Op-Ed

On Friday, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and the self-appointed dismantler of the United States government, was to have been given a top secret national security briefing at the Pentagon. He was going to be shown our military’s plans for how we would fight a war with and conquer China — should there ever be a need for that. A nuclear war with China! Musk could barely contain his raging male hormonal ecstasy that he was going to be taken into the TANK, the most massively secure room in the country, a fortress on the 2nd floor of the Pentagon typically used only by the Joint Chiefs and the President, surrounded by soldiers with the most lethal of weapons. A supreme bunker that simply cannot be penetrated.

There, behind three-foot thick walls, Musk was to see the End of the World: the U.S.’s actual war plans for an attack on China.

It has been another exciting week here in the Land of Oz, formerly known as the United States of America, which is currently going through an apparently overdue purging that will replace the rule of law with a whimsical process whereby the Chief Executive is empowered to decide everything in a new nation that will likely be renamed Trumpland. The transition has not been pretty, as part of the process is to deport all undesirables. As a result, countries that have been reckoned to be friends to the American people and government including Britain and Germany are now warning their citizens that they might want to reconsider plans to travel to the US as they might be detained by one or more of America’s law enforcement authorities even if their travel status is fully legal and they have not committed anything that might be considered a crime in the real world.

Freedom of speech is kind of like eggs nowadays – too expensive! For Columbia University, the cost imposed on it by the Trump administration was suddenly $400 million in rescinded federal funding, at least if the speech was pro-Palestinian and critical of Israel.

What choice did the school have, except, as Jennifer Scarlott writes, “to appease the Trump administration by expelling, suspending, and revoking the degrees of a growing number of students accused of peaceful protest and exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly . . .?

Throughout my political career, I have steadfastly defended the First Amendment, particularly the right to free speech. In 2002, I delivered a speech entitled A Prayer for America, where I challenged the rationale of the PATRIOT Act and questioned actions that infringed upon the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and protection against unreasonable searches.

My commitment to upholding free speech has been a guiding principle throughout my tenure in public service. While a Member of Congress, I consistently opposed measures that, in my view, threatened civil liberties, including the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, which I believed was unconstitutional and could potentially criminalize thought. The bill passed. I was one of 6 members who voted against it.

The Current Assault on Free Speech on Campus

There should be little doubt in anyone’s mind that the “wag the dog” relationship between the United States and Israel has done terrible damage to American institutions and constitutional liberties. The US bipartisan unconditional support of the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world which now despises America’s corrupt political system and its increasing bizarre and out of touch leadership. There were even reports this past week that Washington and Tel Aviv have been discussing shipping upwards of two million Palestinians to Sudan and Somalia, two of the most violent places on earth, to permit the development of Trump Gaza resort and the annexation of the rest of historic Palestine by Israel.

In his first term as president, Donald Trump picked to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a virulent anti-EPA figure, Scott Pruitt. As the International Bar Association said back then, Pruit had been “the scourge of the EPA as attorney general of Oklahoma…abolished his office’s environmental unit” and, on a national level “sued the EPA 14 times.” 

Moreover, the association which describes itself as the “foremost organization for international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies,” added: “As a candidate for Oklahoma AG…Pruitt was bankrolled by the fossil fuel and power sectors, and by the Koch family of energy billionaires.”

Succeeding Pruitt as EPA administrator under Trump was Andrew Wheeler, whose background was as a lobbyist for major coal, chemical and uranium companies.

EPA standards were eliminated wholesale under Pruitt and Wheeler.

When the powerful speak, mushroom clouds emerge – oh so easily. Power is about conquest; winning the war, getting what you want no matter the cost.

For instance, Israel should nuke Gaza. “Do whatever you have to do.” Thus declared Sen. Lindsey Graham last year in a Meet the Press interview, comparing the current genocide in Palestine to the U.S. decision to end World War II by A-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “That was the right decision,” he said, spewing out the historical abstraction that still rules the world.