EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
Speaking at Dubai’s
World Government Summit, De Niro told a packed audience he was visiting from a
“backward” country suffering from “temporary insanity.”
The actor said that,
in the country he was describing, the head of the Environmental Protection
Agency had recently suggested global warming may be a good thing for humanity.
Well, De Niro is certainly an expert, isn't he?
World-renowned expert on climate, to be sure.
But when he speaks more generally of "America as a
'backward' country suffering 'temporary insanity,'" he is certainly right.
The only trouble is that it isn't "temporary," and
it certainly isn't just Trump, as De Niro’s statement implies, although I think
we can all agree Trump does exhibit definite symptoms of a kind of insanity.
The Pentagon’s just-published "2018 Nuclear Posture
Review" is, without a doubt, the most dangerous thing the United States
has done in years. Although it is not Trump's work, and I think it important to
understand that, he certainly supports it, as he supports every action from the
Pentagon and the CIA.
And when you add to the dangerous words of the Review, all
the new aggression displayed towards Russia (started in Obama's time,
absolutely) and against China and against Iran, you have the most reckless and
threatening new situation facing humanity.
Incidentally, I have not seen one word of objection to this
Review (or, for that matter, to steps taken against Russia) from Obama, or
Clinton, or Pelosi, or Biden, or any other well-known Democrat, and certainly
not from any Republicans.
Just as none of them objected – and, indeed, did quite the
opposite - to fifteen years of bloody Neocon Wars ravaging the Middle East and
killing a couple of million people. Not one of them objected.
And look at the destructive idiocy still going on in
Afghanistan. Fifteen years of slaughter and brutality, and it is still being
expanded, all of it to no meaningful purpose. There are no objections, none
from anyone.
All of America's major politicians are on-board the imperial
bandwagon as it rolls along crushing countless bodies under its massive wheels,
all of them. The red stripes on the American flag today stand for more blood
than ever before, other people's blood.
The blood flows and the destruction continues no matter who
is president. Only were the Congress to rise up against the powers of the
Pentagon and the CIA and great lobbies, in a literal democratic revolt, would
we see any change, and really what are the chances of that? You might as well
talk of Harvey Weinstein getting the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Congress, every member of it, literally is groomed by
special interests. They, all of them, have become extremely comfortable with
special interests – whether defense contractors or destructive lobbies like
that for Israel - and virtually none of them shows any independence.
Meaningless movements like the Tea Party come and go or Trump’s comic-book
battle with “the swamp,” and nothing changes.
As for De Niro - as with so many Hollywood actors who today
regularly offer their political and geopolitical advice to us - I can only
agree with the late writer, Truman Capote, who said he found actors tended to
be quite dumb, the better the actor, the dumber. And he knew because he did a
lot of work in Hollywood.
