Henry Giroux: The Age of War Crimes At the Highest Level of Government

I am always deeply grateful for the insight, integrity, depth, 

wisdom, courage, and profound commitment to 

truth of Henry Giroux. - Molly

From June 1st, in the wake of Trump's pull out from the Paris Accord......... 

THE AGE OF WAR CRIMES AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT--

The right-wing extremists now rule the White House and will amplify the climate of hate, a politics of despair and destruction, and most of all will make the world utterly precarious for future generations. 

It is time to build democracies in exile, what the Charter 77 movement once called a landscape filled with parallel polisis. I also think it is time to switch the vocabulary when referring to Trump. He is not merely corrupt, incompetent, stupid, narcissistic, and self-absorbed; he acts like a war criminal in charge of a war culture given his willingness to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, pass legislation that puts the lives of people in jeopardy given the millions who will be left without health care, and his unchecked support for the criminogenic coterie of bankers, hedge fund managers, and big corporations. 

I understand that the phrase "war criminal" should be used with caution, but it appears appropriate given the death dealing legislation Trump has inaugurated. As Mark Hertsgaard recently noted in CommonDreams, "Trump’s repudiation of the Paris Accord and indeed his entire climate policy is to condemn thousands of people to death and suffering today and millions more tomorrow. This is murder, even if Trump’s willful ignorance of climate science prevents him from seeing it." 

This is a president who is on record supporting state sanctioned torture, flirts with dictators, carelessly agrees to put the planet on a suicide trip, and will expand wars abroad and at home. He is the commander in chief of the mass incarceration state and has allowed the most reactionary Attorney General the United States has had in years to roll back all vestiges of prison reform while putting the punishing state on steroids. 

He is not the president of the United States. He is the president of the corporate state now run by racists, militarists, and human rights violators. Most shameful is his condemnation of millions of children to what amounts to a life of sickness and despair given his cutting of vital social provisions from such programs such as SNAP, and his willingness to sacrifice the life of future generations for the sake of the corporate polluters and his right-wing ideologues. 

America is not simply at war with itself, as I have written in my book, it is at war with the planet, the poor, young people, and the lives of future generations.

How could the existing political parties have possibly ignored the importance of education and civic literacy as a public good in order to legitimate and contribute to the dark cloud of ignorance and tyranny that now marks United States politics and leadership?

The power of neoliberal capital and the incarceration state need to be abolished not reformed. The range of oppression cannot be reduced to single issues, nor can it be understand outside of the new horizon of global oppression. The umbrella for a new social movement that brings these movements today has to be radical democracy in the form of democratic socialism. Too much is at stake given that the fate of the future in on a short fuse.

 - Henry Giroux

I highly recommend this book!