Opinion

Tucker Carlson recently full-on embraced Hungary's authoritarian leader Victor Orban, who has attacked immigrants and LGBTQ people with a vengeance. Carlson, broadcasting his show from Hungary for a week earlier this month — meeting with Orban and speaking at a far-right conference there — held Orban's anti-democratic regime up as a model for the U.S.

This article was originally published at The Signorile Report

Channeling Charlton Heston in the original "Planet of the Apes" film: "It's a madhouse! A madhouse!"

America is now experiencing a second wave of the deadly coronavirus pandemic. At least 600,000 people have died from the pandemic in the United States. That number will likely surpass one million by the time it is over. The country may even be forced to endure another wave of lockdowns and forced business closures intended to slow the spread of the disease. The economic and human consequences will be dire.

Do you really think our pull-out from Afghanistan would have looked any different under the man who handled the coronavirus pandemic so well that he cashiered 400,000 American lives? He claimed over and over that he was going to end the "forever wars" and get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan once and for all. He was the president who said he could "make a deal" with the Taliban that was supposed to lead to a peaceful reconciliation with the Afghan government upon the withdrawal of American troops.

This article first appeared in Salon.

The situation in Afghanistan deteriorated quickly over the weekend. The Taliban took control of its capital city last night. That co-op of regional warlords now has effective control of the country. The swift developments provide partisans here in the states plenty of reasons for being partisan. The Republicans are acting like the fall of Kabul is the same — politically, strategically, morally — as the fall of Saigon at the end of another forever war that had no point but cost us blood and treasure. Naturally, this puts the Democrats on the defensive. I'm no expert on military history. I'm no expert on international affairs. I do know, however, that partisanship often makes people say silly things.

I think it took a degree of courage for Joe Biden to end "the forever war." Decisions like this don't come without cost in every sense of the word. The president surely knew what was going to happen, though he probably could not have known how or how quickly it would. Given that uncertainty, it took courage. But contrary to what some liberals are saying in Biden's defense, I don't think it took that much courage.

All the recrimination-filled reporting and commentary about how fast Afghanistan fell to the Taliban after President Biden made the courageous decision to finish withdrawing our troops miss a much more important story.

This story concerns why Americans can't have nice things anymore while our main economic competitor, China, is investing in a lucrative and influential future. It's the story of jettisoning the sensible Powell Doctrine on military action in favor of chronic combat that creates enormous fortunes for investors in the military-industrial complex, all enabled by jingoistic political cowardice in Washington.

In trying to understand what prompted a man in Plymouth, England to commit the worst mass shooting in the UK for over a decade, attention has turned to his apparent links with the incel community – an online subculture of people who describe themselves as “involuntary celibates".

Jake Davison allegedly shot his mother before a shooting spree which ended when he turned the gun on himself. His youngest victim was three years old. In the lead-up to the attacks, he compared himself to incels in YouTube videos and contributed to their forums.

Watching the swift fall of the Afghan government to the hands of the Taliban this weekend, my gut reaction is one I suspect may be true of most Americans watching this disaster unfold: If twenty years of occupation did diddly squat to set up Afghanistan for success, it's doubtful that another twenty years was going to do the trick.

"One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country," President Joe Biden who, unlike most Americans, actually pays attention to the military and political details of the Afghanistan war, said in a statement released on Saturday. "I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan—two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth."

And now, with the inevitable, but quickened, collapse of Afghanistan, comes the blame game and the need to use national embarrassment for political gain.

Call it mistaken national pride or a constant need for a fall guy, Americans always seem to need to personify their collective distaste, particularly if the messages along the way never fully matched the reality.

Nearly two full decades of lies and wishful thinking from U.S. generals, politicians, liberal interventionists and neoconservative talking heads came into full view Sunday as the Taliban in Afghanistan surrounded Kabul while American military forces and diplomatic personnel rapidly evacuated the U.S. embassy and the Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani negotiated a surrender and transition government with opposition forces.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Andrew Cuomo is out as governor of New York. Reeling from allegations in a 165-page report by New York Attorney General Leticia James that he sexually harassed 11 women and assaulted at least one, most of whom worked under him in state government, and facing impeachment proceedings, Cuomo announced last Monday that he will resign on Aug. 24.

Cuomo faces charges that he groped and engaged in unwanted touching of several women, made inappropriate and suggestive comments and created a hostile work environment for women who worked for him. One of the women, Brittany Commisso, his former executive assistant, filed a criminal complaint accusing Cuomo of groping and rubbing her butt and slipping his hand inside her blouse and bra and grabbing her breast. The charge filed by Commisso is the most serious allegation against Cuomo. Four district attorneys from jurisdictions in Manhattan, Albany, Westchester, and Nassau counties have announced that they are reviewing the evidence presented in the attorney general's report.

Donald Trump, who never met a fact or figure he didn't want to distort, desperately wanted to prevent the Census Bureau from getting an accurate count of the people living in America. So his administration pursued "policies that suppress the count among hard-to-count communities — including immigrants, people of color, low-income individuals, and those in rural areas — and effectively disenfranchise them," according to a 2020 report by Vox and the Center for Public Integrity. The Trump administration implemented strategies that were cooked up by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a hate group, due to their advocacy for immigration policies aimed quite overtly at preserving white supremacy in the U.S.

This article originally appeared at Salon.

When I was young my favorite writers were Ernest Hemmingway and Hunter S. Thompson, and my favorite Thompson novel was his 1971 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Which is why a caller last year who started on a rant about "adrenochrome" caused me to both cut him off the air and go back to my copy of the novel to see if my memory was right.

Sure enough, there it was. Thompson was bemoaning running out of hashish and being almost out of opium when his "fat Samoan" sidekick offered an alternative:

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, on the final day of his "cyber symposium," remained unable to produce any tangible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. He attempted to deflect blame for his failed event onto supposed antifa activists — or, actually, "antifa things" — who were nowhere to be seen in this Great Plains city of 177,000 residents.

The pillow tycoon, alongside self-proclaimed "information warfare" specialist Col. Phil Waldron, took to the main stage early Thursday to decry the invisible opposition force he claims has hijacked this event, which he has promised for months would offer "absolute proof" that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.