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“Through the National Revolution its people were purged of alien diseases and America became American again.” So ends A Cool Million, Nathanael West’s now largely forgotten skewering of classic American rags-to-riches stories.  Beginning like a pluck-and-luck Horatio Alger tale, West’s very own “Ragged Dick” -- Lemuel Pitkin -- is mercilessly brutalized over the course of 100 pages, losing his money, his mother’s home, his teeth, an eye, a thumb, a leg, his scalp, and by the end of the absurdist novella his life. My yellowed 1976 paperback of The Collected Works of Nathanael West calls it a “Candide-like satire,” but on recently rereading it, I was struck by how much of the story -- including that near-last line -- had age-of-Trump overtones to it.

So you can add A Cool Million to a list of older works, including George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, and Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, that might have something to offer in grasping the nature of our present moment.  “Obviously, no book is a perfect analogy for the complex events playing out in American politics and around the world,” Sophie Gilbert wrote in a January roundup of such books for The Atlantic. “But for readers, historical works can offer insight into recurring societal trends, as well as reassurance that this moment isn’t unprecedented.”

In his article today, TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich suggests another author worth revisiting -- novelist John Updike -- and a caution against worrying too much about President Trump and not nearly enough about the culture, the society, the country, and the people who put him in the White House. “Trump is not cause, but consequence,” writes Bacevich tellingly.

Toward the end of A Cool Million, Lemuel Pitkin scores a vaudeville gig in which he buys newspapers each day and fashions them into clubs. With them, nightly, two comedians “beat him violently over the head and body” while telling jokes, before finally employing a huge mallet (labeled “The Works”) to “demolish” him and bring down the house. “His toupee flew off, his eye and teeth popped out, and his wooden leg was knocked into the audience” to a chorus of guffaws, writes West of this sick form of entertainment for a deeply sick society.

Called upon to aid a rebellion he had helped foster in an earlier stage, Pitkin is soon publicly felled by an assassin’s bullet, becoming a martyr and so ushering the National Revolutionary Party, a fascist-style group, to power in America.  Trump’s path to the presidency may have been slightly less absurd but, as Bacevich suggests, it also stems from an increasingly sick society.  Luckily, Bacevich offers a possible remedy to the current age, although it’s one he’s not certain you’ll like. Read his piece -- and prescriptions -- at your own risk! Nick Turse

Slouching Toward Mar-a-Lago
The Post-Cold-War Consensus Collapses
By Andrew J. Bacevich

Like it or not, the president of the United States embodies America itself. The individual inhabiting the White House has become the preeminent symbol of who we are and what we represent as a nation and a people. In a fundamental sense, he is us.

It was not always so. Millard Fillmore, the 13th president (1850-1853), presided over but did not personify the American republic.  He was merely the federal chief executive.  Contemporary observers did not refer to his term in office as the Age of Fillmore.  With occasional exceptions, Abraham Lincoln in particular, much the same could be said of Fillmore’s successors.  They brought to office low expectations, which they rarely exceeded.  So when Chester A. Arthur (1881-1885) or William Howard Taft (1909-1913) left the White House, there was no rush to immortalize them by erecting gaudy shrines -- now known as “presidential libraries” -- to the glory of their presidencies.  In those distant days, ex-presidents went back home or somewhere else where they could find work.

Over the course of the past century, all that has changed.  Ours is a republic that has long since taken on the trappings of a monarchy, with the president inhabiting rarified space as our king-emperor.  The Brits have their woman in Buckingham Palace.  We have our man in the White House.

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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: The next TD post will appear on Tuesday, August 8th. Tom]

Think of Donald Trump as the plutocratic id loosed in the White House.  And who hasn’t noticed the results?  Civil war and uproar in Washington with bodies regularly carried out of the Oval Office.  There are the constant tweet assaults on his attorney general, Jeff Sessions.  There’s his disgruntled secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, taking some “personal time” six months into office. (Think of it as his own private Rexit.)  There was (with an emphasis on “was”) Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, under siege for months, only to be frontally assaulted last week by Anthony Scaramucci, the president’s new communications director -- sayonara Sean Spicer -- who accused him of being a leaker, smeared him as a “fucking paranoid schizophrenic,” and compared their relationship to that of Cain and Abel. (And you know how that brotherly duo ended up).  Priebus was soon a goner, replaced by one of “my generals,” retired four-star John Kelly, until recently head of the Department of Homeland Security. And no slouch, Scaramucci also clobbered the president’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, accusing him of trying to “suck his own cock.”  Oh, and then he threatened to fire his whole staff to take care of the problem of White House leaks before, of course, getting axed himself on a day on which the president tweeted "No WH chaos!"

Meanwhile, National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster, the other general in the White House, seems to be on the outs (with White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders ominously saying there's "no reason" to think Trump lacks confidence in him).  Secretary of Defense James Mattis was reportedly caught totally off guard when the president tweeted his decision to ban transgender troops from the armed forces.  Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a key figure in what passes for foreign policy, has at times been at loggerheads with Bannon and, threatened with charges of political collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign, has fallen back on a plea of total, utter, and abysmal ignorance of more or less everything foreign or Russian (even the name of the Russian ambassador to the U.S.).  This bizarre list only grows by the day and by the tweet as the bodies begin to pile up.

All that’s left, in true mafia style, is “the family” and “the business,” hardly the usual definition of the imperial presidency.  And yes, it couldn’t be more poisonous, but keep in mind why Donald Trump won the presidency in the first place.  As I wrote during the election campaign last year, parts of the white working class were “ready to send a literal loose cannon into the White House... willing, that is, to take a chance on the roof collapsing, even if it collapses on them.”  He was, in this sense, their own suicide bomber in Washington, how they planned on giving the finger to the political system they felt had pushed them to the edge of some cliff.  They voted -- and it was no mistake -- a certified bad boy into the White House.  He called himself a “businessman,” but that was the least of what he was.  And as their bad boy, he’s having a blast, as at the Boy Scouts Jamboree where he offered a classic Trumpian tirade to 40,000 12 to 18 year olds and attending adults, lecturing them on the “hottest” people and cocktail parties in New York, getting them to boo Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and using the word “hell” (“Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I'm in front of the Boy Scouts?”) in a non-religious sense, surely a first not just for the president but for anybody addressing such a crowd.

In short, it was glorious.  What more could a bad boy ask for than to be reprimanded by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the chief scout executive for the Boy Scouts of America in the same 24-hour period?

As Robert Lipsyte, TomDispatch’s jock culture correspondent, points out today, Donald Trump has just one thing in common with past American presidents: golf.  And they merely played the game in their spare time.  He’s brought what Lipsyte calls the sport of plutocrats -- the business and the profits -- right into the Oval Office.  Don’t count on Donald Trump for normal Washington politics, alliance making, deals, or loyalty.  Think of him instead as the bad-boy president of chaos.  Fore! Tom

The Sport of Plutocrats
Golf Is Trump
By Robert Lipsyte

While waiting for Trump to jump the tracks, let’s savor the day when his inevitable train wreck first passed through a critical safety switch. On June 9th, President Trump alienated his true base -- the reactionary rich -- by driving his golf cart onto the green at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. In doing so, he committed an unpardonable sacrilege in the high church of capitalism. It was time to start counting the days until he dropped off the scoreboard.

For successful greedheads and their wannabes, golf is the most sacred of sports, the symbol of all that is retrograde and exclusionary in American life. There’s far more to golf, however, than mere inequality or a history of institutional racism and sexism. Golf is also a waste of space and water, and a sinkhole for chemicals poisoning the local aquifer. Think of all the organic vegetables that could be grown on those swards or the walking trails and wildlife sanctuaries that could be established. Think of the affordable housing that could be built on that land. There has to be a better use for the millions of dollars that will be squandered this year on overpriced golf duds and equipment, lessons, playing fees, and memberships in the latest trendy clubs (that these days often have you-know-who’s name on them in large golden letters).

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Over the years, Ann Jones has confronted some of the most daunting and depressing issues on the planet: the abuse of women, African civil wars, the disaster that is Afghanistan, and -- as reflected in her book They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars -- the plight of American casualties of the fighting there. She’s put on her flak jacket and combat boots to “embed” with U.S. troops at forward operating bases near the Pakistani border. (“I... got a checklist of things to bring along. It was the sort of list moms get when sending their kids off to camp: water bottle, flashlight, towel, soap, toilet paper [for those excursions away from base], sleeping bag, etc. But there was other stuff too: ballistic eyewear, fireproof gloves, big knife, body armor, and Kevlar helmet.  Considering how much of my tax dollar goes to the Pentagon, I thought the Army might have a few spare flak jackets to lend to visiting reporters, but no, you have to bring your own.”) She’s been in trauma units in Afghanistan and on U.S. C-17 cargo planes taking the desperately wounded home. (“Here again is Marine Sergeant Wilkins, just as he was on the flight from Afghanistan: unconscious, sedated, intubated, and encased in a vacuum spine board... He remains in cold storage, like some pod-person in a sci-fi film.”) In the heat of summer, she’s ventured off to watch U.S. advisers trying to whip Afghan military recruits into shape. (“Hundreds of little Davids to the overstuffed American Goliaths training them... Like me, many sag under the weight of a standard-issue flak jacket.”)

So, honestly, who could blame her for finally seeking out a little time in Norway, a country that just took first place in the annual World Happiness Report of the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Solutions Network?  Not me.  She spent several years in Norway, in fact, returning to her own land with a strong sense of what might raise the American happiness quotient.  As it happened, she was just in time to watch her country’s slo-mo dive off the edge of a cliff in a fit of plutocratic triumphalism.  In response, she offered a little advice about what actually works when it comes to a better life from one of the happiest, most satisfied countries on Earth, a place where welfare isn’t a dirty word and the social safety net isn’t the preferred place for budget cuts. (Check out her “Social Democracy for Dummies.”)  Of course, not many were listening to such suggestions at the time, not at least until Bernie Sanders came on the scene as a presidential candidate.

Having paid another visit to Norway recently, she’s home again, infused with hope in these grim times. In that spirit, she offers her own uplifting antidote to Trumpcare (that is, to the various Republican deathcare bills) and a striking sense of how resistance to The Donald & Co. might proceed on a state-by-state basis. For me at least, her perspective feels like tonic in a desperately down time. Tom

Scandinavia in Maryland?
Medicare for All in One State
By Ann Jones

You may have noticed that quite a few of the formerly united states of America have been choosing to go their own way. My own state, Massachusetts, now blooms with sanctuary cities sworn to protect residents from federal intrusion.  Its attorney general, Maura Healey, was among the first to raise the legal challenge to President Trump’s Muslim bans. She also sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education for abandoning rules meant to protect students from exploitation by private for-profit schools. (Think Trump University, for instance.) Even my state’s Republican governor, Charlie Baker, announced well before the presidential election that he wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump.

It’s been like the Boston Tea Party all over again, with citizens and public officials refusing to abide by the edicts of their supposedly lawful rulers.  And Massachusetts is not alone. Hawaii, Washington State, New York, Minnesota, and Oregon all joined the legal battle against Muslim bans, while many other states have denounced federal policies that threaten the nation’s international reputation, the environment, or what’s left of democracy itself. So far at least 10 states (as well as Puerto Rico) and more than 200 cities have committed themselves to work toward the environmental goals of the Paris Accord, just as the United States as a nation had promised to do before Trump trashed the deal.

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When you think about it, isn’t it strange that Donald Trump doesn’t represent the historical norm, that Americans have never before elected a P.T. Barnum president (though Barnum did become the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut)? After all, as I wrote of Trump during the 2016 election campaign, “What could be more American than his two major roles: salesman (or pitchman) and con artist?” Americans have always loved a con man -- something Hillary Clinton and her advisers somehow never quite grasped.

Trump was always, at heart, both the pitchman of, and a con artist for, American abundance, or rather for a particularly American version of conspicuous consumption.  Hence, the reported $7 million in gold leaf in the Louis XIV-style ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago private club, the gold-plated bathroom fixtures on his plane, the gold-plated helicopter he owned, the $100 bottles of Trump 24K Super Premium Vodka with a 24-karat gold “T” on the label, and of course his name skylined across the planet in giant golden letters. Hence also his ability to convince others of his success, even when his casinos cratered -- he still made millions off them, leaving his investors holding the bag -- his magazine floundered, his steaks went to the dogs, his airlines barely got off the ground, and Trump University’s triumph lay in the number of lawsuits it produced (and the Mexican-American judge he defamed). Consider this not failure, but Donald Trump in his prime. 

So it’s strange that, in the thunderstorm of media coverage of President Trump -- never has any president sucked the air out of the media room this way -- his greatest pitch and what may be the greatest selling scam in history has gotten so little attention in these last six months. I’m talking about his scheme, as reported by TomDispatch regular Michael Klare today, to open the gold-plated spigot on American fossil fuels and sell the country’s oil and natural gas abroad in far greater quantities than at present.

In the past, the pain Trump caused had its limits (though tell that to those casino investors or the “students” of Trump University).  Even Trumpcare, which -- were it ever to come to be, leaving the health of millions in tatters -- would only wound some, not all.  On the other hand, convincing the world that this is the moment to burn yet more American fossil fuels and so release yet more carbon emissions into an already overheating atmosphere, if carried off “successfully,” might prove the greatest scam in history. The pain from it would be beyond measure, since it would damage the very environment that has proven, for all these millennia, so welcoming to humanity.  It would, in short, represent an all-too-conspicuous consumption -- of pain. Let Klare explain. Tom

America’s Carbon-Pusher in Chief
Trump’s Fossil-Fueled Foreign Policy
By Michael T. Klare

Who says President Trump doesn’t have a coherent foreign policy?  Pundits and critics across the political spectrum have chided him for failing to articulate and implement a clear international agenda. Look closely at his overseas endeavors, though, and one all-too-consistent pattern emerges: Donald Trump will do whatever it takes to prolong the reign of fossil fuels by sabotaging efforts to curb carbon emissions and promoting the global consumption of U.S. oil, coal, and natural gas.  Whenever he meets with foreign leaders, it seems, his first impulse is to ply them with American fossil fuels.

His decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, which obliged this country to reduce its coal consumption and take other steps to curb its carbon emissions, was widely covered by the American mainstream news media.  On the other hand, the president’s efforts to promote greater fossil fuel consumption abroad -- just as significant in terms of potential harm to the planet -- have received remarkably little attention.

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You would barely know it, living in this country, but the essence of modern warfare is what our military tends to call “collateral damage”: the killing or wounding of civilians, not combatants. The Global War on Terror -- more than 15 years later a no-name set of conflicts still spreading across the Greater Middle East, parts of Africa, and now the Philippines -- has been typical of this.  Civilians have died in startling numbers, both directly and thanks to the hardships these conflicts have brought on.  Vast populations have been uprooted from their homes -- at one point more than a million people from the Iraqi city of Mosul alone -- and often sent fleeing across borders.  In other words, from Afghanistan to Libya, the war on terror has (not to mince words) been murder on civilian populations.

In mainstream news coverage, real attention is paid from time to time (and quite rightly) to the continuing brutality of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the civilian deaths caused by their insurgency.  And that’s even more the case with the civilian carnage caused by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.  When it comes to the U.S. role in civilian deaths, however, it’s been another matter.  Clearly, it’s a subject the Pentagon would prefer that we not think about and yet the human toll is all too real.  As I wrote back in 2015, “In 2004 and 2006, the Lancet, a British medical journal, published studies based on scientific surveys of ‘excess Iraqi deaths’ since the American invasion of 2003 and, in the first case, came up with an estimated 98,000 of them and in the second with 655,000 (a much-criticized figure); such studies by medical and other researchers have never stopped.  More recent counts of such deaths have ranged from 500,000 in 2013 to one million or 5% of the Iraqi population [in 2015].”  The latest range of figures offered by the independent website Iraq Body Count for “documented civilian deaths from violence” since the 2003 U.S. invasion of that country is 177,941-199,231 (a conservative figure, given that word “documented,” and yet far higher than the one for combatants).  And keep in mind that that’s just Iraq.

From the beginning, TomDispatch has made an effort to focus its attention regularly on the “collateral damage” from our conflicts.  It’s been our conviction that we Americans should feel some responsibility for such carnage in a war that so infamously began with the “collateral” deaths of almost 3,000 innocent American civilians and shows no signs of ending in our lifetime.  This website may, for instance, be the only news source that bothered to keep track of the number of wedding parties obliterated by U.S. air power since 100 or more revelers were wiped out in a village in Eastern Afghanistan by B-52 and B-1B bombers as 2001 ended.  The total: at least eight weddings in three countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen), including brides, grooms, and even musicians hired to play at the ceremony.

In the same spirit, TomDispatch regular Laura Gottesdiener, who covered the destruction of a hospital in Afghanistan by U.S. air power for this site back in 2015, turns to the American war against ISIS in Syria and the civilian mayhem taking place on the road to the “capital” of the Islamic State, Raqqa. Tom

Burning Raqqa
The U.S. War Against Civilians in Syria
By Laura Gottesdiener

It was midday on Sunday, May 7th, when the U.S.-led coalition warplanes again began bombing the neighborhood of Wassim Abdo’s family.

They lived in Tabqa, a small city on the banks of the Euphrates River in northern Syria. Then occupied by the Islamic State (ISIS, also known as Daesh), Tabqa was also under siege by U.S.-backed troops and being hit by daily artillery fire from U.S. Marines, as well as U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. The city, the second largest in Raqqa Province, was home to an airfield and the coveted Tabqa Dam. It was also the last place in the region the U.S.-backed forces needed to take before launching their much-anticipated offensive against the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa.

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