I want to point out also that while many Friends, myself included, tend to identify with Democrats, due to social issues, we must not ignore that hawks dominate this party. Both Hillary and Biden are hawks.
During the 2020 DNC debates, the DNC changed the rules, preventing Tulsi Gabbard from participating further in the debates. She was the only candidate whose primary concern was peace. By excluding her, they allowed the discussion to be focused on domestic issues rather than our disastrous foreign policy. Democratic sources also circulated spurious rumors about her somehow being a Russian asset. This allowed a hawk, Biden, to be nominated, leaving Trump as the peace candidate, which is very unfortunate. Biden was able to hide his voting record, e.g. voting for cluster bombs in the Viet Nam War, because of the action of the DNC.
Biden's historical hawkishness had to be hidden, because the popularity of Bernie Sanders and Trump together -- both speaking for reduced American military involvement abroad -- clearly illustrate that the majority of the American people want to scale back on militarism. Trump's anti-war position -- now don't get me wrong I dislike him as much or more than the next person -- is routinely characterized in the main stream media as "isolationism," as if the only way of dealing with foreigners is to make war.
War is big business for the media. They are a business that sells negative drama. War is great negative drama. The media all allowed themselves to be embedded -- and coopted -- in the first invasion of Iraq. If the military/industrial complex wants to suppress anti-war candidates, they can manipulate the media to do what they did to Tulsi -- implying that she was a Russian asset/agent and other disinformation, like saying she was a Hindu nationalist.
https://annebarschall.blogspot.com/2019/12/tulsi-related-data.html
https://annebarschall.blogspot.com/2020/03/tulsi-wrt-syria-and-india.html
https://annebarschall.blogspot.com/2019/11/endless-war-tulsi.html
There were also very spurious reactions on mainstream media to the fact that she was a peace candidate. I am not a huge fan of the Jimmy Dore Show on Youtube, but he has some insightful reviews of how she was treated.
The way she has been treated by Democrats and by main stream media has pushed her towards the Republican media, which is more anti-war than the Democratic media. She also tends to speak in rather provocative language, which makes her painful to listen to, but she is firmly committed to reducing USA military adventurism. Her commitment to peace is something that we have to pay attention to.
War is a huge violation of civil rights.
Not being aligned with a party is not only important for Quakers from a tax perspective, but also because we cannot delude ourselves into thinking that the Democratic party is our party.
It is also my view that the hawk, Biden, destabilized the world situation by reflexively running off and re-energizing NATO. The Russians regard NATO as threatening. While we might see France and Germany as friendly, we have to remember that both of those countries (Napoleon & Hitler) have viciously invaded Russia -- and that Hitler publicly stated a desire to murder ALL slavs, despite many of them being blond and blue-eyed white people. His soldiers did engage in incidents of mass murder against civilians in Slavic countries. Biden's retro, Western Europe oriented, worldview gave Putin the justification, in the eyes of his colleagues, that he needed to invade the Ukraine. We shouldn't be hiding our heads in the sand about this.
This is not to say that I support what Putin did -- absolutely not -- but we are not entirely innocent here. We allowed a traditional hawk with a retro worldview to be elected without comment.
#Quakers #Peace #PeaceTestimony #Hawks #DemocraticParty #TulsiGabbard #DNC #Russia #Ukraine #War #NATO
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