Editorial note: In view of the terrorist attack in Nice, Wednesday’s
column seems quite pertinent, so I’m linking to it here.
I’ll have a full column on the subject on Monday. What follows was written hours
before the Nice incident.
These are dark days for the Republic – and the world – what with war clouds
looming on every horizon and a miasma of menace hanging over us in our everyday
lives. The other day as I considered going to the Sonoma County Fair I was suddenly
struck by the not unreasonable fear that Something Might Happen – a deranged
shooter, perhaps, out to prove an utterly deranged point. I checked myself:
what am I thinking? Is life now totally crazy? Do I want to live in a society
where it’s not paranoid to have such thoughts? And yet …
And yet this morning, as I wondered what I’d be writing about today, I scanned
the headlines and saw a number of bright spots in otherwise darkening skies.
Perhaps they’re underscored by the general bleakness, but in any case they’re
there. Here are a few:
A recent NBC News report on the underreported battles taking place in the GOP
platform committee informs
us:
“Another area of debate emerged between national security hawks and
the more libertarian-minded isolationists during a debate over foreign policy.
While isolationists tried to pass measures that would have condemned ongoing
U.S. involvement in wars in the Middle East and opposed efforts to condemn the
shrinking military budget, the hawks won in every instance.”
Yes, we lost – so where’s the “bright spot”? It’s in the fact that this kind
of debate is unprecedented: previous Republican platform committees have been
the equivalent of a Soviet party congress, where neoconservative orthodoxy was
unchallenged and it was only a question of how militaristic the resulting document
was going to be. With the rise of – dare I say it – Donald Trump, all that’s
changed. The dam is breached, and the waters are pouring forth. Reporter Molly
Ball, writing
in The Atlantic, gives us a taste of the proceedings, paying much attention
to the efforts of “Eric Brakey, a libertarian state senator from Maine “:
“Brakey proposed to condemn the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya
and blame it for destabilizing the region and empowering the Islamic State.
‘The deposing of secular dictators in the Middle East empowers our enemies,”
his text read. “We oppose the continuing of this failed practice.’
“Defending his views, Brakey summoned Trump: ‘Even our presumptive nominee
acknowledges that the decision to take out the secular dictator in Iraq was
a mistake,’ he noted. But other delegates said they didn’t like the idea of
the GOP ‘defending evil dictators.’ That amendment was defeated, as were several
other Brakey proposals aimed at…