Nut house conspiracy theories — Professor Hamid Dabashi makes an observation — about the 2016 United States election

© 2016 Peter Free

 

26 September 2016

 

 

Conspiracy theories and American political theater

 

Writing just after the Obama Administration made the biggest US arms deal with Israel ever, Columbia University Professor Hamid Dabashi insightfully wrote that:

 

 

In the . . . rollercoaster-ride freak show of the United States presidential election, not a single dull moment to catch your breath and wonder.

 

Conspiracy theories are the signs of the dire absence of any serious civic discourse . . . .

 

But they are also a healthy sign of a public defiance against the establishment media and their conventional opinion-makers . . . .

 

How else can you make sense of a political culture . . . which . . . can demand and exact astronomical funds to build bombs with which to maim and murder people half way around the globe - instead of letting them be used to feed a nation's own hungry children?

 

© 2016 Hamid Dabashi, The garden of Americanly delights, Al Jazeera English (20 September 2016) (resequenced extracts)

 

 

Sound harsh?

 

 

Well consider this

 

After the Obama Administration made its "can't have enough war" deal with Israel, the US Senate decided that terrorism-exporting Saudi Arabia needed $1.15 billion more in armaments. These included about 153 Abrams tanks.

 

Apparently, we cannot leave our favorite Wahhabists out of the Obama Administration's slaughter game. A bunch more tanks should let the Saudis happily roll over warmly innocent Yemeni bodies.

 

As Alex Emmons at The Intercept put it:

 

 

In addition to providing Saudi Arabia with intelligence and flying refueling missions for its air force, the United States has enabled the [Saudi-led Yemen] bombing campaign by supplying $20 billion in weapons over the past 18 months.

In total, President Obama has sold more than $115 billion in weapons to the Saudi kingdom – more than any other president.

© 2016 Alex Emmons, 27 U.S. Senators Rebel Against Arming Saudi Arabia, The Intercept (21 September 2016) (extracts) 

 

The moral? — Professor Dabashi was not harsh at all

The United States has become just as foamingly lunatic as the so-called allies that it pretends both to support and abhor:

 

During the floor debate, many of those in favor of the [Saudi] weapons sale echoed Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who declared:

"This is a sale that benefits us."

Although even Corker admitted Saudi Arabia is not a "perfect ally" and that many civilians had been killed in Yemen, he argued that the massive sale of new weapons should be approved because it will benefit the U.S. economically.

© 2016 Nika Knight, "Indifferent to Yemen's Misery," Senate Approves Massive Saudi Arms Deal, Common Dreams (21 September 2016)

 

What's a "few" children's corpses compared to the worth of a dollar?

Senator Corker's widely held opinion demonstrates why it is dangerous to have an economy (like the United States') that is so predominantly dependent upon products and institutions that exist only to kill people.

A tip of the hat to the 27 Senators who tried to prevent this sale.