Where's the Precipice?

Greetings, gentle readers.
As the United States caroms from one constitutional crisis to another, I'm reminded of a series of science fiction novels written in the late 80s and early 90s of last century by an author named David Gerrold.  I hope. I read a tremendous amount of material that was being consumed at the time by a friend of mine working as a security guard, and I'm fervently wishing that I'm not confusing this SF literary franchise with another.  Any road...
Take away the wonderfully fantastic alien elements and world-creation efforts, and you are left with some occasionally good writing and an alarmingly good premise.
After the aliens invade using ecological tactics and humanity responds, we are told in flashback of the state of the world after World War Three.  As it turns out, the United States had made itself something of an international pariah and bully and eventually pushed world affairs to the state where it involved a nuclear confrontation between itself and everyone else.  Bottom line:  rather than exterminate all life on the planet, the brinkmanship negotiations cause the U.S.A. to capitulate and submit to Treaty of Versailles-like conditions:  demilitarization, political and economic reorganization, educational reform, and the same sorts of thing the IMF pushes on debtor-nations worldwide today.
Why discuss this sort of Hard-SF Lit now?  There are a couple of lessons buried in all of the red alien worm infestation and flame-thrower combat sequences. 
One is that the present-day United States cannot continue on its current course of regime-changer and arms-dealer to the developing world.  In the seventies, Americans finally forced their government to abandon a perpetual war in Vietnam, only for the Carter administration to begin a new policy of systematic destabilization and insurgency throughout the Middle-East, Africa, and both South and Central America.  Today Americans find themselves stuck with both horrible policies.  American troops of occupation are being slowly bled to death in Afghanistan and Iraq, American tomahawk missiles intermittently sprinkle over Syria, while American drone bombers rain devastation on Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, and others.  Augmenting these overt efforts are special ground forces in Mali, Honduras, and another dozen or so developing nations.
Take the current murderously awful foreign policy agenda and combine it with a regime that suddenly has every student in the country googling "emoluments" and constitutional experts worldwide shaking their heads in astonishment.  It may mark the point where American exceptionalism becomes ostracism and the greedy nature of the American military-industrial complex overwhelms the rest of the world's ability to sustain it.
Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Accords and the Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action are actions indicative of an isolationist, xenophobic, and protectionist ideology.  Continued scrutiny of arms sales to countries and agents with sketchy human rights records and terrorist actions is starting to impede American arms sales overseas.
Are we reaching a point where the international community needs to behave as they did at the Treaty of Versailles and forcibly intervene in American internal affairs in the higher interests of all humanity?  Will the American people reach a breaking point where they suddenly demand a reform of their own governmental system?  I hope for the latter. 
Here's why.
We have all met American citizens.  They are friends, relatives, and colleagues.  Almost to a single individual, and almost to a fault, they are good people.  They are gracious hosts and generous contributors to communal endeavours.  In times of disaster and crisis, Americans are often the first to offer assistance.  According to data acquired by the Gallup World Poll and published by the Charities Aid Foundation, Americans are consistently near the top of the World Giving Index, only being outdone in generosity by citizens of Myanmar in 2015.  Odd, considering the Rohingya crisis, but we'll wait on the revised standings of that Index.  Meanwhile, Americans continue to do as they have done:  give until it hurts, as the saying goes.
In short, Americans are the global citizens that donate time, money, and effort to help strangers and charities.  So at what point do Americans lose that caring and sharing feeling?  Surely the preamble to the American Constitution has enshrined that compassionate feeling in their government when it says in its preamble,
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." (Emphasis mine)
So where is the disconnect?  When did people stop seeing taxation as a way of helping fellow citizens? 

• The people of Flint, Michigan are still dealing with a poisonous water supply and now proceeding with legal proceedings against the people that poisoned it.  
• The people of Puerto Rico still haven't recovered from last year's hurricane damage, and are bracing for a new year of increasingly violent weather.  
• The federal government still hasn't recognized universal health care as a human right, leaving the poor and uninsured to perish in the face of rising medical and pharmaceutical costs.

Why are American citizens suffering and dying in the world's most compassionate country?  I'm reminded of Stephen Colbert's Showtime election night special when he openly lamented "How did our politics get so poisonous?"  If you haven't seen it, or don't remember it, it's worth a watch HERE.
Somewhere, there is a specific point where people have become suspicious of giving taxation money to their government because they believe it will be put to nefarious purposes, like the Republicans who campaigned against JFK in 1961 because they thought that a Roman Catholic president would turn over the government to the pope.  Or the Democrats who campaigned against Ronald Reagan in 1979 because they feared he would usher in a new era of "cowboy-style" international interventionism. 
There is a point where the good-natured spirit of helping becomes a paranoid hoarder that lashes out like some sort of Gollum whenever asked to contribute to the public well-being.  I'd like to think that if we look carefully, we can track the whole philosophical trail where people can discover where their moral paths diverge.

• I am prepared to sacrifice something important to help a neighbour or friend in need. (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to sacrifice time with my family to help strangers in life-threatening situations (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to put my life and well-being at risk to assist families of other ethnicities or religions (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to donate funds and items to a centrally-administered agency to help with disaster relief. (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to pay my tax dollars with confidence that the officials I helped elect will distribute that money equitably to benefit all citizens. (Yes/No)

I'd like to think that we can identify that point where the consensus of compassion begins to dissolve, and we can start to build a solution from that point.  This is the spot where major problems like immigration, school shootings, health care, and education should find their root sources.  People often forget or obscure that point of reference.
When Americans realize that their social contract should be forged in goodwill and compassion, and not in mutually assured destruction, perhaps they can renegotiate their relationship with their own government so that transparency and accountability become the watchwords of the new covenant.  Perhaps that is the legacy of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and her staff at the Democratic National Committee who decided that their charter explicitly allowed them to ignore the democratic wishes of their constituents - that the politically active and aware voters they spurned will create a revolution to overturn the self-destructive status quo.
And that's about all I can muster at the current time.
Looking forward at another assault at the keyboard in the future.
Cheers, and goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

False Flags Flying

Greetings, gentle readers.
First off, I would like to recommend the film "Last Flag Flying."  If nothing else, the ensemble acting talent and charisma of Laurence Fishburne, Bryan Cranston, and Steve Carell should pique some interest.  Amidst some charming and humorous scenarios are some very profound insights into American foreign policy today as viewed by Vietnam War veterans.
The bottom line is that the war in Vietnam should have acted as an object lesson.  When Nixon and Kissinger ordered the withdrawal and cessation of hostilities, that should have been the wake-up call that George Orwell's warning from 1984 was real.  The war was unwinnable.  In fact, the Pentagon Papers proved that not only was there no achievable victory condition, but that both American policy makers and military authorities were fully aware that they were feeding young men and women into an interminable meat-grinder.  The military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower described in his 1961 speech (transcript here) was in full effect - politicians use the government's foreign policy to justify purchasing bombs and bullets from manufacturers, who employ voters.  The more bombs and bullets expended, the more employment, and thus, more electable officials.
The fact that the recent missile strikes on Syria did no damage to any military targets is irrelevant to the point of those strikes.  The stock value of Raytheon, the manufacturer of those missiles, rose by almost $5 billion as those five dozen missiles crashed into suburbs and fields south of Damascus.
This leads to the real point of this particular set of ramblings:  Syria.

Syria

For years now, media and journalists have been attacked as being biased manipulators of opinion.  Social media has also been drawn into the fray, as Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms are accused of shaping popular interpretations of events.  Every entity with an agenda has tried to shape the narrative of the conflict in Syria to their own ends.  Russia wants a friendly, warm-water naval base, the Americans want an ally that borders Iraq, Europe wants a stable, secular state that can deal with the regional refugee crisis, Israel needs to balance Sunni and Shiite factions against one another while drawing international attention away from their own ethnic occupation and settlement issues.
Here's the bottom line:  Syria is a mess, but there are no easy answers.  There are no good guys and bad guys.  There are lots of weapons and loads of despicable people, and millions of innocent people trapped in a hellish sea of destruction with them.
Americans don't quite understand this.  At all. 
First of all, their entire society has been browbeaten into polarizing everything, particularly politics.  If you are a Republican, you must be a racist believer in waging war on women's reproductive rights while you imprison the homeless, and if you're a Democrat, you're a godless baby-killer who wants to give away money to crack-whore parasites.  Second, American exceptionalism means that every international problem has a uniquely American solution that foreigners haven't considered because they weren't introduced to the Founding Fathers, Liberty, Freedom, Patriotism, etc. as infants.
Third and finally, as the world's largest and most heavily funded military, Americans feel obligated to be the world's policeman in a very patronizing and condescending way.
So in a quick-bullet form, here's how we end up with the awful mess in Syria today.

• Bashar al-Assad is an awful person.  No question.  Secret police, torture dungeons, censorship, repression, the lot.  His regime is nasty and not particularly concerned with human rights.
• 2011 sees a large populist surge through the Middle East as predominantly democratic and liberal causes unite to protest and challenge the ruling governments of Tunisia, then later Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and... Syria. 
• President Barack Obama's State Department sees an opportunity to use protesting students, nurses, journalists, et aliter to further their objectives.  
• Under the direction of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and following the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", U.S. security agencies begin to start supporting and funding insurgencies.
• Guns, bullets, missiles, armoured vehicles and other pieces of military hardware flood the region:  rebellious forces need to get some, and repressive governments need more to reinforce their dictatorial and autocratic rule.

Long story short - with the exception of Tunisia, the corrupt dictatorships win.  They have bigger and better armies with more training, better leadership, and lots more guns.  But now there are tons of rebel pockets and enclaves armed to the teeth with modern weapons and feverish religious purpose.
In Syria, the rebels became allies with, and in many cases, joined forces dedicating to creating "The Islamic State."  ISIS, ISIL, or whatever other names you can append to them, are the assorted sweepings of Al-Qaeda, Taliban, and other militant Muslim fundamentalist sects that have networked, found geographic areas to pool and store resources, and have created avenues and pipelines for selling petroleum products to create revenue.
The unhappy innocent civilians who were previously being oppressed and denied civil and human rights are now being slaughtered by the thousands as the various factions fire bombs, missiles, artillery shells, and other destructive munitions at one another.  Countries such as the United States that acted as arms suppliers to the region are now denying refugee status to those trying to escape the ubiquitous carnage wreaking havoc there.
Right.  On to more harmless things.

Random Musical Hit-List

• Walk on Water, by Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Ghost Riders in the Sky, by The Blues Brothers Band
• Top of the World, by Chumbawamba
• You Bet Your Life, by Lightning Seeds
• I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, by Duane Eddy
• Before You Accuse Me, by Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Cigarettes and Lies, by Lightning Seeds

Aside from the weird case of double-repetition of artists, there doesn't seem to be a clear unifying theme.  There is some sort of nebulous feeling of something legal or judicial involving accusations, proof, obfuscations, authority, and punishment, but that might just be me projecting some sort of subconscious summary of late-night television chat-show monologues.
I've been feeling weird recently due to some changes in the pharmaceutical regimen, but I'll try to get back to more regular submissions to this area as well as my book reviews, including that of Trevor Noah's recently released memoir.
Until then, good night England, and the Colonies.
—mARKUS