By Max Jones and Diego Ramos / ScheerPost Staff Writers
Professor Michael Brenner joins this episode of Journalists for Sale to discuss the moral emptiness of Western empire, most visibly expressed through its unequivocal support of the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Brenner details how this depravity manifests not only in the form of mass slaughter and total disregard for human life, but also through mass psychosis of government leaders who consistently make global decisions through a distorted lens completely detached from reality. Only this can explain their escalations in Ukraine at every turn, their “acknowledgement” of Palestinian life yet total complicity in its destruction and the mass censorship being imposed upon dissidents by the ruling class, most recently at the University of Southern California.
Brenner’s wealth of knowledge and impressive ability to articulate the philosophical implications of this ongoing lunacy form a unique analysis one can’t quite get anywhere else but from the man himself.
Transcript
This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy.
Max Jones: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Journalists for Sale. Today we’re joined by Michael Brenner, Professor Michael Brenner. He’s a Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at John Hopkins. He was the Director of International Relations and Global Studies Program at the University of Texas.
And he’s the author of numerous books and over 100 articles and published papers. Thank you, Professor Brenner for being here with us today.
Michael Brenner: I’m very pleased to join you.
Jones: As we are to have you. You’ve discussed at length, the rationality and delusion of Western empire in your recent articles, you’ve used examples from Ukraine and Gaza to demonstrate.
I think what you called it, like a detachment from reality. So I wanted to ask as Iran has responded. To Israel’s bombing of their consulate in Damascus with a barrage of drone strikes that did little to no damage to Israel. I saw some commentators like Glenn Greenwald saying that this was actually by design in hopes of not provoking too much of a reaction from Israel.
President Biden has promised not to support offensive actions against Iran, but he also has pledged support for Israel, full support for Israel and its defenses against Iran. And, in terms of US foreign policy, the lines between what is considered defense and offensive operations are somewhat blurry, I guess you could say.
So Biden administration or just an example? of the typical lunacy that you’ve written about.
Brenner: I think we’re at a moment of truth for both Washington, the Biden administration and the Israeli government. It’s both a moment of truth, it’s a moment of truth because they’re in a quandary, they’re in a dilemma.
There’s strict strategies in regard to the multiple crises in the Middle East. Crises which were sparked, of course, by the events of October 7th and the subsequent Israeli reaction have failed. And the Iranian attack has punctuated that failure, in fact you might say it’s added another aspect, facet, to that failure.
But I think to, in order to begin to delineate the current situation and the nature of the very fundamental and probably fateful if not fatal choices, Facing Washington and Jerusalem, we have to understand what happened in terms of the Iranian attack on, on Saturday. Unfortunately, but predictably, the mainstream media’s sort of coverage represents a distortion in part willful, in part due simply to lazy journalism.
In other words, the headline, which in effect you, you paraphrase, is that the Iranians launched a massive drone and missile assault. And that it was a technical failure. That’s not true. And the very brief summary assessment and appraisal of what happened is not based upon my own knowledge because I don’t specialize in these matters.
Nor do I have sort of exceptional sources directly. But I do know people and have read and spoken with people who do have those credentials. In fact, people like Scott Ritter. We’ve served in very high positions in the U. S. government, and in Ritter’s case Chief Inspector for the U. N. in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War.
And they all agree on both the sort of technical assessment and an interpretation of what it means in terms of the strategic constellation. Let me see if I can paraphrase what they say and to do it in summary fashion. First, it does seem as if there was communication between Washington and Tehran, we don’t know the exact form it took, perhaps through intermediaries in which the Iranians made it known what their intention was.
Their intention was not to wreak enormous damage on Tehran. Israel, rather it was to demonstrate the capabilities and for this to serve as a warning for Israel if they were to seriously consider further escalation or even if they were to consider further actions directed at the Iranian state. Actions of the sort, which in the past the Mullers have pretty much accepted with a degree of passivity.
They would respond in a more formidable fashion. What they did was they sent three waves of of attack. First were the drones. Now, drones take three to four hours. To reach their target when launched from Iran to Israel. So if you really wanted to do damage, you wouldn’t signal it by sending missiles.
Drones are not exactly, missiles. You wouldn’t use weaponry, which is in fact, announces itself and gives yourself ample time to prepare your defenses. Defenses that were activated by both Israel and the United States and in a subordinate role, the French, the British all operating from sea, in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.
The reason why you do that is, is twofold. First, it was based on this sort of understanding. Over there to convey the message that this was not an all out attack, but it was meant to send a message to the response, by the elements of the Israeli iron shield, as well as by the American Aegis system base at sea reveals their capabilities.
And in the modern age of electronic warfare, that is critical. Because that then enables you to do one or two things in subsequent attacks. Either you try to destroy them, because you know where they are located, you know what their electronic signature is, or you try to evade them. So that’s exactly what the Russians have done through their air assaults and missile assaults in Ukraine.
Over the last 18 months or so. Then these were followed by cruise missiles, which are faster than the drones. And it was timed in such a way that the cruise missiles and the drones would arrive simultaneously. Although this was not meant to overwhelm Israeli defenses anti, missile defenses, but rather to reveal more about Israeli capabilities and their locations and their electronics, etc.,
etc., right? And so most, almost all of the cruise missiles, as well as the drones, were shot down, as the Iranians expected. Then they followed it up, though, and here it becomes more consequential, with ballistic missiles. And the Iranians actually have an inventory of ballistic missiles of varying degrees of sophistication.
Most of the, I forget how many ballistic missiles, there wasn’t very many, was it something like 30 or so? Was a mix. And some of the older, less sophisticated models were intercepted. But the big news is that the more sophisticated ballistic missiles, Were able to evade both the Israeli missile shield, anti missile shield, and the super sophisticated American electronic shield, which was operated out of a base in the Negev Desert by Americans.
And they failed. And the, so the Iranians demonstrated that they could, if they wished, to hit any target In Israel, without fear, without Israel and or the American allies be able to shoot it down. And that highest class of Iranian missile has two characteristics. One apparently, Although technical people are not entirely sure about this.
Hypersonic, hypersonic missiles is the kind that Russia has developed and which the United States does not possess. And trying to catch up. They come at such a speed as to make it impossible for even the most sophisticated defenses to intercept them. The other feature was something that I believe they call maneuverable
What it means is that the warhead, the missile and warhead, has built into it such intelligence that it can see an anti missile coming at it and change its course to evade it. And apparently it has been shown, there is one video which depicts what happened. When the Iranians attacked this sort of air base in the Negev with the Americans, which is both where the American sophisticated equipment was located and the base from which the Israelis had launched their F 35s, which struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
And you can see the missile is headed towards the base. You see the anti ballistic missile trying to intercept it on a line and the incoming missile does a sort of jog in dogleg. The anti ballistic missile flies harmlessly past it. The incoming missile resumes its previous trajectory and hits the base.
Now, so what we know, just to sum it up, is that seven of those sophisticated ballistic missiles did hit that base. Four hit another Israeli air base in the Negev. One destroyed a Mossad sophisticated communications in the Golan Heights. And one actually hit the building in which was located the unit of the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces.
that they believe organized the attack in Damascus.
Total casualties, by the way, is one person wounded. So the aim was not to cause Great damage or to kill many people. It was rather to show that you cannot defend against our missiles And if you up the ante We can take out your infrastructure. We can take out the Knesset building We can take out anything we wish and that apparently has come as a great shock To both the Israelis and to the Americans, and that combined with other unexpected and developments, in the current hostilities, is what has created this extraordinary sort of dilemma for Israeli leaders.
And for the Biden administration, and we can get into that, as you wish.
Diego Ramos: Yeah. So from examining this previous or this recent event with Iran it seems like Israel is continuing to use these sort of events and October 7th as justifications for them being victims of unprovoked attacks and spinning it in this way in order for them to justify their continued actions in terms of what they’re doing in Gaza and, their military attacks on places in Syria.
The embassy in, in, in Damascus. So how, I’m just curious what do you think is, like, how much, what’s the logic left in that? How much further can they go in terms of the Netanyahu government, in terms of using these events as ways to paint themselves justified in doing these, in, in doing these things?
But now there’s actual, there’s potential for actual action against them. In the way that Iran demonstrated the cardinal strategic fact of life is for the Israelis is that their overall strategy is, has failed or is fading on all fronts. They’ve been unable to achieve their objective in Gaza.
They’ve been unable to eliminate Hamas. Hamas still has thousands and thousands of fighters. Sorry, just to interrupt.
Jones: Do you believe that’s their actual objectiv, are we really witnessing the failure of their actual objective? Because if their objective is to eliminate Hamas and they’re failing, but if it’s the ethnic cleansing and removal—
Brenner: yes, it should go together. I wanted to, there was a pre, objective which was built into the Zionist project going back 80, 100 years. In effect to establish a Jewish dominion over all of the land between the river and the sea. Now, the U. S. Congress, in its usual sort of ignorance and hubris, has just voted a resolution.
The fact is that anybody who uses that term is labeled anti Semitic. That term was first used by the Zionists, and that exact term and those exact words is incorporated in the charter of the Likud party. Anybody can look it up, but, Congress people are much better at opening their mouths and making noises than they are looking and reading.
Oh. So yes, and Netanyahu in the past, going back some time, has talked in those terms, and the current government, a number of members of government, has said as much. So yes, so you had a dual objective. That is to re establish Israel’s sense, give reality to Israel’s sense of and desire for total security by cleansing all of Palestine of Palestinians, whether by Expelling them, which was the objective beginning in October, into the Sinai Desert, and to expel some of the, at least in the beginning, some of the West Bank residents into Jordan.
And we should remind ourselves, something which has been overlooked. It was the position of the United States government to support and to encourage the expelling of the Gazans into the Sinai Desert. Secretary, and this is a matter of public record, it’s not opinion, it’s not speculation. Secretary of State went some weeks after October 7th, but still in the month of October, paid a visit to Cairo.
In Egypt and to King Abdullah in Jordan and press them in effect to open the gates and allow hundreds of thousands, if not a million, of Palestinians to vacate Gaza. And in fact, in in, in Egypt, he held out a number of enticements to President Sisi, including writing off tens of billions. Of debt, which Egypt owes the United States, and a readiness to lobby on their behalf for the IMF to write off other billions, which Egypt owes the fund.
As Sisi told him, nothing doing the thought of having a million refugees, that would be a breeding ground for jihadi terrorists, which his government’s already trying to suppress. In Sinai, it was intolerable, in addition to which he knew that if he were to accept that, he’d be overthrown. Because opinion, popular opinion in Egypt is so intense, in a way, that no government that would accept a proposition like that, no matter how autocratic, how ruthless could stand.
And the same thing regarding King Abdullah. The Israelis still harbor this hope. Their talk is they are going to attack Rafa. And the Umatanean gesture is intended to move, since they can’t kick them into the Sinai Desert, is to move them along a strip along the Mediterranean coast, near where they’re building that pier or jetty or whatever they call it.
Have them all live in tents there. So in other words, you move hundreds of thousands of people from tents in Rafa to tents 40 miles away. And you would call that Umatana Aryan gesture. And then you level Rafa. Now, of course, Hamas has less of a tunnel network in Rafa from what we understand, but they’re not standing around.
They won’t be standing around or ready to be shelled and shot by the Israelis. So that’s the failure there, double failure. Failure of two interlocking objectives. One, getting rid of the ethnically cleansing Gaza, and two, destroying Hamas. Neither one is now at all feasible. Second objective was to somehow neutralize Hezbollah, and that the Hez the artillery exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah, which have gone on for six months now, one consequence of which is that Israelis living in border towns or close to the border have had to evacuate.
I think about 170, 000 of them, or 100, 000. They’ve left their homes, they’re living in hotels and government provided shelter in Israel, deeper into Israel, and the Netanyahu government have promised they’ll be able to get back into their homes. Now, the hesitation about taking on Hezbollah is two fold.
One, Hezbollah, unlike Hamas, is a very organized and disciplined and very well equipped military force. Conventional military was, they fought in Syria on behalf of Assad’s regime. Syrian government for years. And in a straight up battle, Israelis might lose. In any case, the Israelis could not crush them.
And in addition Hezbollah has thousands of missiles, not just drones, which they could rain on Israel. And, since the distance between the border and the Hezbollah forces and where these launches are located and the main population of Israel is very short. Israel, in effect, could be destroyed.
Now, here again, the objective or the veiled objective, is to get the United States to fight Hezbollah for them, just as they want the United States to get into an all out war with Iran, and therefore destroy all of Israel’s enemy, and leave it master of the Middle East, As well as being in a position to rule all of historic, historical Palestine.
Now, of course, it’s the extraordinary shortsighted in his blundering fanaticism in general incompetence of the Biden team, that they have allowed themselves to be manipulated and placed in this position. Encouraging writing blank checks to Israel on the assumption that Israel would at the very least be able to deal with Gaza, right?
And therefore not getting entangled with Hezbollah and Iran in ways that would force the American hand, either let Israel suffer a severe defeat or have the United States go to war with Israel. On it, on its behalf, that’s the dilemma they face now. And frankly, the administration doesn’t know what the hell to do.
You can talk in a moment about what the Israeli quandary is, what their two unpalatable choices are, but that’s the reality.
Jones: So basically, are you saying that. At this point, the Israelis are facing a decision between defeat in terms of their military objectives or direct American involvement. Basically, American boots on the ground fighting Israel’s enemies for them, like it’s between those two options.
Brenner: The two options are admitting their feet and coming to terms with the new reality. political, military, et cetera as in a way diplomatic or going for broke.
And doing two things or one or two things retaliating against Iran with a large scale air and missile assault, which would then evoke response in kind by Iran and or to launch an all out attack on Hezbollah. In a way, what they’re faced with. Is either impalatable deflating of all of the ambitions, the fall, not just of the government, but the undermining of Israel’s entire position in the region, right?
Or, pursuing a strategy of all or nothing. And the all or to win the all to, to achieve the all they cannot do on their own can only do if the United States were to join them and it would have to join them in the initial assault on either Heah or Iran or both, because if they don’t, the retaliation from Iran would be intolerable, would create intolerable damage on Israel.
And if the United States don’t, didn’t join them, did not join them from the outset in attacking Hezbollah, then the Hezbollah response would cause almost equal damage. So they are cornered. They painted themselves above. And I think that there’s something else we should keep in mind, which is of paramount importance.
There is good reason to doubt that this Israeli leadership is capable at this point of making rational decisions. They’re so caught up in their own emotion, in their own,
Biblically, supposedly foreseen, uh, turning point. In, in, in achieving all the great sort of, the prophecies and that they seem to be unable to sit down and do a cool calculus, say, what are the possible costs? What are the possible benefits? What are the probabilities, what are the probabilities that we would get this response from Iran, that response from Hezbollah, and a key, what is the chance the Americans would indeed join us, which would give us a chance to reach our goals, or won’t, in which case Israel as we know it, which used to exist.
They’re incapable, apparently, in people who know much more sensitive and experimental. Understanding of Israeli, both politics and the emotional dynamics at work they don’t seem to be capable of doing that. And since, They’re probably incapable of accepting a new reality in which they’ve been rewarded in all of their aims and purposes.
They are most likely to launch a rather large attack on Iran. How large, we don’t know. The position of the United States, Is to was as been much discussed and is in the news and as publicly stated is to convince the Israelis not to overreact by which they mean don’t react so massively that Iran will then respond with a equally massive and destructive attack on you and they’ve also said we’re not going to participate, we’re not going to foreclose the latter.
By participating in the initial, any initial attack that you have in mind. And then they’re trying to dissuade the Iranians. With the implicit assistance of Russia and China, not in their sense to over overreact if the expected Israeli strike is relatively limited. Now, that’s a very delicate game to play, both in terms of rotating the two psychologies and the two psychological reactions.
In Jerusalem and Tehran and second, placing confidence on your ability to persuade the Israelis to exercise restraint in their retaliation, and to persuade the Iranians to exercise restraint in how they might respond to an Israeli. Now, of course, we have zero credibility in Tehran. That’s why we’re, the hope is that Moscow and Beijing, which do have good relationship would counsel them when it’s in their interest to be prudent and cautious.
And of course, up until now, the Iranian leadership has shown itself to be prudent and cautious. Their attack on Saturday was highly sophisticated in both design and execution. They clearly have kept cool heads. And they’re not being, blindness has to be driven by emotion and this is the Netanyahu gang.
What happens next? We don’t know.
Jones: I wanted to ask you a question about censorship. You point out a lot, you’ve pointed out in your recent pieces that there’s this crumbling of the moral image that the West portrays of itself with Gaza. And it seems that supporting Palestine or at least, at the least opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza is becoming an increasingly mainstream position in the U.
S., especially among young people. Despite this though, censorship on the issue persists most visibly on social media with journalists like Patrick Lawrence, who writes for Sheer Post, or Kit Clarenberg, who writes for the Grey Zone and Mint Press News, but also recently at me and Diego’s or mine and Diego’s alma mater USC, who just banned the Muslim valedictorian who minored in resistance to genocide, I think is the name of the minor, and openly opposes the military action in Gaza by Israel from giving her commencement address at graduation.
And to me, what this signals is another example of the erosion of this, of the elusive officiality or. Intelligence of our elite class and the recognition of how fraudulent that is by normal people. So I wanted to ask you, is the public becoming increasingly aware of these vapid moral foundations of Western civilization that you’ve written about recently.
Brenner: No, certainly not. From all the evidence. You personally, I find the most disturbing, if not the most dangerous feature of this whole situation. Has been the response to the behavior verbal, diplomatic, tangible, of the political class, particularly the political elites, not only in the United States, but across the Western world.
The way in which they have almost in knee jerk fashion, Identified completely, with not just Israel as such, but with the fabricated Israel picture of realities. And they’re continuing to do despite the horrors of Gaza. Forces us to face really some fundamental questions. They said, one, is in fact there a moral void at the heart of Western civilization?
And two, what has happened to, what is the supposed humanistic philosophical underlay foundations? Thank you. Of contemporary Western societies, as well as governmental institutions. Now, you can attribute the former in part to the extraordinary sort of effective lobbying, public relations campaign, etc.
Of organizations like AIPAC in the U. S., which has bought most of Congress. And people who would associate with it and with the positions of AIPAC. Provide the bulk of the financing for presidential campaigns, particularly the Democratic Party. You have a sort of less, less powerful analog in France, but not in, in the rest of Western Europe.
So their reaction requires further explanation, but let’s come back, stick to the United States for, for a moment. And the, the current job is, as you well know, you have what, a dozen members of the House of Representatives who are bold enough to even support a ceasefire.
You have one, one and a half senators, Bernie Sanders, who came to that position about halfway through this crisis and last week, Elizabeth Warren, who voted to cut off funding. To the UN Relief Organization in Gaza, U. S. Right. You have mainstream media without exception following the Israeli line and deceiving us through outright lies, through lies about omissions, through various deceptive practices, knowingly or unwittingly.
And you could say,
Most surprising of all, what has happened to American civil society, a much wanted civil society.
Jones: Yeah. Just one thing. I totally agree with you. And I think that it’s pretty clear that the political class that the moral foundation there, or the morality there is being proven to be completely, vapid or fictitious. I think the question I was raising was more about, are the masses becoming aware of that? Are they basically raising the same questions that you are right now? Are there, are these contradictions becoming more evident to regular people because, I, for the, I remember that just a few years ago, I think that if any, if people said that they weren’t going to vote for Biden and they were instead of going to vote for a third party then you were a racist or you were a white supremacist, even sometimes people would say but now I think a lot of those same people are coming out and screaming at Joe Biden every appearance that he makes in public, calling him Genocide Joe.
And his support is tanking among the Democratic voters. And to me, I think a lot of that is attributed to not the mainstream media’s coverage, but citizen journalists in Gaza who have been posting these horrific videos since the beginning of the onslaught that, cause you’ve had this Democratic party that has positioned itself as a friend to people of color not substantively, but rhetorically, they’re constantly calling the Republicans racists and fascists and white supremacists. And then it’s hard to then now make that argument that you’re the non-racist party for brown and black and working class people when you’re enabling and funding and aiding the genocide of an indigenous population, right? Do you think people are waking up to that or no?
Brenner: It’s hard to know because, opinion surveys only get responses from, the top of people’s heads. You don’t know the saliency of what, behind what they say or what box they check and so on. We do know, that there’s a natural sort of human revulsion to kinds of atrocities.
Being committed in Gaza, which is really rooted in human nature, especially if you, yourself and your group are not directly concretely involved when, you’re more inclined to totally demonize and dehumanize the energy and the way we did the Japanese in world war II, but this is not our fight, we’re not fighting Palestinians.
In any sense, so yes, you probably do have a number of public things puzzling things about the Western reaction, most specifically in the United States and when we can just talk a bit about Western Europe we were saying that, currently public opinion by at least the two to one margin favors a true ceasefire, not this sort of phony pause.
Give them a snack before you kill them, that policy of the Biden administration. But that doesn’t translate really into political action, into political pressure. It’s more in the nature of an instinctive human reaction to horror, to atrocity. Which is really rooted in nature and genealogy.
And of course the farther away the people are from you, ethnically, geographically, religiously the more abstract it becomes. And in that sense, there is an element of racism. It’s not racism in the form of hatred of Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims. Thank you. Except for very few people, it’s just that’s how we differentiate our responses and the way we deal with certain groups based upon how familiar we are with them and how distant they are.
But generally speaking, there still is a, an instinctive reaction. As we said, when you see human beings. Being slaughtered, being suffered, et cetera, no matter who they are. And I think that is reflected in the 70 percent of Americans who come forward for a ceasefire. But this has not cut very deeply into American political class or political elites.
And that’s really a fascinating and troubling question as to what, as to why, if you look at the government, that is the Biden administration and Congress, there’s some cold political calculations and some other self interested factors. The Democrats feel that they cannot win this election, which seems to be, going to go down to the wire again without a large war chest, which is provided by people who would cut off the flow if the U.
S. were to reverse its position on Israel, Palestine, Gaza. You could counter that by saying, look, Joe Biden is committing suicide by alienating a significant portion of habitual Democratic voters, particularly the younger and the more progressive. And that’s, would be fatal in what is likely to be a close election.
So you know, you’re committing suicide doing, if you take that route as well. I don’t think these people are sophisticated enough, either intellectually or even in terms of political smarts. Despite how, the extent to which they promote themselves as old pros, etc. I think they’re politically stupid as well as stupid in terms of estimates of American national interest and what constitutes a responsible foreign policy.
And the money factor of course plays even more in, in Congress. With the notion you might win an election based upon what you say and do. Rather than on the, basing it on the number of TV ads you take, is considered to be so retro as not to be taken into serious account at all. But, beyond that, I think that a political class in the foreign policy community, if you can use that term, has over the last, I’m sure.
20 to 30, 30 to 20 years locked itself into a strategic vision, which no longer is viable in terms of actual realities, if it ever was. And if you want to what are the underlying elements of it was, but you have to go back to the notorious Paul Wolfowitz memo of March 1991, when he was in the Bush, the senior administration in which he laid out a plan, very cold blooded.
So what the United States could and should do to maintain global dominance. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it was comprehensive in one of its elements was one of its global to you would use all of the instruments of power and influence at your disposal. Three you would act.
preventively to deny, to prevent the possibility of any power arising who might challenge it.
And while it was considered embarrassing at the time, that has in fact It’s become the intellectual foundation stone of the country’s thinking, and certainly the political league’s thinking about the United States place in the world. It then was infused with and took on another dimension when it was able to absorb neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism, supposedly idealistically, foresaw a world of functional economic independence, a spread of democracy. Ushering in a new age, the end of history, and blah, blah, blah, if you like. And what we’ve seen is a fusion of these two strands, if you like, and with heavy emphasis and leaning towards the Wolfowitz conception, as neoliberalism begins to lose its credibility.
And as the neoliberal bet. It has been lost, thanks to the rise of China, as an American economic, equal, if you like. And, of course, this conforms very much with our American collective sense of having born under a providential star, destined to lead the world towards, a better future, right?
And the American sense of exceptionalism, mission superiority, et cetera, is the emotional dynamic behind this. And so you take these two, this sort of geo strategic audacious, global empire building idea with a sense of American moral wish and mission. And you get the brew now, which has been drunk and absorbed by almost the entire American political class.
And I think that’s the framework, intellectual, doctrinal political, in which we have to place American foreign policy. Over the, current American foreign policy going back some years. That’s really, to my mind, a frame of reference in which we have to place it in order to understand the pig headedness, the stubbornness, the refusal to adjust to realities which, which contradict your underlying assumption as to how the world works and the degree to which you can work your will.
Within it. Part of our dilemma, leaving aside the, leaving aside for the moment, the moral dimension. Is that we’re living in a fantasy world, which we not only can’t escape, we don’t want to escape from because it except it means downplaying and diminishing the whole American collective sense of self.
And I think that’s the pathological psychology we’re dealing with. And that only partly explains why the same time. In the face of what’s happening now, Melza, we have become, in terms of morality, totally numb in how all our humanistic instincts have been numb, because if you act on those instincts and you call, the truth then that means a change in your thinking about Israel.
It means a thinking about change in your thinking about Arabs. And maybe even thinking about changing your demonizing of Russia and China and we’re simply unable for emotional, psychological, as well as intellectual reasons. To go down that road, and there is nobody in the country with any visibility.
There’s some very admirable people, and incredibly able, responsible people, some of them who used to hold very high positions in government, who provide a devastating sort of critique of where we are, but they’re invisible. You have to go on certain marginal websites to see them and to hear and to hear them.
Ramos: So I’m just curious, do you think like these people who are, important decision makers who are always speaking in front of, the media, the Secretary of State, the spokespeople in the State Department, all these people, do you think they really buy into this narrative and all these sort of I think you call them fictions that in, in one of your articles have gained currency amongst all these kinds of heads of government.
And you’re referring to, 9 11 Russian election interference war with China, Putin as this dictator. Do you think that this genuine, all this, all these narratives that build it, that they have a genuine belief in them, or is it all like a cynical ploy that is very intentional? Some of it is pure cynicism, right?
Some of it is genuine conviction that yes, this is a tough, nasty, competitive world and we’ve got to do everything we can to remain top dog and to keep everybody subordinate. There are others who simply are unable or unwilling to accept, to adapt to realities that America’s self conception and its supposed sort of ideally, idealism doesn’t match up with reality, either what the world is or what our government is doing.
And then you have the element of careerism. Look, if you write for the New York Times, if you are any of the cable news or network news people and so forth, you know in your bones where the boundaries are. And if you want to keep your job and your career, you don’t even want to get close to them. It’s becomes instinctive.
Like going down into the New York City subway, even if they didn’t paint the yellow line, instinctively, you’re not going to get too close to the edge of the platform. And some people, I’d say instinctively, with varying degrees of self awareness. But let’s face it, self awareness is not exactly a distinctive trace, a trait of contemporary American culture.
It was so self regarding and so selfish, if you will, and so narcissistic, self awareness. And, there’s a superego, which is strictly national superego. Principles of humanism are not part of that superego for the vast majority of people. And look, let’s come back to that point about civic society.
You look at it and you say you’re running through, look at the churches. The Pope made a heartfelt statement about Gaza. It’s at zero resonance. In the American Catholic hierarchy, as far as I know, you look at the mainline Protestant denominations. None of them spoken up neither an individually nor an aggregate under the umbrella of the national council of churches.
It’s as if they exhausted their reservoir. Humanistic feeling. By the coddling of transgenders which makes them feel good and great and virtuous, right? Media we’ve done, look at professional associations. Do any of them speak up? No. Medical associations. How about the gross violations of international law?
Does the VARA associations? No, nothing. Thank you. And the universities, of course, cower, totally intimidated. And in fact, as you mentioned, you have this sort of, almost scythe like movement, through the universities trying to cut down and cut off anyone who as much as voices criticism of Israeli behavior in Gaza, And you label them anti Semites.
It’s because university you fellows are probably too young to remember a time when university presidents, particularly in most prestigious universities, were actually recognizable public figures. Often, not often, but occasionally, would speak on great nationalists. Usually, they don’t even know the names of these people.
A bunch of non entities, mediocrities, look at their performance and their boards of trustees in reaction to their their roasting by the Congressional Committee. And the people themselves, one, they got very bad legal advice to, The way they were trying to cut and trim, and they opened some themselves up, which was ridiculous.
Anyway, but don’t you look at these people. They have a lot of formidable personalities in any respect. And so they get you dispose of like Kleenex, and the regents trustees bring in another non entity. You look at the USC. incident. It’s a sad commentary on the contemporary state of American society in several of its of its dimensions.
In a way you can argue that, a lot of this is visible and invisible for 20 years or so in terms of American foreign policy and also some of these things. Social cultural deformities, right? But in a way what this unexpected Gaza crisis has done, it’s like a, it’s like a dye that you place in and runs through the body politic of the United States and it highlights all the function, all of the organs and how they’re functioning.
And that’s what this has done. And you take the x ray, you don’t need an x ray, and you watch when you’re through, and you see all this highlight, and you say, oh my god, nothing looks very healthy. Where you go from here, I don’t know, I never, don’t fancy myself, a proper, you can get all excited about.
Choosing between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, but, that’s not going to answer anything. Yeah. It’s just a question how things are going to get worse.
Jones: Yeah. That actually wraps in perfectly to the last question I wanted to ask you. Cause while I have seen and heard more and more people opting out of the whole argument of Trump or Biden, I still hear a good amount of people online and friends at times, but mostly not people in my personal life, usually people.
Online, but some people in my personal life that that are saying I don’t like Biden and I think what he’s doing in Gaza is terrible, we better vote for him because everything is going to get so much worse. Palestinians and Barack Trump gets elected and, in your recent article that we published or that we posted a cheer post, the, you lay out like a lot of the egregious stuff that Republicans do on a domestic level.
In terms of, I think you said that they will not even accept Medicaid expansions and things like that on a state level, and they’re cutting social programs and et cetera. But the Democrats seem like they run on this issue of the Republicans being so bad. And then once they get in power, they don’t reverse any of the things that the Republicans did.
They don’t cement anything to prevent them from doing it next time around that they win. And then the Republicans seem like they need the Democrats as well to be these epic failures every time they get in. So then they can say, Oh, we’re remember us, these guys suck too. So it’s almost like they’re feeding off of each other in a way.
And it seems to me like the whole election season is a distraction in a way, and. Do you think that this situation in Gaza and that dynamic of the Republicans doing all these things within the Democrats doing nothing to reverse them or to change anything do you think it shows that these two parties almost maybe not intentionally, but at least effectively are working together to keep the status quo in place?
Brenner: They’re obviously not working together consciously, but what each does reinforces the allegiance of those who strongly identify with the other, and like watching two political parties competing who wins. In a contest to commit suicide. And here they’re different personalities. The Democrats have been committing suicide since the Reagan days.
And the Democrats do it, by a thousand cuts and it takes them generations. They’re not quite on life support, but we want in terms of representing what an America could and should be, pretty close to it, if you like. Republicans, on the other hand, they grab the sword and rush after monsters that they see coming at them.
And either you slay the monster and you get into the White House, or you think you’re the monster. Or you’re, the trouble is, you’re the trouble. They try to commit suicide. They haven’t always slain the monster. And yet the other guy is still busy, slowly cutting his wrists.
Rather than seizing the opportunity to control the territory. And it’s morbid and it’s tragic, it’s true. And unfortunately in the United States you don’t, there’s no opportunity really for third parties, all kinds of reasons. We, we know. But what’s also interesting to me is that there is no impetus really towards.
Forming something that constitutes a serious break would have to be a break from the Democratic Party. Of course, there has been a break on the Republican side. Now it’s taken over by, crackpots, neo fascists, and yeah, it is true if you talk about, whether to vote expediently, yeah, if Trump is reelected, then we’re fully in a world of post constitutional America.
The game is up, where we would wind up on the autocracy scale, nobody knows, but the America that was founded and we knew is at an end. And the other hand, the argument, therefore, for voting for Biden is to avoid that and to allow the gradual deterioration. Of the moral fiber of American society to weaken and unravel with the hope that something could arrest the, the process, but that said,
no assault on the two party system have any effect unless you have some people and usually led by one person. of enormous conviction, ability, articulateness, and absolute courage. Now go back to 1992. What was distinctive about 90, 1992?
Ramos: Ross Perot.
Brenner: Yeah, Ross Perot was an absolute oddball, very talented person as a businessman. Totally idiosyncratic. And he won 19 percent of the vote, and not at a time of great national crisis, neither internal or external. How did he do it? He did it by bluntly saying some truths or things that people thought were truths that should be said. And there’s some about the most Mundane is a very serious thing.
Yeah, he was a great critic of NAFTA and he also penned that thing. He got a seat on the board of General Motors because his company, which was a data processing company, had a big contract with them, you know what I’m saying? And he said, I’d sit in the meeting. This was when the American car industry was really at its nadir.
Not that it’s risen that far since, but anyway, it was really, I didn’t say that. And he recounts how he told them, Guys, at least let’s try and be number one at something, even if it’s ashtrays. And he said a lot of things like that, which really endeared himself to people and resonated. And on that basis, the guy with these big ears and funny accent got 19 percent of the vote.
JonesL I’m not sure what were the sentiments of the truth that he was speaking that got him 19 percent of the vote?
Brenner: It’s still something, because nobody pays any attention to it because it’s considered to so aberrant and idiosyncratic and nobody’s drawn any lessons from it, either candidates from the two main parties or some kind of rebel but the point is I think the relevant point is.
That there is nobody out there, you can even imagine doing what Ross Perot did, whatever the political found, he had no real ideology or philosophy. Now in a way, Trump in 2016 was something of an emulation in that he broke every rule of the game
in what he said, how he said it. In terms of insulting people,
and that, frankly, apart from the substance of his, maniacal views was part of his attraction. And there were all kinds of people who voted for him on that basis. Now, of course, now that’s all consolidated, in another sort of aberrant mode, but can you think of any Democrat doing anything like that, in a more noble cause?
Ramos: Thank you, Dr. Brenner, so much for joining us on this episode of Journalists for Sale. Do you have any upcoming work that you’d like to plug or any place where people can find you besides your posts?
Brenner: No, unfortunately, I don’t have a site and I don’t blog. The things I write get picked up in various places, including ScheerPoost, Consortium News. I do a number of interviews with different people, including one in Japan, one in Brazil.
Please share this story and help us grow our network!
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.
Max Jones
Max Jones is the producer for The Chris Hedges Report, and a staff writer and video producer for ScheerPost. After graduating summa cum laude from the University of Southern California in 2023, where he studied communications and screenwriting, his journalism has been published in Unlimited Hangout, ScheerPost and republished at Popular Resistance. He has been featured on the Kim Iversen Show and Redacted with Clayton and Natali Morris. He has also interviewed a wide range of figures such as John Kiriakou, Ray McGovern and David Hundeyin. He continues to write fictional stories for the big screen, has directed an independent short film and produced multiple viral videos for both The Chris Hedges Report and ScheerPost.
Diego Ramos
Diego Ramos, ScheerPost managing editor and New York bureau chief, is a journalist from Queens, NY. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He has previously worked at BuzzFeed News and was managing editor of Annenberg News at USC. He’s covered and researched myriad topics including war, politics, psychedelic research and sports.