Confronting Evil, Wars, and November’s Elections

We are dealing with more than madness and corruption in Washington. Our multi-crisis is a manifestation of evil which permeates much of our society. Our certifiably insane would-be dictator, with his repeated threats to eliminate Iran’s people and civilization while tossing almost a million people off of healthcare are but a few of his regime’s crimes against humanity. All of these issues are interrelated, which is why our resistance must be multi-issue and multifaceted. November’s elections will define our futures, and, as in the darkest days of Nazism and Jim Crow racism, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. So, defending our albeit flawed Constitution and elections, so that we can change policies and actions, must be our priority. We need a united and active front against the lawless would-be dictator and his minions.

In the 1960s there was a film, Mondo Cane, which warned of a world gone to the dogs. With President Donald Trump and company driving our nation and the world into more crises than we can count, Mondo Cane has arrived. Continuing Gaza, West Bank, and Sudan genocides. The catastrophic and widening war on Iran. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Brownshirts’ brutality. The widening Russian-NATO Ukraine War now spreading across Europe. AI gone rogue. The climate emergency. Growing nuclear dangers. Food, medical, and housing insecurity. Affordability.

Trump has just dispatched a third aircraft carrier and 9,000 more warriors to threaten escalation of a war that he cannot win. New war-fighting technologies and Iranian military resistance, and Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ignorant and racist arrogance, dictated that they lost their war on Teheran the moment they launched it. Now, fearing the political consequences of his defeat, Trump is leading the world ever deeper into the desert version of Vietnam’s Big Muddy. And, even as Israeli forces hold the ceasefire with Hamas in contempt and continue their drive toward the Mediterranean, Trump’s imperial Board of Peace has demonstrated the legitimacy, integrity, success, and staying power of his reflecting pool repairs. Until Israel withdraws from the lands occupied since its 1967 war of conquest and respects the Palestinians' right of national self-determination, there will be no peace in the Middle East.

We must insist on free and fair elections—even if necessary, with our bodies.

The heart of darkness has names: Donald Trump, his allies, and those who are complicit with the imperial military-industrial-congressional complex. Trump is the racist, corrupt, greedy, insecure, and bullying son of a Ku Klux Klan slumlord, who rose to riches and power with Mafia ties, and with Roy Cohen’s deceitful disregard for truth, the law, and any limits on his desires.

I have the privilege of being part of confidential discussions between current and former US, Russian, and European arms control negotiators, government and military officials, and analysts. Just after Trump’s reelection, a Russian asked a former very senior Pentagon official what Trump’s foreign policy priorities would be. The American immediately replied, “Making as much money as he can for himself and for his family.”

Thus, we have Trump’s seizure of Venezuelan gold and oil, his futile campaigns to transform Gazan and Serbian beaches into his resorts, Don Junior’s wedding party financed by a Putin-related Russian oligarch, and Trump’s corrupt 26,000-30,000 stock transactions since he returned to office. While the media has focused on congressional stock trades, Trump has been more active on Wall Street that all members of Congress combined.

Amid it all, we’ve lost track of the growing nuclear threat to our species’ survival. This danger has been greatly increased by the Iran War, by Trump’s commitment to resume nuclear weapons testing, and by increasing Pentagon reliance on misnamed tactical nuclear weapons. They can be Hiroshima sized, and if they are used would ignite thermonuclear war.

Think about it. We are threatened by the wars involving three nuclear powers as they rage across Southwest Asia and Ukraine. Each could escalate to thermonuclear war as Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have threatened. China annually adds an estimated 1,000 thermonuclear weapons to its arsenal, making us three nuclear scorpions in an AI-augmented bottle. The US played the leading role in sabotaging last May’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, and that in turn is encouraging proliferation. The war on Iran provides incentives for Teheran to follow North Korea in creating a deterrent nuclear arsenal. And then there is Trump’s nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. In South Korea and Japan, there are powerful pressures for the return of US nuclear weapons or, failing that, for those nations to become full-fledged nuclear powers. France is extending its nuclear umbrella across Europe. Germany’s US F-35 fighters are designed to launch US-supplied B-61 nuclear gravity bombs. Finland will welcome NATO nukes in times of emergency. And fearful of Russia, even Poland is toying with the possibility of becoming a nuclear power.

Would that it were otherwise, but the increasingly urgent reality is that the more nuclear weapons states, nuclear tests, and nuclear exercises there are, the greater the chance that an incident, an accident, or a miscalculation will trigger nuclear war, ending life on this planet as we know it. Incidents, accidents, and miscalculations happen! In recent weeks we almost went to war with China, when an AI system reported that a Chinese vessel was transporting nuclear weapons materials. Preparations were made to attack that ship, but fortunately before US forces could attack, it was discovered that AI had miscalculated. Existential garbage in. Existential garbage out.

Like a virus, Washington’s evil and madness have spread nationally and internationally. If we want a democratic–small d, peaceful, and just society, one without Trump-MAGA abusive rule, we must disempower Trump and remove from power all who are complicit with his wars and brutal injustices.

Toward that end, even as we pursue our many campaigns to end criminal wars, restore respect for truth and the law, and ensure food and medical security for our people, our priority must be creating a united front to defeat Trump’s duplicitous congressional allies. That means doing what we can to maximize voter turnout for progressives and centrist allies, and win elections overwhelmingly to make stealing them beyond the reach of a corrupt administration and election deniers who are responsible for counting votes in several key states.

We must insist on free and fair elections—even if necessary, with our bodies. We need to be prepared to launch and join social or general strikes. as Jeremy Brecher and others have advocated, if they become necessary.Not only can you travel to North Carolina or Iowa to campaign for democracy, but you can take action wherever you live.

And remember, even if Democrats retake Congress, our campaigning on so many urgent justice, peace, and democracy fronts must be renewed, taking advantage of the openings we create.

“Don’t mourn. Organize!”

This article is based on Joseph Gerson’s Speech at the October 3 Boston Stop Washington’s Madness rally.