Old Socialist wonders at political opportunism, in its various and toxic itertions?
Dec 07, 2025
Headline: The Trump administration sinks to a new low – opening fire on drowning men
Sub-headline: These deadly US boat strikes are the latest example of a president corrupting both the law and morality
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/05/trump-administration-opening-fire-drowning-men
Editor: To say that Friedman’s political opportunism is wedded to an exercise in public shaming of Trump, and his appoitees deserves condemnation is an exercise in what? Is self-aggrandisement too strong a concept? From a man, a writer who defamed Corbyn, with a kind of gusto that Trumps minions excell at in another context? JD Vance is perhaps the example that comes to mind! Or should a writer concetrate on the misdeeds of the Historical Moment, rather than look at another revelatory Historical Moment, of the past as a kind of revelatory frame for the political present?
The Trump administration looks ever more like a criminal enterprise – and now it seems to have added war crimes to its repertoire. Though even that may be too generous a description.
On Thursday, word came that the US military had launched yet another deadly strike on a small boat moving through international waters. This time the attack killed four people, bringing to at least 87 the number of people the US has killed in a series of 22 such strikes on what it says are drug boats – vessels carrying illicit narcotics in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific.
This has been happening for months, but the issue has only just drawn political heat thanks to a Washington Post investigation of the first such attack on 2 September. The paper reported that US forces hit the targeted boat once, then hit it again – the second strike killing two survivors clinging to the wreckage. According to the Post, the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, had issued a verbal command to “kill them all”.
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Editor: With a mere 1173 words left in Freedland’s exercise in ‘High dudgeon’ left to explore, what might the reader contemplate as a possible future for the American Republic? Might that reader contemplate a senario via Fletcher Knebel & Charles W. Bailey II Seven Days in May?
Old Socialist
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