Some months ago, I pointed out that a benefit of Preacher Johnnie Moore’s taxpayer-funded defense firm, the Orwellian labeled Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, had one benefit and one benefit only. It would allow its American employees, former soldiers in many cases, to be on the ground in Gaza seeing what the US is faithfully funding, and what Israel has done and is doing.
Israel, with the active support and blessing of over 80% of Israelis since late 2023, has been violently destroying Gazan structures, food and water systems, education, healthcare, along with many of the 2.3 million Palestinians who had created a culture and an economy – in spite of decades of periodic attacks, and the occupying state’s military domination and constantly evolving restrictions on trade, travel and movement. In spite of this, and perhaps shocking to many Zionists, Gaza has survived and thus far, resisted its intended demise.
The tiny strip is now a moonscape, courtesy of the equivalent of 8 Hiroshima sized nuclear detonations, over half a million Gazans have been killed or lost in the rubble, and the intentional starvation, intensified in March by Israel, is reaching its tipping point.
Acute famine is part of the US and Israeli strategy for Gaza. IPC Phase Five has been purposely created in Gaza, and the upcoming and imminent stage is massive human losses as the weakest and sickest are already dead, and the stronger and healthier segments of society themselves begin to starve to death. Resistance to disease for Gazans has already collapsed.
How do we know what starvation does to a population? Because state-enforced starvation is a common historical tactic of empires and states against those they intend to punish and dominate. The US government is happy to recognize and abhor the state starvations of populations, as we see in this recent US commemoration of the 91st anniversary of the Holomodor. We study in universities the state conducted starvation and genocide against Jews and others by the World War II Axis powers. The government of Israel, and that of the United States, presides over a deep body of knowledge about engineering starvation and famine, and profiting from it.
The powerful conversation between Tucker Carlson and recently retired Army LTC Tony Agular this week is a point of light emerging from the fact that US soldiers are now on the ground supporting this imperial project of death and destruction. Just as the US has experienced in other imperial wars, our own soldiers and Marines – like Lt General Smedley Butler – end up being the best witnesses, the angriest citizens, the boldest truth-tellers.
Agular is a military hero, which means his story is pertinent to Americans and politicians alike. He is reporting on a genocide that is technically removed from a direct US policy – as far as I know, Trump and the US Congress, with the exception of porcine scum Randy Fine, have not endorsed genocide or starvation publicly. Because of this, Agular’s story is particularly powerful. He is an American soldier with a dozen deployments supporting American foreign policy of the last 25 years. He is apolitical. He is focused on military best practices, law and justice. As a West Point grad, he does not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate anyone who does. He is ethical. Perhaps most importantly, unlike most Americans, he is unafraid.
The US taxpayer funds the Gazan genocide. The US government authorizes and allows the starvation there, and yet, President Trump has the power to do two things right now. He can freeze aid and weapons to Israel, and he can authorize military force against Israel in order to create a hundred road entry points to Gaza from the two largest US foreign subsidy recipients (Israel and Egypt), through which the US government can drive in thousands of trucks a day filled with food, water, and medicine, doctors, nurses, and health specialists. The trucks and the donations are there. Why doesn’t he?
Only a few weeks ago, Trump had no problem bombing a country for no discernable national security reason, without notifying Congress nor seeking its consent. The aftermath of Trump’s “bold” decision to spend $200 million in order to have a cutely monikered “12 Day War” was confirmation that he presides as the current American emperor, as blatantly wasteful as Caligula and confirming growing suspicions that Trump may be our very own Commodus, or perhaps more appropriately, Caracalla.
Fascinated by war and conflict, Caracalla ended up militarizing and centralizing power in the Roman Empire, but “the extravagance and brutality of Caracalla’s reign ultimately undermined his authority.” His reign was in the pre-Christian era Roman Empire, where state ethics were unhinged from societal ethics or religion as we understand them today.
Unhinged does indeed describe the US government today. Whether you are angered that Trump reversed himself on Epstein, or happy that you are getting a consolation prize in the “reveal” of Obama, Clinton, and Biden criminality – you are ruled by the unhinged. Whether you love the military because it is “Number 1” or are happy that the US military is no longer “Number 1,” you are ruled by the unhinged. Whether you oppose genocide in Gaza, or you cheer it – you are ruled by the unhinged.
Unhinged can be a psychological judgement, and there is evidence that Israeli society today satisfies that mental health criteria. I’m using unhinged simply as a construction concept, the disconnect of a door with its frame. The frame of the US government – the Constitution – is rotted and tattered. These frames won’t hold any door, and thus we have unhinged function, where force or impetus for good may be applied to the state, but it doesn’t – and it cannot – result in the desired result. Case in point, Israel is self-destructing as a blatant murderous, ethnostate bent on geographical expansion and war above all. What is worse, the average American Republican, Democrat and Independent – on record opposing US policies of fighting other peoples’ wars, subsidizing other people’s economies, militaries, education and health care – lives under a government that is orchestrating and tolerating genocide in Gaza, one they both know about and oppose! The American population is deprived of their money, their will, their voice, and their political function because the state framework is decrepit and corrupted beyond repair.
True freedom of speech is rarely observed, and barely tolerated, yet it is possible, as Tucker Carlson and Tony Agular, and millions of others who see and share this interview are demonstrating. Colonel Agular also offers a number of specific steps that could be taken today, from a practical perspective – but the US state, unhinged, is not only unpredictable under pressure, it is inoperative, broken. To my Marxist and Republican friends, who believe they could just fix the state, and or change its leaders, to make it work “as it should,” you are fantasists of a dead era, and complicit cowards.
This state-designed, funded, and implemented genocide in Gaza, and those to come, closer to home – are on you.
