As 2023 ends and 2024 begins, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank billions of you, in America and around the world, for your service.

No, I’m not talking to military veterans — or at least not to military veterans AS military veterans. Whenever I’m thanked for my “service” in the US Marine Corps, my first instinct and usual course of action is to point out two things:

First, the rest of you paid me good money and provided me with food, housing, medical care, exotic travel, and other benefits.

Secondly, my “service” wasn’t to you, nor was it to some high-minded concept like, say, freedom. It was to a government which forcibly extracted that pay and those bennies from Americans’ wallets whether they liked it or not, then endangered the lives and livelihoods of Americans and others alike by using me and millions like me, sending us around the world conducting ourselves violently in pursuit of unworthy goals.

War is an evil, not a good. Those who engage in it are, at our very BEST, the unwitting (or if conscripted, unwilling) pawns of evil actors, and at worst know full well what we’re doing and for whom, yet actively choose to do it anyway.

You don’t owe veterans thanks for our “service.” We owe YOU our sincere apologies and such restitution as we can figure out how to make for the damage we’ve done.

Of course, many veterans go on later to engage in service that’s truly worthy of thanks.

Waiting tables. Growing crops. Building houses. Writing software. Entertaining audiences. Treating the ill and injured. Putting out fires. Repairing or operating planes, trains, trucks, cars, bicycles, etc. Mopping floors. Cleaning toilets or making sure water gets to and from them correctly.

The list of good  and important things that people do goes on and on.

The vast majority of humans spend much of our time making other humans’ lives better, and having our own lives made better by those other humans.

I’m not sure we thank each other (including military veterans who’ve moved on from destructive to productive work) enough, or sincerely enough, for all we do.

But I’m sure we should.

My New Year’s resolution is to be more mindful of my debt to all those who, by way of earning their own livings, improve my life.

Thank YOU for YOUR service. I wish you a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2024.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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By way of marking the western date for Christendom’s most holy celebration, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III announced  that “at President Biden’s direction, U.S. military forces conducted necessary and proportionate strikes on three facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups in Iraq.”

So much for visions of sugar-plums, etc.  Instead of surplus socks or the latest video game console beneath the tree and a day spent watching football and avoiding fruitcake, we get war  in the “Holy Land,” war in Ukraine, war in Myanmar, war in Sudan … the list goes on, covering quite a lot of territory, costing thousands, and negatively affecting millions, of lives.

Austin’s justification for the US strikes: They “are a response to a series of attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias.”

The US occupation of Iraq (following George W. Bush’s war of aggression based on false “weapons of mass destruction” claims) supposedly ended in 2011.

US forces supposedly vanquished the Islamic State in Syria (following Barack Obama’s illegal invasion, supposedly in pursuit of that objective, but more likely in hope of overthrowing that country’s existing government) in 2019.

Why are US troops still in harm’s way in those places?

Why does the US government continue to mind everyone’s business but its own — providing arms, “advice,” and even direct muscle to at least one side in almost every conflict on the planet, at your current financial expense and at your and your loved ones’ future risk of experiencing the same horrors now inflicted on others?

If all the talk about “democracy” means anything, the answer is:

Because you allow it.

The usual appeals against you doing so are aimed at your conscience:

Don’t you care about the lives of civilians caught in the crossfire of [insert war here]?

Don’t the mangled bodies of children disturb you?

Don’t the videos of families fleeing their homes with what little they can carry, ahead of airstrikes or within hearing of artillery fire, rouse your empathy?

The evidence says no, not really, or at least not very much.

If you DID care, the gaggle of warmongers you continue electing and re-electing to Congress and the presidency would either be in prison or, at best, out on parole and asking you if you’d like fries with your value meal to earn their livings.

Since you clearly don’t give a hoot about the lives of foreigners who may not speak the same language, worship the same god, or even sport the same skin color as you, let me instead appeal to your self-interest.

Do you remember 9/11? I’m sure many of you do. Do you want more of that action? Because this is EXACTLY how you get more of that action.

Every time “your” congressional representative or the president “you” “elected” announces US government support for atrocities abroad, he or she is threatening you and yours with death at home.

If you choose to vote, vote the warmongers out — for your own good and for your family’s safety.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On December 19, Colorado’s Supreme Court deemed former president Donald Trump ineligible to appear on the state’s 2024 Republican presidential primary ballot. In a 4-3 ruling, the court held that Trump had engaged in “insurrection” and was therefore disqualified from returning to the presidency per the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection” clause.

Most opinion and analysis on this ruling (and other, similar cases working their way through other states’ court systems) revolves around particular questions:

Was the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot an insurrection?

If so, did Trump incite and/or support it? Did his attempts, outside the context of the riot, to invalidate the election results, constitute part of an insurrection scheme?

Is the president an “officer” “under” the United States as referred to in the insurrection clause?

Can state courts enforce that clause based on civil determinations of the answers to those questions, or is a criminal conviction and/or federal determination required?

Interesting questions indeed, and that they’re even under serious consideration seems to bolster the case that the United States may be headed for some kind of “national divorce” scenario, possibly entailing civil war.

I’ve got another question to add to the mix:

Did anyone really believe America’s “major parties” would never get around to using ballot access barriers against each other?

Those barriers began to go up in the 1890s with adoption of the “Australian ballot” — a uniform ballot printed by the government subdivision holding an election.

Prior to that, all votes were, essentially, “write-ins.” You hand-wrote your ballot, or dictated it to an election official with a witness if you couldn’t write, or cast a ballot printed by your political party or association of choice.

Once the government started printing   ballots, the government got to decide who could be ON those ballots. Ever since, the “major” parties have increasingly and enthusiastically abused that power with onerous signature requirements, filing fees, and other restrictions to ensure that only Republicans and Democrats have a very good shot at getting elected in most races.

Now Democrats and “never-Trump” Republicans want to use that same power to tell Americans — more than 74 million of whom voted for Trump in 2020 — that they’re not entitled to vote for their candidate of choice,  a former president and a “major” party front-runner.

And by the way, they’re doing it in the name of “protecting democracy.”

At some point,  a dialectical analysis might predict, “democracy” collapses under the weight of such internal contradictions.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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