Sen. Tom “Tehran Tom” Cotton has done it again.
After embarrassing himself, his party and his country last week by sending a totally unprecedented letter to the government of Iran, the Arkansas Senator then went on CBS’ “Face the Nation” yesterday and said that, “Oh, my God, the Iranians have already secured Tehran.”
That’s right – Tom Cotton is freaking out about the fact that the government of Iran controls Tehran, which IS THE FREAKING CAPITAL OF IRAN!
See more news and opinion from Thom Hartmann at Truthout here.
I think it’s safe to say that Senator Cotton might want to skim through a Rand McNally World Atlas before his next Sunday show appearance.
In fact, while he’s at it, Senator Cotton should also retake high school civics because his letter to the government of Iran didn’t just violate diplomatic protocol, it also turned back the clock to one of the most chaotic periods in US history.
You see in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, the United States was governed by a collection of documents known as the Articles of Confederation.
The Articles were, for lack of a better word, a mess.
They didn’t provide for any real central authority and gave no clear guidelines as to who had what kind of power, which was a big problem when it came to things like foreign policy.
As historian Kathleen DuVal pointed out in excellent piece for The New York Times this weekend, the result was a total vacuum where anyone who wanted to could negotiate with foreign governments.
Things got so bad that at one point in 1786, North Carolina Congressman James White actually tried to work out a deal with Spain that would have seen the western part of his state secede from the US and join the Spanish Empire.
This obviously never happened, but it’s still a great example why when they scrapped the Articles of Confederation in favor of the Constitution, the founding fathers gave the president and only the president the sole power to make and ratify treaties.
The founders had seen the kind of chaos that came about when citizens negotiated directly with foreign governments, and they wanted to make sure that that chaos never reared its ugly head again.
And, for the most part, they succeeded.
Except for a few hiccups in the early 1800s – like when former Vice President Aaron Burr tried to establish his own empire in the west and Thomas Jefferson called him out as a traitor – pretty much every other consequential politician has, for the past two centuries, accepted the president’s dominant role in foreign affairs.
Everyone that is, except for today’s Republicans and their geographically-challenged pied piper, Tom Cotton.
These guys are so committed to the “Caucus Room conspiracy” that was hatched the night Obama was inaugurated that they will do whatever it takes to stop our nation’s first Black president from achieving any sort of meaningful success.
They’ve already shut down the government, brought the nation to brink of fiscal crisis and filibustered countless pieces of legislation.
Now they’re dragging us back to the dark days before we even had a Constitution, which essentially means they’re willing to turn back the clock on the entire US democratic experiment just so they can sabotage President Obama.
The Republican Party now officially belongs in the dustbin of history. It’s time to dissolve it with a RICO complaint, and bring back the federalists or the whigs.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.