As Afghanistan enters its last dreadful lap, much like Vietnam circa 1970, I have been looking back to what fiction from those ‘golden days’ had to say, when students were alive with antiwar politics and sexual revolution, the empire at its peak of power and savagery. The parallels are bleak, and very, very enlightening.
In Norman Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), the rich Texan D.J.’s son spends the night in a tent with his best friend. They feel lust for the other, but intuit that the only response to such desire is violence; they will never be lovers, but only ‘killer brothers’.
They (and their fathers) worship their high-powered guns. They revel in shooting an exquisite fox, standing nobly at dawn, a magnificent grizzly, wounded and running crazily in pain. The atmosphere is full of cruel violence against the natural order and lack of understanding of reality. Then, in the final sentence, ‘off to Vietnam we go.’ Argh.
It was then that I turned to Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge (1968) and Myron (1974).
What exactly is the religious rationale for Israel as a Jewish state? Who better to ask than an America Jewish secular journalist. We can assume that makes our investigative journalist a zionist (90% of Jews support Israel), but, as a journalist, and secular, our protagonist assures the reader he is interested in giving us as objective a version as can be expected. 
Who in US presidential history even comes close to Trump? While corporations run America for all intents and purposes, it has been unusual for a hardcore businessman to take the helm. Founders like Washington and Jefferson were plantation owners. Most were lawyers, military (9 generals), political hacks (including lots of governors, senators and VPs), even a university president (Wilson, Yale). But businessman? Who bragged of making and losing and making a fortune?
For long, Israelis have despised diaspora Jews as weaklings, fraidy cats, too lazy to come to live (and fight) in the Jewish Homeland. But, imperialism -- Israel is the last of that dying breed -- needs constant growth, more bodies to exploit, to fight the enemy, to prove itself. It also needs to exploit other countries financially, and terrorize its enemies, to prosper. So Israel will never disown the traitors, the 'expats'. They provide a trickle of recruits (‘antisemitism’ ensures that) and are useful to squeeze billions of dollars out of the US (don’t forget Germany).
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion have finally come into their own. The pieces of imperialism’s geopolitical jigsaw have fallen into place after four centuries. Jerusalem (read: JerUSAlem) is the honorary capital of the US-Israel empire. All hail King Donald I.
