James Baldwin once said “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
In that exact spirit (seeking positive change by facing realities and piercing illusions) I am going to be extremely rude again today – that is, truthful. I can even boil down my message to the simplest possible very rude form up front (to save the lazy, effort). Every angry ‘group’ opinion which is held by large numbers in the west right now supports outright mass murder of one type or another. Without ANY exception.
Yes – I am saying that “leftists” are backing the mass murderer of poorer foreigners, and so are the “righties.” And if you can find a group of stubborn Middlers left anywhere on earth – do please say (it would be a huge smile, just to know they still exist). Of course I’m joking – in our normal lives, we actually all know plenty of them – mellower, non-hysterical folks who don’t actually enjoy screaming constantly – but those far happier and more modest voices are strictly verboten in media now. ALL MUST BE WAR – ALL WHO OPPOSE (n) ARE EVIL! (Because wasn’t kill or be killed always the highest aim of representative democracy?)
One big reason everything now sounds insane 24/7, is the sad fact that the things we now call the “left” and the “right” (for almost entirely nostalgic reasons) are both completely dominated by poisonous weirdoes, who represent only the tribal upset of their constituents, instead of leading them past hurt and retribution, toward learning, growth, compassion, cooperation, solidarity and principle (you know, like um, leaders).
I DO NOT SAY ANY OF THIS TO BE MEAN – and I am not trying to suggest that increasing our anger hatred or guilt would be helpful. Awareness helps, always, but the emotional side of it is infinitely more about our own self-entertainment, than it is about addressing the actual problems of the world – for that we need self-overcoming.
What I am saying is that all of the high and mighty righteous accusing finger-pointers of every tribe here are really hopped-up narcissistic assholes who believe their personal emoting is a useful and important force – that their state of internal agitation and upset actually is a kind of political action – simply because deep in their hearts, they truly do believe they are the centre of the entire damn universe. Hopelessly screwed-up brats.
The fact that this killer-madness is EVERYWHERE now – and almost every set of productively stimulating ideas (both rigorously correct and metaphorical or less so) which could once be considered by the young and excited in an open and curious way, is now filled with tripwires of over-reaction groupthink, malicious mistranslation and the threat of ostracism, is nothing short of heartbreaking. Like mounting the lifeboats way out of reach. Not just stupid in the moment you’re doing it, but primed for the consequences to become way way stupider still, later on, when it is much too late to fix it.
Curiosity and learning are key metabolic goods for us – but even more important – humility – being wrong – learning to realize we are wrong with good humour and ease – understanding that it is not just okay, but also crucially important to admit it (so that we can learn from and perhaps even change it) and then getting less wrong over time – is all CRUCIAL. That is how we grow up (or at least, avoiding-this is how a depressing number do not).
Every way in which online culture bullies any questioners is despotic and dangerous. Every means by which young people learn to think for themselves (that is, without the hostile reaction of hectoring fanatical thought-police, human or bot) makes the whole future better.
Which community, class or cultural tribe is involved in what is completely irrelevant.
Okay – now let me get to some meat (apologies to my vegetarian friends, but this material is too bloody in consequence, to be honestly approached in a completely bloodless way)
Osama Bin Laden Won. Yes, very rude, but I dare even the most patriotic to deny it.
He didn’t attack America because he hated freedom and liberty, as millions of young people suddenly realized quite recently, that was always cheap shit propaganda. What he was angry about was violence that the United States had been doing in his part of the world for many years – actions which most of the citizens of the United States didn’t much know or care about.
He spent years working for the sneakiest and most violent double crossing part of the US establishment in Afghanistan, helping to fund and arm the Mujahadeen – and because he understood the CIA and the war state which really runs the White House, he realized that the only way to bring down what he saw as the greatest Evil Empire of our time, was to trick it into destroying itself.
At that millennial moment, the US was at its peak power projection capability and could have utterly destroyed any external adversary which faced it with a challenge of conventional arms. Rather than being a classy winner and taking a beat after winning the cold war (with the help of a whole lot of foreign sneaks like Osama, causing trouble for the other side, that most of us never heard or thought about), the US used this unipolar moment to press every last advantage by force, and gave literally billions of people around the world the shaft with extortionate exploitation resource deals, economic warfare or outright nation-ruining hyper-violence – sometimes all three at once (the Eastern Congo is on my mind, every day of my life). Got a cellphone? It should be on yours, too.
But the existence of that secretive manipulative and casually murderous war cabal within the US establishment (which Eisenhower so brilliantly warned of, in his Military Industrial Complex speech) was always contrary to America’s better principles and potential. The exact, “Dangers of unwarranted power and influence” Ike warned us about, have indeed been fully realized.
What Osama did that was so powerful, was make the US play these dangers and contradictions out in such a staggeringly gigantic and grotesque way, that even the American people caught a glimpse of their own bloody hands in the mirror. The last time they had this potentially sobering moment was during the war in Vietnam – and OMG do I ever wish the lessons had actually stuck back then, the way youthful-me was so hopeful they would – since the costs were already far too high for everyone involved – the millions of murdered Vietnamese civilians, most especially.
Osama was clever enough to understand America’s lust for military over-reach, but he was definitely not enough of a genius to have contrived the many extra bonuses his confidence shattering action ultimately won, in terms of advancing American ruin.
The kid gloves have been off the war machine and anti-citizen spy state for so long now, that we honestly don’t even know where to find them anymore. Only extreme options are now put on the table. The death for profit gang at the heart of the United States establishment has spent this entire century acting like a vicious criminal gang on a killing spree for racism and energy hegemony. No one in Afghanistan did 9/11 – ZERO. Same with Iraq. America spent decades bombing mining and machine-gunning both – FOR WHAT? No one in Vietnam ever attacked America either.
TWO TRILLION DOLLARS on Afghanistan alone. And since numbers that big are hard to get our heads around, let me translate that in practical terms. If you drew a line and said the top third of Americans are doing fine already – then you could give the rest – every citizen in the bottom two thirds of the American populace – Ten Thousand bucks cash in hand. Not to say that such diverse and unprecedented direct anti-poverty stimulus would utterly transform the face of the country – but it would be a whole lot better than the average business grant or a public assistance check. Did you get ten grand worth of value out of that somehow? Anyone else you know feel that way?
Another way of thinking about it – Barrack Obama confiscated more wealth from black Americans than any other president in US history – no kidding. By siding one hundred percent with bankers (he literally called them up and asked them who they would like him to hire, to regulate them) and then sacrificing the rights and modest but important wealth gains of ordinary citizens, to reward his own Wall St backers, he made a lasting contribution to widespread frustration, underemployment, class immobility and even urban blight. Two trillion dollars would have done a lot to repair his crime against his people – even considering the speed with which real estate tends to swallow capital.
And then just imagine the check everyone could get instead if the Iraq war was also avoided, and Syria, and Libya, and Somalia, and Sudan, and on and on and on (I have tons of smart American friends, and I have literally never met one who could even name all of the countries in the world where their nation was fighting – openly and not). Also worth mentioning – one thing no one ever wants to say about the Uighurs is that sure enough, the good old maniacs at CIA identified them as ‘useful’ decades ago, and spent many millions to make them seem dangerous to the Chinese state with arms and training. How much trouble they are in (independent from the wildly racist war-promoting propaganda we are now submerged in) and how much they would be in anyhow, without that direct American effort to make things worse for everyone, is very hard to say – but even there, in the places we feel most confident still spewing our violent supremacist bile, we are in every possible way complicit – we just keep our eyes closed, and keep insisting that therefore, the moral consequences should not be able to find us. (Cuz we’re invisible, see?)
And of course – even while we have politicians thumping their desks, bellowing, and finding whole new hateful ways to pronounce China and Chinese like pejoratives (as if that great and ancient culture hasn’t always deserved a place of eminence and respect in the world), in the backrooms and offices, they are in fact constantly BEGGING those same long-game thinking Chinese to please please pretty-please refinance their insane out of control war-debt – because if the Chinese decide they don’t want to do that anymore – the over-extended American Economy will pop like a balloon!
And still there’s more!
As a Canadian, I can honestly say the combination of American ignorance and arrogance is obnoxious in the extreme, and from the vantage of a less furious culture it is obvious that so many of the serious problems they try to explain to themselves with complicated theories, really come from a baseline orneriness. The seed-stock for the American national character wasn’t really Adam and Eve or the poor and huddled masses – it was Hatfields and McCoys!
BUT – just as the disagreeable problems show up there most dramatically, over the last few years my own country has become a laughing-stock demonstration in the opposite direction. Compliant not just to a fault, but even to a literal grave.
People who are old enough to remember the left when traces of the old vitality still existed (over fifty) will also remember that mass immigration was always sought by the corporatists on the right, because it keeps labour prices down, suppresses worker demands for better conditions and rights, and, by constantly forcing scarcity, keeps housing prices for the rest of us, way way up.
Of course the left has always welcomed immigrants – a tradition in the union left particularly, which I always credit to the original “One World Union” Wobblies – but it tried to do so without ever using them as weapons against the poor who were already here and struggling. This means developing at a pace to accommodate all. But such old fashioned boring ideas as thermodynamic limits do not apply to our contribution to the international posing bourgeois narcissist fantasist club – Emperor Justin!
He has heroically announced bold unprecedented new immigration targets, and then a reporter caught up with the housing minister and pointed out, “We already have a huge affordability and housing availability problem, nationwide. Can we actually build new housing fast enough to accommodate all of these newcomers?”
The minister’s response was astounding – he said that the entire Canadian construction industry working full-tilt on housing alone was not even capable of half of the new construction which would be required to achieve the level of supply his own office estimated would be needed, to restore middle and working class dignity (that is, get rent at least semi back under control).
So the great caring model enlightened progressive government is – smiling about diversity and welcoming the world, the whole time, mind you – knowingly planning to MASSIVELY INCREASE HOMELESSNESS. And please don’t forget – Canada is a brutally cold winter country (both senses) – homeless people die here all the time.
Our Medical Assistance in Dying (you have to admit, MAD is the true natural name for it) really is out of control. Well meaning incompetents have set up and then unwisely extended an absolute cascading disaster, all because they really can’t get past their own internal metaphors and intentions and go down to the street to listen and watch.
YES – people who are poor and can’t find services, or depressed and can’t find treatment, or even sometimes just very angry about the state of the world, have been offered the option of state sponsored death (by absolute utter dolts, one must assume, to be charitable – but this alone proves the whole line impossibly dangerous as policy). And meanwhile, the state continues to prosecute individuals for offering DIY kits (hands off OUR franchise!)
The thing about these insane pieces of shit (sorry, but they have utterly betrayed the key diplomatic role and legacy of our middle ground meeting-place country, by slavishly pandering to the US racist war for profit club) is that they are all of that particular attitudinal class I have tried to characterize a few times lately, in a way other than ‘left’ (because I say left is still a thing, but they aren’t it).
Are they middle-classers? Bourgeois Brats? Clean-Fingernail Urbanites? Coddled Metrosexuals? White Guilt Self-Flaggelants? Who cares – they are the thing which pretends to be left – but first spits-on and then utterly betrays the working class constantly and without pause mercy shame or fail. They serve POWER (only). Their narcissistic fulminating makes them handy tools to be easily used and worked – because power knows they live forever inside ego – no humility – no empathy.
I bet you still don’t believe me (yet).
But I can change your mind (or at least I figure I still have a good chance, if your mind remains even five percent open – and if it does, thank you sincerely for bothering that much, even if you still disagree with me completely by the end of my rant!)
Now here’s a very rude short-form summary of modern industrial leftist history.
For roughly a century, from the 1870s to the 1970s, workers organized together to very slowly and painfully pry power away from the ultra rich land-holding despots, industrial robber barons and state-steering bankers, and the always plentiful and wildly corrupted politicians who make an art out of betraying the people who elected them, in favour of the interests of their actual (moneyed) masters.
Then, in roughly 1970 (again, I did say rude and short) the boomers showed up and said “We are the new definition of left”. Only problem was, they weren’t committed workers in deep solidarity with the struggling poor – not at all – what they were was an unprecedented number and concentration of narcissistic brats. (And in their defence, they were very deliberately raised to be such, by mark one TV consumerist cultural indoctrination).
Ever since then, more and more people who proclaim themselves to be “left”, and can indeed claim many humane victories of value to individuals, have found it shockingly easy to completely ignore mass harm done to others – which was always the original organizing and animating MORAL power of the left.
They have also found more and more reasons to say, “You know, maybe we should just hand all of our power back to despots, barons and bankers again, so they can be our daddy and clean up our poopy mess for us. Or at least be the ones at fault, if it all stays screwed up forever.” (like I said, a locust horde of crazy psycho brats).
We still see people screaming for a carbon tax, as if they haven’t even noticed sharply increasing poverty since Obama’s mass wealth confiscation on behalf of bankers (or, more likely, do not give the slightest shit) and have even more outrageously failed to notice – that is a BANKERS SOLUTION. Seriously – their priority list goes like this: preserve banking, shareholders, capital, war industries, numbing consumerism, racist exploitation and brutal bayonet suppression of entire continents… …and ‘heal Gaia’ (presumably with wonderfully sincere Kumbayas, since that is all that the ‘sacrifices’ of the west have amounted to so far).
What have these technocratic monetizing maniacal bankers ACTUALLY DONE (not said) – for the last century straight? Were they seeking ethics? Social benefit for all?ARE YOU FREAKIN NUTS? Seriously, check the record. What capitalists at that level do is enslave and or kill foreign and domestic poor in our name, for our marginal luxuries and their record-setting shareholder profit!
Now go have a more careful look at these EU Sorbonne racists’ grand “Global” plans for the environment READ IT. The last billion new people that we can expect to join us, before we hit a new stable planetary population level (almost all Africans) get utterly lynched.
So – if you want to stand with bankers and their established track record of mass murder for profit (and energy hegemony) and are all-in for strangling the future of a billion Africans – you go ahead and do you – BUT DO NOT CALL YOURSELF LEFT (ever again, please). OR GREEN actually. Hell – or sane applies just as well, really.
The sickening and now total gentrification of the left (where all the political correctness and white guilt entered-in) has accompanied a (completely predictable) half century of increasing poverty and decreasing hope – worse and worse conditions for our own poor – even while we continue to wage uncountable wars and lesser exploitative assaults on the poor of the rest of the world, all in the name of our special wonderful feel good supremacist me-first psychotic model of the “best society ever.”
No folks – I am not saying we need to abandon the many gains made for the individual, I’m just saying that pretending that these personal gains are the essence of the struggle, instead of the dividends of a century of struggles before we even got here, is betraying the spirit of leftism that got us all to a place where we could dream that big in the first place, and then also bring enough other people along to make it a win. (which we really did, over and over again)
The fact that our economy keeps doing endless actual real world immediate harm to hundreds of millions elsewhere – including outright murdering them for the profit of our companies, is an infinitely more important and pressing matter than any and all of the wondrous varieties of metaphorical harm we may feel is being done to our feelings (especially online, where even a single misplaced or deliberately misunderstood line can be magnified infinitely).
Zero tolerance rules about politeness are a ritual status dance for the rich, the bourgeois, the spoiled, and the hopelessly self indulgent. If you actually are that kind of a navel gazing dummy, by all means “Do the work.” The rest of us are doing life, join us in the backyard when you’re done.
It isn’t just that the map is not the territory – that (mental) map is a freakin’ prison!
Please be very clear, folks – whenever a western politician says “I call for sanctions,” they are really saying “lets go lynch some uppity darkies, for daring to disobey our superior white power.” If you find yourself cheering along with that game you are a sick racist piece of shit. (apologies, if you still hadn’t noticed that) FORCE IS VIOLENCE IS SUPREMACY. Our own treasured and subjective hurt feelings simply ARE NOT!
The thing is – there have always been two basic choices for western civilization – we could go for distributed power (political and energy), general abundance and freedom – a smaller share of a much much bigger pie of abundance – which would mean finally putting war and exploitation in the past. Or we can (and do) go for monopolist control at all costs (inevitably, hyper-violent), create constant false scarcity, panic and under-supply, and thus actively and at every turn drive conflict in the wider society, and squander the human potential of the poor everywhere, most certainly of all. You got a worse racism in mind? More black lives at stake than all of Africa? Really?
Here’s the ultra freaky double whammy though. Not only have we convinced ourselves that our personal freedoms are crucial, but the poor can just fuck off, we have even developed powerful new forms of racism, based on those hateful others who do not see personal expression exactly as we do.
How dare those disgusting foreigners prioritize housing and education instead of gay marriage? Why do they insist on Investing in the poor? Where’s the profit in that? Why – it’s a distortion of free market forces – a violation of the rules-based order – we really ought to bomb them, for still thinking so much like we did ourselves, just a few generations ago.
Propaganda is incredibly powerful stuff, some of the most brilliant creative minds are involved in the field (even Orwell had his turn, remember), so none of us can be faulted for falling into these traps of foul racist war-powering narcissism. The very fuel of every colonial enterprise in recorded history.
BUT – saying a stupid hateful mass murder enabling thing because someone gave you an excellent pitch is one thing. Older readers will remember watching the “Babies torn from incubators in Kuwait” speech live, the night before the vote to authorize the first gulf war. It hit hard, I was rocked, and then a few months later I discovered she wasn’t a nurse, had never been to Kuwait, and was actually on the staff of the Saudi Embassy – at which point I updated the hate-point so cleverly laid down as a doubt point instead, and then kept asking questions.
But you can’t take back an authorization for war, because you realize later on that you were had. Or at least, if they can, they sure as heck haven’t demonstrated that skill lately.
The point is, we can all be swayed for a short time – but staying that furious and irrational, without reconsidering that easy reflexive (and let’s face it – far too often outright pleasurable) contempt for the other, which has always elevated our own wonderful superior selves by comparison, is simply not cool.
That’s the dumb play, the bully’s approach. Force and control not only is but deserves to be the losing game. We stay angry thwarted and miserable because we do not actually care about anything enough to get over ourselves and our own treasured navel-issue. We’d rather put up fences then wallow in lonely misery, instead of learning new modesty and hilarity, then joining in solidarity (always an incomparably better party – even speaking as a lifelong freaky loner).
We ain’t left. Left is caring about everybody, and wanting everybody to make it.
And you know what? – until we finally pull our heads out of you know where for real and look at the world instead of our own colon, we can’t possibly be right, either.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now, as has been my recent habit – let me add a big pile of potential trouble and controversy for myself, by way of applying some of the ideas above. (I always like a math book best, when there is an appendix with some example problems)
The main problem with our modern understanding of hate-speech is that it ignores what humans are, and are like, and also presumes that the government can (and should) read minds, so as to be certain about the ideas it will punish us for having.
When we are very angry, we all deliberately say hurtful things we don’t actually mean, that is one hundred percent normal, and the idea that our most furious speech can be taken as a revelation of our most truthful self (as opposed to our most ape-scattering-shit-like self) is a fascistic state-persecution-enabling vision of humanity. Almost Jesuitical in its cruelty.
Please people, this is way beyond horseshit now – it is as dangerous as can be for the future of representation, citizens power, free expression and the voices of the poor and weakest. Crime is crime already – but thanks to big tech, our individual citizen rights are far easier for corporations to stomp on now, than they ever have been before. If we mean for humane culture to resist the lethal contradictions of decaying industrial capitalism (all around us, now) these rights are infinitely more valuable and important than the establishment of state enforcement of politeness codes (which again, are always fine-tuned to serve the rich, the clubby-excluders and the most neurotic and self-indulgent, while punishing free thinkers, the poor and the workers relentlessly – almost as if the sickest are outright jealous of those still sane and trying).
My old working colleagues will be able to back me up on this. A quarter of a century ago I had some truly epic debates with a couple of Israeli and Jewish friends. They kept insisting that the Palestinians had done this or that at this moment, and therefore they simply could not ever negotiate with them. Like the people had lost their rights forever, on a technicality (one of the most surreal nationalist arguments there is, still).
My position was simple (and mostly from Machiavelli, really). Israel exists thanks to one single financial and military guarantor, which happens to be the supremely powerful empire of this particular moment. But American power is top heavy, unstable and fast heading south, so Israel should set aside the tactical angst in order to finally secure the big strategic win – cut a deal while it is still in an economically and politically strong position, because that position cannot possibly last long term, without the kind of deal that brings a diversity of alliances to replace the crumbling empire as it fades.
I really do appreciate that Israel is almost unique, militarily – no strategic depth to fall back into, which means it is forever one big battle away from destruction. But just because a huge proportion of the citizenry also consider that reality, thanks to their own military training (again, very rare among modern nations), that doesn’t mean you can reasonably sacrifice the goal of strategic stability in favour of immediate tactical advantages forever.
I can’t say that any of us persuaded one another, but they did concede that immigrants from Eastern Europe were being used in a cynical and unfair way by the Israeli state – which is one of the main reasons so many give up the dream after a few years, and come to settle here, where their children can grow up with the taste of peace instead.
The strange thing about Israeli politics that I’ve leaned from reading Israeli papers ever since those long running discussions (that is, about a quarter century now) – is that Israeli citizens have a sharp and lively debate about all kinds of matters which we have been trained to not even go near. Because here in the west, even a precise criticism of one specific governmental policy, advanced by one specific politician, (even someone with an actual criminal record for repeated racist violence) can get you called an anti-semite. (To be clear – there definitely is such a thing – but that ain’t it)
So – we have learned to roll our eyes and sigh on the topic of Israel, instead of discussing it.
Personally, as a mister curious who listens to everyone, I am shocked by how many completely apolitical people I know, who have told me without any prompting, that they thought Israel was on a long term suicide course. Many Israel supporters seem to have taken the chilled silence here as a kind of broad assent – as if it meant that we in the west did not even notice that Israel has kept working hard against a fair two state solution for decades – building settlements which not only split up Palestinian land, but also set up more and more communities (often extremists, and sometimes violent racists) which would forever resist peace – even by threatening the Israeli state itself if necessary.
Thing is – we did notice that – all of it. We noticed the “Settlements” (military outposts) we noticed the attacks on refugee camps, we noticed the conflicts in Lebanon and the tragedies in Syria and we sure as hell noticed “Cutting the grass” (thinning the population) and “Putting them on a diet” (restricting the available calories allowed into Gaza, to a bare minimum for survival).
October Seventh was a horrible tragic shocking and violent day. Hamas did some totally insane things (though not all of the babies and incubators they are accused of – and this is according to the Israeli press, mind you). Also, there were a whole bunch of angry people who came through the gaps that Hamas smashed in the wall, and then did all kinds of random violence and mayhem.
And then – again – from the front pages of Haaretz – the Israeli military also reacted in a way which was designed to respond to an earlier military failure. Problem is, that strategy worked outright disastrously on this day.
The Hannibal doctrine was created in response the kidnapping of one single Israeli soldier a few years ago (Gilad Shalit). The government was furious about how many prisoners they finally had to trade to get him back, and vowed that they would never let this happen again.
Consider also – the border with Gaza was one of the most electronically surveilled areas in the world – and yet Hamas got through. How? Tons and tons of high-precision planning. Not only did they disable key systems and sensors (including those for robotic remote control machine-gun emplacements, which regularly detect small desert animals) they also kidnapped a number of intelligence people along with officers who were in charge of operating this system of cameras sensors and weapons, and grabbed a whole lot of their super-sensitive computer drives, too.
Which meant that the first troops who responded were given panicky Hannibal style orders (again, the Israeli papers have interviews with a young tank commander who was actually there and firing) to attack the retreating Hamas units – and their hyper valuable prisoners – at all costs. Tanks were told to fire on houses, where they suspected Hamas and hostages might still be, and their own attack helicopters did a tragic proportion of the damage done to cars at, and fleeing from, the music festival.
I understand that this is very emotional stuff – and I’m not trying to ‘push a narrative’ but rather just to point out reality. Light weapons like Hamas had, do light weapons damage. Only tank rounds and missiles and rockets from helicopters explain a lot of the evidence that we’ve seen ourselves (and then had spun and interpreted for us, very carefully).
The public response from the left has outright shocked a lot of my Jewish friends in a way which I sympathize with a great deal. A massive tragedy really is a terrible time for a whole bunch of people who have been angry all along, to suddenly say so.
But the misinterpretation that objecting to the mistreatment of civilians means that there is a huge new wave of anti-semitism, is being used to fuel war sentiment – and my dear friends, war sentiment is the very opposite of “best for Israel” (again, please think of what America used to be, before it overreacted so disastrously as to undermine its status, economy, power and soul).
It is not just that blood taken in fury does not ever wash off – though this is a lesson which should not have been forgotten so soon. Week after week, even the most elite units of the IDF are being taken apart – and this is a citizen force, remember – not a super trained professional military like we’re used to in the west. The ultimate militia, in a way.
Hamas picked the timing and the battlefield – and they must have assumed mass casualties would result – but even now, after tens of thousands of horrific civilian deaths and hundreds of American five thousand pound bombs being dropped on urban areas (always a technical war crime, no matter the circumstances) in wave after wave, the IDF estimates that it has diminished Hamas forces by maybe twenty percent.
Worse still – and this part is underplayed in the media even there – the casualty reports about IDF forces are not only greatly understated, but are also very different from previous conflicts of this kind. Ordinarily, roughly ten times more soldiers are injured than are killed – but in this conflict with close quarters, fire points and easy cover everywhere and ultra fast evacuations (meaning fewer who are hit, actually die), many are suggesting the ratio for the IDF may now be more like fifty to one!
That is, completely aside from the wisdom of their tasking, a whole lot of Israeli citizens who will be coming home with life altering injuries – all to accomplish something which has so far not even come close to defeating the opposing military force, but absolutely has very badly eroded the long-standing sympathy of the entire world – despite wide objections to specific policies.
There is no strategic logic here – let me say this plainly – it is not at all “The Jews” but Mr B Netanyahu personally, who is risking the future of the nation and its citizens, just to stay out of jail.
For decades, the policy of Israel has been to use the billions in aid America faithfully offers it every year, to take every available advantage to win every possible kind of dominance (no wonder they’re such pals – same hobbies).
Readers of Tablet and Free Press (like me, I don’t just read the Israeli left) understand that even the most faithful Israel supporters on the right are finally coming to realize the American guarantor is already unreliable and fading fast, and in any case, their supposed (military-industrial and energy hegemon serving) “charity” has always come at too high a price in sovreignty, let alone the deep corruption of national aims and diplomacy.
The all powerful moment is over. America just ain’t all that anymore. The decayed industrial base of America plus all of Europe plus some of the most determined fighters in the world, still can’t defeat just a part of the Russian army – which absolutely didn’t want to fight them in the first place – but finally lost their patience with western imperialist supremacist gamesmanship.
And the lesson there really isn’t so hard to find either, despite some of the most unhinged racist propaganda I’ve ever heard. Not only the eternal caution (from Aesop, wasn’t it?) “Don’t poke the f@cking bear!” (dummy) but also my favourite line from Crowley – “Do not call up that which you cannot put down.” (You asked for it – for the spiritual and pompous)
I read a truly beautiful piece the other day from a reporter who is a man after my own heart. For years he kept saying over and over that Trump’s election connection to Russia and the hatred for Putin which rubbed off from people’s hatred for Trump, were utterly ridiculous baseless fictions. Sure enough he was proved to be completely correct about that. Every single reporter who bought into Russiagate (almost all of them) was either a knowing liar or a dumb sap. It really was concocted racist dangerous warmongering Democratic party Bullshit, all along. What the real CIA reports of the time said was actually that Putin greatly preferred Hillary! No freakin’ kidding, folks.
But now, after years of taking shit for that (entirely true) position, from all sides, he turns to again challenge the audience that only just yesterday finally caught up to him. “Hey but wait a minute, I didn’t mean to say that Putin was actually a nice guy or anything, let far alone a damn hero.”
Which is so courageous principled and foolish (in terms of avoiding controversy, just for five freakin’ minutes, to maybe catch a breath) that I kind of love the guy. (my kind of idiot for sure, principle above self, always and relentlessly)
Of course, what he’s missing in his piece (perhaps just to shape the writing, or maybe because as an American, he’s too close and still too young to see it) is that everyone has been angry at America for being a global bully and psycho killer for this whole century and most of the last, too – we’ve just been rolling our eyes and sighing for a long while, since the Americans keep getting more and more fascist with their candy social media tech. Surveys definitely do not show…
Thing is, history tells us that eventually, somebody will step up to stop the bully, humiliate them, and force them to think it over and try something new for a change. It isn’t about the guy who does it being pure or good or even right at all, it’s about decades of silenced rage and grieving widows.
The giant NATO humiliation which is coming over the next few months, and the tragic betrayal of Ukraine which was always the end-plan of the American war state (too bad Zelenskyy didn’t have any Kurdish pals who could talk some sense into him last March) will earn Vlad hero points, even from many who hate him for super high-resolution reasons. Money is not the hold-up, there is no war stuff in the Western Hemisphere to be bought, and thanks to the suicidal summer offensive, run entirely to please their American backers, there are no men left to use it if there was. Total tragedy.
Nobody I know has ever said a single nice thing nice about Hamas. This is about unstable power structures breaking down – as was always destined to happen in time, not any kind of a Hollywood hero myth. Let alone a grand contest of ideals (the last refuge of contemporary racist supremacy). Occam first, or in this case Machiavelli – instability (that is, the use of force, instead of effective positive persuasion) is absolutely always going to be unstable. All such bets build on sand.
Again – not working a narrative here. I’m just the peacenik who has studied military history for my whole life, and tried my best to also watch as it unfold before me. This is about realities. And no – Putin will not go steam-rolling through Poland next – that is dangerous warmongering shit. Please read just one book on logistics (which even Napoleon recognized as the key). It is literally impossible, and absolutely not what he is building out for (six hundred miles of new border with NATO, is – and so much for the Finnish peacetime economy).
What he really wants is – “Don’t ever press the barrel of that country against my head again.”
Something both your average Hatfield and McCoy can not only understand, but even agree about!
I read a lot of people who are way smarter than me, and there is a lot of stuff I left out of this (even after going on so long, sorry). These brilliant writers add much of what I didn’t.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work breaks my heart and also gives me hope, because the fact that she has so many readers, proves there are still a lot of breaking hearts out there.
This piece – “The Perfect Recipe for Real Anti Semitism” is one of her best.
(In case you think I underplayed the tragedy side – I tried and found I was just unable to enter it at all, and then find my way back out again – hence this purposeful delegation)
Finally, here’s the hearteningly courageous piece I mentioned at the end there, by Michael Tracey “The War in Ukraine is a Giant Disaster”. As I said, there are many things missing from it, but failing to seriously consider these parts of the story and instead just flipping to a lazily reversed, but still entirely emotionally powered idea isn’t really any less dumb a position to take on anything, even if it does let you cheer for the team that’s actually about to win.
Remember what I said earlier, eh? We don’t need more guilt or personal anger, but more self-overcoming and awareness. Because what we need to make things better isn’t more and more tantrums, it’s an organized purposeful and unified popular front. Soli-freakin’-darity!
(look it up, and then just try and think of a better recipe for making everything tastier)
