by achrilock
Let’s skip the really weird shit, this morning, shall we? I’m gonna do the neighborly thing and save you guys a great deal of headache and embarrassment. There is no conspiracy, no cabal, no secret money. I know that you know, but, it needs to be said, straight out. They’re just ‘that’ good. You talk about American exceptionalism, and then when you are presented with it, you shrink back into the shadows and start blaming aliens and questioning gravity. Just stop.
I’m not talking about intrinsic exceptionalism. We Americans are just as… no… probably more… fucked up as anyone else. But we’ve got a system, a really, really fucked up system. And you put enough young people through the crucible, you’re gonna end up with steel. Our dissidents are just the gold standard. Our criminals are the gold standard. Hell, I’m a piece of debris from 40 years of American history, and I’m better. You know very well who my teachers were, and what I know.
But, like, why are you always looking for the negative? (I know very well why, and it is not an ennobling or endearing assessment, I’m asking it as a rhetorical question.) Look at it this way: if anyone ever tries to occupy America, they’re in for a very serious, involuntary ass fucking of epic proportions. We were the ones saving your asses when Trump tried to rip apart everything. We will be the romantic idiots rescuing you and your families from the gulag when he gets elected again.
You know damned well that if I thought anything untoward was going on, if there were outside forces at play, I would be making all sorts of noise. It’s not happening. The Left here isn’t the NVA. They aren’t Hamas. They aren’t IS. They aren’t being funded by anyone. Whatever differences we may have, I grew up here, your stupid asses educated me, took care of me, and we are neighbors. I promise you, I wouldn’t betray you like that. They wouldn’t betray you like that. You guys just made us.
Lemme tell you why I play the games I play, and why I play them the way I play them. I don’t do it because I just get off on playing fart chair general (I do, tho :). I do it because it teaches me about the world, about human societies. Like a book. Sometimes ‘teh real’ gamers make fun of me because I don’t just build war production. I roleplay the thing, which includes creating provisions for the population, includes an actual economy and quality of life metrics that aren’t exclusive to war.
I build functional societies, that still persist and thrive. I do it to prove that it is, at least in theory, possible. You’ve lost sight of that. You’re so caught up in the game that you have forgotten that the game is about human survival and the human experience. If you created a sustainable world, full of people who wanted for nothing material, under an international system genuinely dedicated to maintaining and enhancing that situation, there would be no one questioning or challenging you.
We don’t do this because we hate you or any system or whatever. Not really. We do it because we don’t want anyone to have to hate anymore, or want for what they should have, ever again. Just as those who came before us did. We want peace, for everybody, all the time, and your system cannot provide that. Therefore, there is friction. But it’s not a conspiracy. There’s no secret club. There’s no terrible plan. People are just tired, and getting more so each generation.
Ice-T – You Played Yourself
I’ll keep this short, first, because it’s obvious and second because the advocates of colonialism and imperialism love nothing better than for good people to feel things and express their disquiet over the excesses of empire in what seems to them an ineffectual display of naivete and sobbing misguided moralizing.
I’m not here to cry. I’m here to tell you how you’ve fucked up. In challenging even the ICC’s involvement in what any objective observer understands to be willful, intentional ethnic cleansing on the part of the Israelis and their partners in the US and Europe, and crimes of war on the part of Hamas, Biden, and his administration, and the colonial beneficiary vanguard in Europe, are giving away the game.
I was speaking with someone earlier and we were talking about how colonizers and imperial ideologues react when challenged, when even the slightest criticism is leveled against their disregard for the legal and human status of others. You are seeing that in action in the United States, in Europe, and in Israel. Like any fascists, they will lash out, violently if they feel it necessary, for they are simply the arm of fascism that chooses to obscure its daily practice in more palatable rhetoric.
Western civilization is the abomination child of colonialism, racism, and capitalism, which, as history and current events teach us, becomes fascism when practically challenged. Israel is the proxy battlefield, not just for Netanyahu, for his government, for Zionism (itself a supremacist, colonial ideology), but for the entire idea and fundamental foundations of the colonial, supremacist empire spanning the Atlantic. This is ‘the’ proxy war for the idea of the whole system.
But, make no mistake, the historical implications of this are not minor. This decision means that there will be no legal consequences for Russia in its campaign of erasure against Ukraine. There will be no consequences for China and the atrocities it will commit if it invades Taiwan. There will be no consequences for the United States in its next major war, and make no mistake there will be another. And that is precisely the point. The law exists for those who are subservient, not the powerful.
You can see it in real time as they express sympathy with dictatorial Iran after some of its fascists died, as they stop Ukraine from winning its war with Russia as they profiteer off the conflict, as France struggles to hold on to one of its colonies, as they use violence to invade places of learning, as they tighten the borders, including those around Gaza and the West Bank, that protect elites and their functionaries and constituencies from the people they exploit all over the world.
Remember this when they preach nonviolence, when they use the words ‘law and order’ to shame you, when they talk about equality, justice, or morality. These are just words to the elite. They are meaningless. The only rights you will have are those you choose to take and keep by force. The only humanity to be had is in challenging this monstrosity of capitalism that strangles the world, to take any opportunity to strike at the heart of empire.
And remember that neither your life, your so-called rights, your dignity, the quality of your existence, nor indeed the concept of law itself mean anything whatsoever to these so-called leaders and owners. It’s rhetoric meant to preserve the system and destroy those who would challenge it. And each time their rhetoric fails, they resort immediately to violence, in the streets or on the battlefield (which is just someone’s streets). It’s not about justice. It’s not about law. It’s about power.
TL;DR version: placing aside the extensive ethical and consistency considerations already mentioned, and taking the matter simply in tactical sociopolitical terms, you couldn’t have done a bigger favor for the so-called ‘radical’ left had your teleprompter been written by ruthless anti-colonial, anti-capitalist anarchists. You are less, even, than the rulers who came before you, because you aren’t even trying to tell a pretty, holistic lie, anymore. The less the oligarchy pretends, the less we all feel the need to.
Hippies were so dumb. First, love is like freedom, is never free. Mostly people pay for love. Furthermore, you cannot levitate the Pentagon. Women’s powers of levitation are only effective intermittently and at a distance, while men may only levitate themselves by psychologically priming their physiology with certain patterns of electrochemical naughty naughty, and that hole in the center of the Pentagon isn’t for ‘that,’ it is not a dick hole. It is just a courtyard. Don’t get too excited.
Spoon – The Underdog