Photo by Devin Avery
It’s been a pretty rough last year or so for those in the reality-based community here in the United States. I’m sure we’ve had some mental health casualties; watching the international as well as the local play out in the fashion that it has—well, that hasn’t been exactly conducive for sanity. Even the very nature of cause and effect has been hijacked. Don’t believe your gut when you see wanton carnage, believe in the “joy” based toxic positivity being peddled by the Democrats. Or if you want to give in to the dark but magnetic Thanatos, the death drive, just embrace the carnage and go full “get the job done” with the Republicans.
Many of us had a glimmer of hope when a guy seemingly somewhat decent (these are politicians so of course the bar is subterranean) was selected as a VP pick for the Democrats, but there seems to be no indication that this will meaningfully change the trajectory of the aggressive and “lethal” behavior—that of which the United States leaders seem intent on pursuing. Of course I use lethal in quotes from that fantastically fascist speech given by Harris at the DNC. As if lethal is what you strive for as opposed to fair, just and prepared (if you have to mention the military at all).
At this point, I think we have to come to terms with the fact that these are the last gasps of the Empire. Israel in particular, is seen as a red line to the leaders, not one in terms of….. this is a red line to stop backing specific behavior, but more along the lines of….we are full-in for settler colonial capitalism, ride or die, baby. This is all despite the fact that this is killing the planet and to keep the cogs turning in such a fraudulent industry requires the input and lubrication of the global south and other indigenous peoples’ blood. Put simply, it’s the Chicago School of Economics, masturbatory capitalism. Oh, and the ever popular if you’re in a hole keep digging method to accelerate civilizational collapse. To do anything else is to admit to the fragility and moral vacuousness that is at this stage of capitalism. We know better but we choose not to do better because idiots in charge of us want to stay rich. We see horror and carnage readily, but to these leaders, this is irrelevant; the important goal is to keep in place what clearly is unsustainable. Those in the crowds, who are easily swayed by, of course, bread and circus, or AI-level awkward donut shop visits (don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed that glazed horror show too) as well as continued carnival barker antics (if the carnival barker was Franco, Mussolini or Hitler) don’t seem to have the ability to see past the narrative being served up to them, these accomplices by virtue of ignorance and or blindness.
The effect that we are seeing, that is, a ratcheting to the right from both major parties is no accident. To maintain firm control of a dying system requires a heavy hand, the hand of a fascist. Organic and life-affirming situations do not require such high incarceration rates or other forms of institutional violence.
We have seen the current Democratic party become what the Republicans were during the Reagan and Bush eras. Obama bombed somewhere every day right…… but he did it with such eloquence, of course. The now and new embrace of the likes of Liz Cheney, George W or Mitt Romney by liberals shows the cult behavioral disgrace infecting that party in a similar fashion to the MAGA outfit. All these moldy Republicans need to do is voice disgust at the optics of a Donald Trump and they are in like Flynn. Never mind illegal wars, previous war crimes—it’s all good if you join us in the shooting fish in a barrel comedy of making fun of the MAGAs. This lurch to the right where the Democrats are basically older-school Republicans has allowed for no clear populist-type resistance to the creep of the Republican party to—well, whatever you call their present incarnation. Maybe old-timey fascist, but with the aesthetics of Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A (no Hugo Boss uniforms for them). The Republican faithful are willing to overlook any flaws in their leader and do not demand anything from said leadership. It is a one-way love affair, to be sure. To combat such a situation one needs to have a clear alternative that gives distinct benefits to those leaning towards fascism. It always happens this way in history, when a liberal “left” allows for the right-ward trend through incompetence as well as corruption and infiltration from groups who do not have the best interests of the public in mind, just the advancement of their limited greed-based agenda. They hand over the reins of power to the fascist in one fell swoop or allow for the continual rightward drift that we have experienced over the last few decades.
I know a lot of these opinion pieces land on grasping the bits of positivity lurking, but at this time it’s fairly clear that those who have broken hearts from witnessing a textbook genocide while surrounded by people who seem to just not really give a fuck are in pain and have no idea what to do. It’s terrifying to see how easily the crowds can be convinced to support such barbarity. And we live among them. It’s like some kind of damn horror movie to be surrounded by such behaviors It scares those of us who realize what is going on because it’s as if the rest of the country has had their minds hijacked, but for some reason we perceive that this is pure barbarism with no acceptable excuse
It’s uncomfortable and terrifying, to say the least–to be surrounded by those who simply don’t care, that see life as inherently without meaning because if we are truth-telling here, that’s what you are saying if you honestly don’t give a shit when children are being turned to pure gore. A group I’m certainly speaking to are those who derive “meaning” from being a member of a church, more of an identification than a nod to a striving to improve as a human and to improve our society. To me that is worse than a materialist who gives a nod to their own nihilism; it’s a hypocrisy that allows for a self-satisfied worldview with no striving towards goodness, understanding or compassion, all the while not being a caring human but “playing one on tv”. These are the Evangelicals we all see in the United States who love Israel (because it is a necessary part of their narrative world-view), hate the homeless and poor, and love Donald Trump. The flip side is those who wear the identification of “liberal” implying that they are not an idiot who hates gay people, but still…..are full-on NIMBYs and will do any necessary mental gymnastics to not see a genocide fully playing out in front of their faces. They don’t get angry about hateful policies when Democrats do them, but are all about the ire when a Republican does the very same thing. They make plans to visit holocaust museums and fail to see the irony of “never again” being phrased. Like twins separated at birth who both find home and comfort in group-think, these types don’t venture out into any sort of broader thinking about the context of these conflicts and whether or not the powerful always have the right to impose their will and their narrative on the vast majority of humankind not in their group. In this manner the two world-views are pretty similar Willfully blind. I say this as a truly flawed human who constantly tries to see the world clearly, to look past my own stereotypes, knowing full well I have them and have to fight them at all times. That’s the difference though—to embrace the MAGA, to avow the liberalism—that’s to love a simplistic narrative that calls for no critical thinking on your part and only serves to allow continued misery on this planet.
The past (and present) has been filled with racial horror, misogyny, and a lack of rights for LGBTQ individuals in the United States—the trajectory has been improving in some of these areas, but there is something disturbing afoot that seems to be getting much worse as time passes. We all know the photo of the little girl in Vietnam screaming as she is running naked, covered in the napalm of the war. Images such as those undoubtedly factored into the nation disavowing that imperialist war. Now older boomers go to the country to enjoy retirement in the nation that escaped being “rescued” by America in a manner similar to Libya. I wonder how many will want to retire in Libya in a couple of decades? But back to the point, those images had heft; they were heavy with symbolism and the very real infliction of pain on children, which back then, a lot of people seemed to not be okay with. But cut to the present. We have literal images of families scooping up pieces of children into garbage bags as their refugee tents are bombed. We see the Israeli forces bombing an initial hospital, a tiny bit of outrage ensues, but not enough. So cut to a few months later and pretty much all hospitals get bombed. They dipped a toe in world opinion with the first, saw that the outrage was not sufficient to stop them and went all in. We see shot-up UN vehicles–to the point that no misidentification can be construed. It was obviously willful. We see clearly marked food aid vehicles bombed. We are told this is all due to an attack last October but there is no reference to why anyone in an occupied territory would want to fight back in our common media narrative. That isn’t to be asked. And most in the United States don’t even wonder about that. They fall back on old tropes about Muslims and figure….whaddya gonna do—these people are a mess. And heaven forbid we look into Great Britain’s role in starting this horror show and the inherent true anti-semitism that formed a foundation for the creation of Israel. Goodness, those European countries didn’t want to keep all those Jewish citizens and serve to protect them as they should have–why not kill two birds with one stone and put the Jewish people in a place far away but also use them as an imperial outpost and base of operations for wars? Win.Win. But of course the media never touches this and if you question any of it, you get called anti-Semitic. It’s like if you were transported to North America in the 1500s and 1600s and you had to completely back the genocide of the Native Americans or you were called an anti-Puritan disgrace.
I don’t write this to wring my hands and say there is nothing to be done, truly I hope there is, but I do feel it is important to at some point stop and realize that the people in power are not wired as we are. The images of slaughtered children really don’t seem to bother psychopaths/sociopaths. Those of us who couldn’t fathom the derangement hearing about doctors coming back and reporting clear sniper wounds to the heads of children or about a new mom of twins having a missile attack on her apartment as her husband went out to file birth certificates (likely another murder designed to get rid of doctors, the new mom was one, and to wipe out the intelligentsia class—those who can articulate the horrors in a transmittable fashion to the outside world)—we can’t believe that others aren’t outraged.
So we have the leaders who clearly show signs of psychopathy, the vast masses who can be swayed towards good or evil, and those of us in the minority at this time who do care, who don’t want murder to be done in our names. We don’t want a creepy overused “joy” narrative to paper over the “lethal” nature of our Empire. This is our situation, those of us in this reality-based community. I guess none of us were promised at birth this would be an easy path, but I think whatever your larger belief system dictates in terms of why we are here and what our purpose is in this life—well, I don’t think it’s to parrot nonsense from the likes of the Democrats and Republicans. This is all a much bigger existential aspect of our existence—what we tolerate and what we will choose to believe against all manner of evidence.
It will never be okay to close your eyes to reality, to suspend compassion to the other, to make excuses for genocide. It’s incredible this even needs to be voiced.
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