Meandering Thoughts on Campus Protests against Genocide and Police Responses
College and university campuses across the USA are increasingly the sites of violence, but that violence is largely being committed by police units called in to disperse and arrest protesters. The police, I assume, are, as they say, just following orders. The question is: Who’s giving those orders? And the answer most often seems to be senior administrators at those colleges and universities. Welcome to your education in liberal values!
Police do what they’re trained to do, just as soldiers do what they’re trained to do. Soldiers aren’t freedom-bringers and diplomats: they are trained in the use of deadly force under the most violent of conditions. Police aren’t educators and negotiators: they are also trained in the use of suppressive force under violent conditions.
On campuses across America, police have done what police are armed and trained to do here. They break out their riot gear, their sniper rifles, their armored cars, their tools of behavior modification (e.g. cuffs, Tasers, truncheons, rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray), and they go to work. They literally kick ass and take names (and mug shots, fingerprints, and so on).
Police are here to protect and to serve, so we’re told. But to protect and to serve whom? And for what cause? Ultimately, police protect the powerful, those with property and money, because those are the ones giving them their orders. If and when police begin to refuse orders from above, that’s when the powerful will truly begin to worry.
It’s interesting that some student protesters, as at Columbia, are now being compared (as by MSNBC) to the January 6th protesters and rioters for Trump. It’s a sign of desperation by the establishment to equate anti-genocide protesters with pro-Trump rioters, but there you have it. Recall on January 6th that the police largely stepped aside and allowed protesters for Trump into the Capitol. I don’t see the police stepping aside on campuses or taking selfies with protesters, or even removing barriers, as some police did on January 6th.
In “Rollerball,” John Housemen explains to James Caan that he is not to interfere with management decisions
The overly violent and repressive responses we’re witnessing across America to largely peaceful protests reveals the imperative at the heart of America’s political system. Recalling the movie “Rollerball,” the one thing you’re never supposed to do as a corporate-citizen is to question management decisions. America’s managers have decided to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and YOU ARE NOT TO INTERFERE WITH THAT. If you do, your protest will be suppressed, often quickly and violently.
There’s a reason America’s managers “invest” so much in the “thin blue line” of the police. They believe in violence as the way to uphold their power and privilege. It doesn’t matter that violence hasn’t always worked, especially in foreign wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.). They’ll continue to use violence as long as it remains profitable to do so, whether economically or politically.
How long before people are killed or seriously injured in these police actions? How long before those who are killed or wounded are denounced as “bums,” as President Richard Nixon called the dead students of Kent State? How long before we hear that the “silent majority” supports Trump and/or Biden in their call for “law and order”?
How long before Israel renders Gaza Palestinian-free, as various U.S. police forces mobilize to render college campuses protester-free?
And how long before we’re told once again that America is the greatest, most exceptional, nation on earth because of all our freedoms?
I’d like to highlight this Twitter/X post by Lee Camp and his take on improving NPR’s BS headline:
Lee Camp: Ummm, NPR, I believe you meant to say “Nearly 300 peaceful unarmed people brutally attacked by fascist police for exercising their freedom of speech”
I’d add that students are protesting the Israeli government’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and the U.S. government’s complicity in the same. They are not protesting against “the war in Gaza,” unless you modify that as “Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.”
It’s funny indeed that NPR has a reputation as being “left” or even “far left.” Anything critical of Joe Biden is “radical left” in America (unless you’re a Trumper, in which case you’re “fascist”). Anyone that questions and challenges the U.S. government’s total subservience to Israel’s current genocidal agenda is dismissed as unrealistic or as Kremlin stooges. Or maybe apologists for China. It’s nonsense, of course, but it seems to work for some people.
Confuse and obscure the issue. Baffle with BS. And don’t forget Tasers, handcuffs, tear gas, rubber bullets, and good old-fashioned truncheons for those who refuse to obey.
I suppose deceptive headlines don’t hurt quite as much as being beaten to the ground and hauled off to jail. But they are even more effective, I think, at quietening dissent.
Update (4/29): At Indiana University, snipers and armored cars showed up as well as circling helicopters for a modest student encampment. The snipers were apparently escorted into rooftop and tower positions by university administrators. Check out this report:
“Biden administration faces pressure to step up its response to antisemitic incidents on college campuses”
“College campus protests over war in Gaza show no sign of ending”
Mention was also made of police breaking up a “pro-Palestinian protest” at Northeastern University.
You’ll note the framing and what’s missing: there’s no mention of genocide in Gaza, no mention of the more than 100,000 Palestinians already killed and wounded in Israel’s violent assault on Gaza and its people.
Students across America are protesting against genocide in Gaza. They want the mass killing to stop. They want America to apply pressure to Israel to halt murderous assaults by the IDF that end in mass graves for Palestinians.
But NBC is not in the business of admitting this. Instead, NBC is most worried about alleged antisemitism on college campuses. Or they frame the protests as anti-war, as if Israel and Gaza are engaged in a declared war between equals. Or they frame the protests as pro-Palestinian, not anti-genocide.
I especially like this subtitle: “The tumult spreading through college campuses is especially tricky for the president as he works to rebuild the voting coalition from his 2020 win.” See, the main concern for Biden is getting reelected, not trying to stop mass murder.
And I liked this lede: “As antisemitic incidents mushroom on college campuses, some Jewish leaders and lawmakers from both parties are accusing President Joe Biden’s administration of taking a lax approach toward enforcement of civil rights laws, exposing Jewish students to continued harassment.”
Harassment! We can’t have that. Arrest all those protesters. By the way, many of those protesters are Jewish. Are Jewish protesters harassing themselves by protesting against genocide in Gaza? Arrest them too.
Green Party candidate for president Jill Stein (center, in dark blazer) was arrested with students at Washington University in St. Louis. We must have order here!
I keep wondering where all these police are coming from. Shouldn’t they be fighting crime on the mean streets of America, taking on hardened criminals and upholding both law and order? Although I do admit that now the police have ample opportunity to don their riot gear (paid for by you the American taxpayer) and put their anti-riot and anti-terrorist training into practice. Fun fact: Did you know that more than a few police officers have learned anti-riot tactics and techniques from the Israeli military and police? Who says Israel doesn’t pay us back for all the scores of billions they get from us?
$95 Billion “Supplemental” for More Weapons and War
Who knew mass death was such a growth industry? And by “death” I mean not only of humans but of any organism in a war zone.
We humans are a self-absorbed lot. We blast the earth and obliterate life without a thought to the ravages we commit against nature. Indeed, we pass and sign bills for $95 billion for more weapons and war and we dare call it “peace”!
Yes, President Biden thinks “peace” is advanced through weapons and war. It’s a sentiment that recalls Tacitus and his condemnation of the Roman Empire: “They create a desert and call it ‘peace.’”
So, even though the USA spends triple what China does and eight times what Russia does, we’re the nation allegedly most committed to advancing peace. Call it a logic bomb, and we’re the best at producing them.
Finally, here’s a quick summary about what real high explosive bombs are doing in Gaza:
No worries: the president says it’s a “good day” for world peace. In Gaza, call it the peace of the grave, as so many innocent Palestinians are buried in mass graves or under rubble.
I’m already drowning in mainstream media coverage of Trump’s trial for paying hush money to Stormy Daniels and hiding it under the cover of legal fees. The gavel-to-gavel coverage is mindlessly extreme, designed as it is both to tarnish Trump’s image (as if that’s possible) and to capture eyeballs and ratings.
Stormy weather for Trump (Photo by Victor J. Blue)
Meanwhile, Biden’s enabling of genocide in Gaza proceeds apace, and indeed Congress is acting to accelerate it by sending even more weaponry to Israel. Crimes against humanity—what? Where? I don’t see any.
The message: enabling genocide is OK, killing or displacing millions of Palestinians from Gaza isn’t a crime, but don’t you dare pay a woman you had a consensual fling with to keep quiet and then try to hide it. Some crimes can’t be forgiven!
The other big story this week, besides the trial of the millennium against Trump, is the upcoming NFL Draft. I cannot count the number of “mock” drafts I’ve seen, the amount of ink spilled, predicting what will happen in the draft, which players will be chosen in which order, what trades will be made, and so on. The coverage is both endless and exhaustive. And all of it is unnecessary. If you want to know about the draft and which players “your” team selects, why not just wait until the draft is over?
I just wish the mainstream media devoted one-tenth of the resources it commits to the NFL Draft to more serious issues like Gaza or Ukraine or homeless people in America.
Speaking of Ukraine, did you see Members of Congress waving little Ukrainian flags when the House approved over $60 billion in aid to prolong the Russia-Ukraine War? At least now we know whose side they’re on. I had no idea we elected representatives to serve Ukraine, but I’m learning.
If you’re a Trump aficionado, an NFL fanatic, and a Ukraine flag waver, this is your week, America.
Standard Disclaimer: Nope, I’m not a Trump fan. See this article I wrote in March of 2016 about how Trump is constitutionally unsuited for the presidency.
Today is Earth Day: a good day to commit ourselves to saving the earth from the ravages of nuclear war. Global warming may get us in the long term, but nothing will kill the planet quicker than a nuclear war.
I’ve written a lot about the folly, the greed, the absurdity, of yet another round of “investment” in nuclear weapons. There’s no need for an updated nuclear triad when the present triad is more than enough to destroy the earth and probably several other planets as well.
America’s nuclear triad currently consists of land-based ICBMs (Minuteman III), bombers like the B-1 and B-2, and submarines that carry nuclear-tipped missiles. The Pentagon plans to “modernize” all these “legs” of the triad at a possible total cost of $2 trillion over the next 30 years.
First off, land-based ICBMs and nuclear bombers are no longer needed. The ICBMs are especially vulnerable to attack, putting pressure on DC decisionmakers to launch them quickly in case of a warning (perhaps false) of a nuclear attack against their silos.
All the U.S. truly needs for deterrence is the current Ohio-class sub force with its Trident II missiles. That force can be modernized without an entirely new class of sub being built, which is perhaps why we’re seeing ads about building new submarines as “job-creators.”
In the USA, more nukes are “justified” most often by threat inflation (or even threat creation) and military Keynesianism—morally dubious claims that jobs are created by building genocidal weapons and doomsday machines.
Speaking of America’s submarines and their missiles: Each Trident II D5 missile has up to 8 warheads, with up to 20 missiles per submarine. One submarine could conceivably destroy 160 targets, with each of those warheads having a “yield” of somewhere between 5 and 25 Hiroshima bombs. That arsenal, if launched, could very well tip the world into nuclear winter while killing tens of millions of people outright. A nuclear winter would kill billions. From one sub! And the Navy has 14 of them!
Senator George McGovern in 1963 complained about the absurd nuclear “overkill” the U.S. possesses. Just over 60 years ago, some members of Congress vowed to do something to stop the madness. And then came Vietnam … and so many other wars and rumors of war.
We Americans are so easily distracted by war and propagandized into believing that safety comes from swinging the biggest nuclear club.
Anyone who thinks about nuclear weapons and war games in the abstract should watch this scene from “Terminator II.” It’s perhaps the best, most visceral, image of what one nuclear bomb would produce.
“There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.” The more nuclear weapons we build, the darker our fate becomes, and the closer we come to terminating ourselves and our planet.
On this Earth Day, the U.S. should commit itself to a “no first use” policy with respect to using nuclear weapons and to total nuclear disarmament, to be achieved over the next 20-30 years.
Something like a JFK-like vow is needed here: Before the decade is out, America should commit itself to halving its nuclear forces, working with other countries on the goal of nuclear disarmament.
Only the future of humanity, as well as that of the earth and all living things, is at stake here.
Surprise! The House has approved $95 billion in more weapons and war for Ukraine and Israel, along with a few billion tossed in for Taiwan. Ukraine gets the lion’s share of the aid, roughly $61 billion, while Israel gets roughly $26 billion, which is $12 billion more than the Biden administration initially asked for.
Imagine that! $26 billion for Israel as it slaughters Palestinians in Gaza. America is led by moral monsters and mental midgets.
Speaker Mike Johnson confuses the Baltics with the Balkans and says the Bible tells us America must support Israel no matter what that country does. Does he “speak” for you?
I predicted months ago (not a tough prediction) that Republicans would eventually cave and support Ukraine. In this election year, they don’t want to be blamed for “losing” the Russia-Ukraine War. Even though the war is going poorly for Ukraine, the answer is never to negotiate or deescalate, it’s always to escalate with even more destructive weaponry. Of course, this is justified by America’s moral monsters and mental midgets (M4 for short) by saying Putin is evil and that jobs will be created in America among the arsenal-producing merchants of death.
There was a time, World War II to be exact, when it made a smidgen of sense to call America the “Arsenal of Democracy.” Those days are long gone. America is now simply an arsenal.
Of course, this is yet another triumph for the MICIMATT: the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academe-think-tank complex. Its power and greed are almost irresistible. Add that to AIPAC, threat inflation, and fear-mongering and perhaps it is irresistible until the U.S. empire final collapses under the weight of its own folly.
But let me give the last word to my smarter wife, who upon hearing of yet another $95 billion for war put it succinctly: “All that money to kill people.” Then she added: they are the planet-wreckers.
Tom Engelhardt Is the Post-9/11 Generation’s I.F. Stone
Today’s post has a simple goal: to praise TomDispatch, a regular, reliable, and highly effective “antidote to the mainstream media.”
Its creator, editor, and chief author, Tom Engelhardt, founded the site soon after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Its remarkable longevity and brilliant perspicacity testifies to his integrity, his character, indeed his patriotism and his humanity.
What I.F. Stone was to the Vietnam generation, Tom Engelhardt has been to the post-9/11 one. If more Americans had read his articles and truly listened to his words of wisdom, disastrous wars like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan would never have happened, and America itself would be a far better place.
Tom began his site as a simple Listserv. Soon after 9/11, he started by putting together lists of articles he’d read, together with some commentary of his own, sharing those links and thoughts via email with friends and other interested parties. An early article that stuck in his mind (that he mentioned to me) concerned America’s bombing raids against Afghanistan in 2001, attacks that would serve mainly “to bounce the rubble” there. (Afghanistan had already been the site of a devastating war in the 1980s conducted by the Soviet Union.)
Quickly, Tom’s Listserv messages proved popular, focusing as they so often did on the folly and fallacies of American empire. A colleague suggested that he should create a website featuring his “tomgrams.” Though not a tech or computer wiz, Tom embraced the challenge, overseeing the founding of a dedicated site for original articles that would serve as “a regular antidote to the mainstream media.”
Tom has now been posting his tomgrams for 22 years, usually three original pieces each week, on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. It’s the side job that took over his life, he ruefully admits. (Tom has been a longtime editor for several publishing houses, as well as writing several of his own books, notably “The End of Victory Culture,” which I highly recommend.)
I first started writing for TomDispatch in 2007. I recently posted my 106th article at the site. Tom has made me work! He features articles that are typically 2000 words or longer, articles that often include a dozen or more links that readers can follow to confirm facts and deepen their knowledge. Each article Tom posts goes through a rigorous process of editing, far more so, it seems, than many print magazines use nowadays. Typically, when I write for Tom, he edits my pieces, after which three proofreaders offer their own suggestions and corrections, all of which I review along with Tom. It’s a laborious process that produces consistently high-quality pieces at the site.
If you’re a regular reader of his site, you’ll have noticed that Tom writes introductions to nearly every piece he posts at TomDispatch. Some of his intros end up being essays in their own right. He is seemingly inexhaustible.
Tom Engelhardt, the creator of TomDispatch, with the author
Articles initially posted at TomDispatch usually go to many other sites. My most recent piece for Tom went to Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Information Clearing House, The Nation, ZNet, and LA Progressive, among other sites. Most of these are broadly liberal or progressive, but Lew Rockwell, a libertarian site, picked up my last piece as well. In the past, mainstream sites like CBS News have picked up and posted TomDispatch pieces, and three of my “tomgrams” earned a mention in the New York Times (here and here and here). Another one was posted (in shorter form) by the LA Times. All this is to say that TomDispatch’s reach far exceeds that of the site itself.
It’s amazing the network of readers and publishers Tom has built over the last 20+ years. I’m amazed as well at how some of my articles have been translated into foreign languages, including German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (in Brazil), Danish, Czech, and Arabic. Honestly, I never thought I’d be so widely read, and I owe that to Tom, who saw in 2001 the need for an alternative to the mainstream media soon after the events of 9/11 and all the mindless patriotic hoopla that followed.
What makes TomDispatch unique? Certainly, the length and rigor of its pieces. Most sites nowadays post shorter works of 600 words or fewer. I’m also struck by the diversity of authors at the site. And, if I may, I wish to applaud Tom for seeking out military and government dissenters, military officers like Andrew Bacevich and Danny Sjursen and State Department dissenters like Peter Van Buren. And Tom has enlisted people like Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Adam Hochschild, and so many other authors for whom he’s served as an editor.
(Check out Tom’s incredible list of authors since 2002 here.)
Later this year, Tom will celebrate his 80th birthday. He tells me TomDispatch is nearing its end, that soon, perhaps in the next year or two, it’ll post its last article. When it does, a bright light of stimulating discourse and informed dissent will be extinguished. America will be worse for it.
I urge you to dip into the TomDispatch archive. It begins in 2002 and comes forward to the present day. Read a few articles, especially on war, militarism, and empire. And tell me: Isn’t it amazing how much Tom saw that those in officialdom either didn’t see or refused to see?
When I was in the U.S. military, I learned a saying (often wrongly attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato) that only the dead have seen the end of war. Its persistence through history to this very moment should indeed be sobering. What would it take for us humans to stop killing each other with such vigor and in such numbers?
Song lyrics tell me to be proud to be an American, yet war and profligate preparations for more of the same are omnipresent here. My government spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined (and most of them are allies). In this century, our leaders have twice warned of an “axis of evil” intent on harming us, whether the fantasy troika of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea cited by President George W. Bush early in 2002 or a new one — China, Russia, and North Korea — in the Indo-Pacific today. Predictably given that sort of threat inflation, this country is now closing in on a trillion dollars a year in “defense spending,” or close to two-thirds of federal discretionary spending, in the name of having a military machine capable of defeating “evil” troikas (as well as combatting global terrorism). A significant part of that huge sum is reserved for producing a new generation of nuclear weapons that will be quite capable of destroying this planet with missiles and warheads to spare.
My country, to be blunt, has long been addicted to war, killing, violence, and massive preparations for more of the same. We need an intervention. We need to confront our addiction. Yet when it comes to war and preparations for future conflicts, our leaders aren’t even close to hitting rock bottom. They remain in remarkable denial and see no reason to change their ways.
To cite two recent examples: Just before Easter weekend this year, President Biden swore he was personally devastated by Palestinian suffering in Gaza. At the same time, his administration insisted that a United Nations Security Council resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza that it allowed to pass was “non-binding” and, perhaps to make that very point, reportedly shipped 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs off to Israel, assumedly to be used in — yes! — Gaza.
The Biden administration refuses to see the slightest contradiction in such a stance. Men like Joe Biden and his chief diplomat Antony Blinken confess to being disturbed, even shocked, by the devastation our bombs deliver. Who knew Israel would use them to kill or wound more than 100,000 Palestinians? Who knew that they’d reduce significant parts of Gaza to rubble? Who knew that a blank check of support for Israel would enable that country to — it’s hard not to use the phrase — offer a final solution to the Gaza question?
Not to be outdone by the Democrats, Republican Congressman Tim Walberg of Michigan recently cited the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in seeking a “quick” end to the conflict in Gaza (before walking his comments back somewhat). For him, Israel remains America’s greatest ally, whatever its actions, even as he argues that Palestinians in Gaza merit no humanitarian aid from the United States whatsoever.
With that horrifying spectacle — and given the TV news and social media, it truly has been a spectacle! — of genocide in Gaza, America’s leaders have embraced the very worst of Machiavelli, preferring to be feared rather than loved, while putting power first and principle last. Former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, recently deceased, rightly vilified for pursuing a Bismarckian Realpolitik, and deeply involved in the devastation of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, might even have blanched at the full-throttled support for war (and weapons sales) now being pursued by this country’s leaders. Dividing the world into armed camps based on fear seems basic to our foreign policy, a reality now echoed in domestic politics as well, as the Democratic blue team and the MAGA Republican red team attack each other as “fascistic” or worse. In this all-American world of ours, all is conflict, all is war.
When asked about such an addiction to war, your average government official will likely claim it’s not our fault. “Freedom isn’t free,” so the bumper sticker says, meaning in practice that this country stands prepared to kill others without mercy to ensure its “way of life,” which also in practice means unbridled consumption by an ever-shrinking portion of Americans and unapologetic profiteering by the richest and greediest of us. Call it the “moderate” bipartisan consensus within the Washington Beltway. Only an “extremist” would dare call for restraint, tolerance, diplomacy, and peace.
A Common Cause to Unify Humanity
Short of an attack on Earth by aliens, it’s hard to imagine the U.S. today making common cause with “enemies” like China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia. What gives? Isn’t there a better way and, if so, how would we get there?
In fact, there is a common foe — or perhaps a common cause — that should unite us all as humans. That cause is Earth, the health of our planet and all the life forms on it. And that foe, to state the obvious (even if it regularly goes unsaid), is war, which is unhealthy in the extreme not just for us but for our planet, too.
War turns people into killers — of our fellow humans, of course, but also of all forms of life within our (often very large) blast radii. In addition, war is a mass distraction from what should truly matter to us: the sacredness of life and the continued viability of our planet and its ecology. Call it a cliché but there’s no way to deny it: there is indeed only one Spaceship Earth. As far as we know now, our planet is the sole body in the universe teeming with life. Of course, the universe is incomprehensibly vast and there could well be other forms of life out there, but we don’t know that, not with certainty anyway.
Imagine, in a dystopic future, America’s “best and brightest” (or the “best and brightest” of another country) acting in a nuclear fury, employing the very weaponry that continues to proliferate but hasn’t been used since the destruction of two Japanese cities on August 6 and 9, 1945, and so crippling Spaceship Earth. Imagine also that our planet is truly the universe’s one magnificent and magical spot of life. Wouldn’t it be hard then to imagine a worse crime, not just against humanity, but life itself cosmically? There would be no recompense, no forgiveness, no redemption — and possibly no recovery either.
Of course, I don’t know if God (or gods) exists. Though I was raised a Catholic, I find myself essentially an agnostic today. Yet I do believe in the sacredness of life in all its diversity. And as tenacious as life may be, given our constant pursuit of war, I fear the worst.
Earthrise from the Apollo 8 mission
If you’re of a certain age, you may recall when the astronauts on Apollo 8 witnessed earthrise as their spaceship orbited the moon in 1968. The crew read from Genesis, though in truth it could have been from any creation story we humans have ever imagined to account for how we and our world came to be. Specific religions or creeds didn’t truly matter at that moment, nor should they now. What mattered was the sense of awe we felt as we first viewed the Earth from space in its full glory but also all its fragility.
For make no mistake, this planet is fragile. Its ecosystems can be destroyed. Not for nothing did the inventor of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, turn to the Hindu scriptures to intone, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” when he saw the first atomic device explode and expand into a mushroom cloud during the Trinity test in New Mexico in July 1945.
In the febrile postwar climate of anti-communism that would all too soon follow, America’s leaders would decide that atomic bombs weren’t faintly destructive enough. What they needed were thermonuclear bombs, 1,000 times more destructive, to fight World War III against the “big fat commie rat.” Now nine (9!) nations have nuclear weapons, with more undoubtedly hankering to join the club. So how long before mushroom clouds soar toward the stratosphere again? How long before we experience some version of planetary ecocide via a nuclear exchange and the nuclear winter that could follow it?
Genocide and Ecocide on a Planetary Scale
The genocide happening in Gaza today may foreshadow one possible future for this planet. The world’s lone superpower, its self-styled beacon of freedom, now dismisses U.N. Security Council resolutions to stop the killing as “non-binding.” Meanwhile, Israel, whose founding was a response to a Holocaust inflicted during World War II and whose people collectively said Never Again, is now killing, starving, and displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the name of righteous vengeance for Hamas’s October 7th attack.
If the U.S. and Israel can spin mass murder in Palestine as not just defensible, but even positive (“defeating Hamas terrorists”), what hope do we have as a species? Is this the future we have to look forward to, an endless echoing of our murderous past?
I refuse to believe it. It truly should be possible to imagine and work toward something better. Yet, in all honesty, it’s hard to imagine new paths being blazed by such fossilized thinkers as Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
“Don’t trust anyone over thirty” was a telling catchphrase of the 1960s. Now, we’re being told as Americans that we’ll have to place our trust in one of two men almost at or exceeding 80 years of age. Entrusting and empowering political dinosaurs, however, represents an almost surefire path toward future extinction-level events.
Let me turn instead to a 25-year-old who did imagine a better future, even as he protested in the most extreme way imaginable the genocide in Gaza. This February, fellow airman Aaron Bushnell lit himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. He sacrificed his life in a most public way to challenge us to do something, anything, to stop genocide. America’s “leaders” answered him by ignoring his sacrifice and sending more bombs, thousands of them, to Israel.
Aaron Bushnell did, however, imagine a better world. As he explained last year in a private post:
“I’ve realized that a lot of the difference between me and my less radical friends is that they are less capable of imagining a better world than I am. I follow YouTubers like Andrewism that fill my head with concrete images of free, post-scarcity communities and it makes me so much more prepared to reject things about the current world, because I’ve imagined how things could be and that helps me see how extremely bullshit things are right now.
“What I’m trying to say is, it’s so important to imagine a better world. Let your thoughts run wild with idealistic dreams of what the world should look like and let the pain and anger at how it’s not that way flow through you. Let it free your mind and fuel your rage against the machine.
“It’s not too late for you or anyone. We can have the world of our dreams tomorrow, but we have to be willing to fight today.”
His all-too-public suicide was a fiery cry of despair, but also a plea for a better future, one free of mass murder.
Earlier this week, millions of people across America witnessed a total eclipse of the sun. It’s awe-inspiring, even a bit alarming, to see the sun disappear in the middle of the day. Those watching took comfort in knowing that it would reappear from behind the moon in a matter of seconds or minutes and so gloried in that fleeting moment of preternatural darkness.
But imagine if the moon and sun were somehow to become permanently stuck in place. Imagine that darkness was our future — our only future. Sadly enough, however, it’s not the moon but we humans who can potentially cast the Earth into lasting darkness. Via the nuclear winter that could result from a nuclear conflict on this planet, we could indeed cast a shadow between the sun and life itself, a power of destruction that, tragically, may far exceed our current level of wisdom.
We know from history that it’s far easier to destroy than to create, far easier to kill than to preserve. Yet when countries make genocide or ecocide (from nuclear winter) possible and defensible (as a sign of uncompromising “toughness” and perhaps the defense of “freedom”), you know that their leaders are, in some sense, morally obtuse monsters. And who or what are we if we choose to follow such monsters?
As human populations rise, as vital resources like water, food, and fuel shrink, as this planet grows ever hotter thanks to our intervention and our excesses, we’ll need to cooperate more than ever to ensure our mutual survival. Far too often, however, America’s strategic thinkers dismiss cooperation through diplomacy or otherwise as naïve, unreliable, and impractical. “Competition” through zero-sum games, war, or other hyperviolent urges seems so much more “reasonable,” so much more “human.”
To the victor goes the spoils, so it’s said. But a planet despoiled by thermonuclear war, cast into darkness, ravaged by radiation, disease, and death, would, of course, offer no victory to anyone. Unless we put our efforts into ending war, rather than continuing to war on one another, such conflicts will, sooner or later, undoubtedly put an end to us.
In reality, our worst enemy isn’t some “axis” or other combination of imagined foes from without, it’s within. We remain the world’s most dangerous species, the one capable of wiping out most or all of the rest, not to speak of ourselves, with our folly. So, as Aaron Bushnell wrote, free your mind. Collectively, there must be a better way for all creatures, great and small, on this fragile spaceship of ours.
I went to a political debate and a hockey game broke out
America is in deep trouble, yet this year’s election is a rerun of 2020, of Biden against Trump, a singularly uninspiring “choice” for the presidency.
With respect to Biden, his handlers are doing their best to isolate him, to control his campaign events, and to limit the questions he has to face. Consider this example:
— ̶B̶l̶u̶e̶ ̶C̶h̶e̶c̶k̶ Beth! (@torstrick) March 18, 2024
A Biden campaign aide says the president will take a few questions, and other staffers immediately step in to put an end to the event. No unscripted questions allowed!
Then there’s Trump. His campaign appearances are more unhinged than unscripted as Trump rails against immigrants, stolen elections, and various nasty people he doesn’t like. Trump is a collection of petty grievances.
An aspect of Trump’s personality that intrigues me is his almost complete inability to laugh. Rarely if ever do you see him enjoying a good laugh, and never at his own expense. The most you’ll get from Trump is a Cheshire-cat-like grin. He may be a “very stable genius,” but he’s largely a humorless one. His idea of humor is making fun of or insulting other people, notably women, for being ugly or otherwise unattractive to his alpha male gaze.
Meanwhile, both major parties, Republican and Democrat, seem most concerned to attack and vilify the other as extremist, as fascist, as un-American, or otherwise beyond the pale. I went to a political rally and a hockey game broke out. Seriously, last night’s game between the New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers features a line brawl that started as soon as the puck dropped. That’s basically our political scene today.
Bracing Views 