The genocide in Gaza portends the emergence of a dystopian world where the industrialized violence of the Global North is used to sustain its hoarding of diminishing resources and wealth.
What we have wrought in Palestine is coming for us sooner than later. And it will likely play out with a Red and Blue civil war on top of climate change, an economic crash and so forth and so on. The arc of the USA has always been coming down to this dystopian future, of which the genocide in Gaza is a prelude to the shit show of the ever accelerating collapse of the USA. The only way to stop that collapse is if every citizen of all political stripes, including the cultural bigots and anyone who have divided themselves from others, is for all of them to band together and say: WE WILL NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE! Could that ever happen in the USA with how far it has descended such outright division. I guess that is for the future to unfold.
If hate is not part of your nature, if love of earth and animals and children is...........then there might be hope.
Because in truth, we have little to fear from most of our fellow humans, and much to gain. The trick is to slow down, find time to feel, and refuse fear............we are sometimes so close to the new world waiting to be born, than as Arundhati Roy said years ago......we can almost hear it breathing.
I’m reminded of that old saying: The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth. I suspect if that ever happens, by then the earth will look like the equivalent of the destruction in Gaza. I hope it’s not a death rattle we can almost hear. I would love for your vision to play out, but there are those who say cynics are more in touch with reality than optimists. And I am clearly on the cynical side when it comes to observing the world.
I'm often full of despair myself. But it doesn't have to be this way. We could get over our fears of each other.....over our idiocy about anything communal or collaborative being bad...........and come together to build a better world.
We are likely too far gone in capitalist denial to do that.........but the fact remains: There are options.
Time will tell how it all plays out. I take some strange comfort in the thought of infinite multiverses whereupon some humans have figured out how to get along with each other, without billionaires and inequality, living in balance with nature and no fossil fuels powering everything, etc. I’ve also thought for decades (now that I am 70) that I got off at the wrong bus stop when I incarnated on this world.
Still..........I was remembering the pony I had when a girl last night...I have a cold and couldn't sleep. Her beauty...and my love for her, came back as if it were yesterday. I cried......remembering how long her bones have lain in a bit of prairie abandoned now by our family.......and how much we loved each other when I was young.
It has been good to live....even with all the wars, and fires, and petty meannesses. Imagining what it might be like if we renounced War and exclusions....if there were no old white men trying to claim their superiority over others.....gives me the energy to keep speaking.
Your analysis is spot on. It may, however, downplay how much genocide has been the bedrock of whatever passes for western civilization, and the United States, in particular. I wrote a post exploring those unfortunate themes shortly after Israel escalated the genocide in Gaza two years ago. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/indigenous-lives-matter-from-north
Humanity is at the end something. Genocide is occurring against life itself. It appears to be unstoppable. What we have regarded, lionized, as civilization, needs another name. A word that embodies an inherent suicidal cruelty and stupidity. Decency, compassion, empathy, are increasingly being treated, by the system as a whole, as a weakness, as a pathology, as an impossibility, as entirely unrealistic. This is a lie. Human beings, individually, if not collectively, can choose life over death. We, as a global species, can recognize, that to choose life this must mean all life. The Whole Enchilada. We may fail to secure a coherent and meaningful survival against an insane, extravagant, mega-settler, death cult, colonialism, that apparently despises life itself. But in the end, we, or our descendants, may be picking through the rubble, like the People of Gaza, starting from the bottom, working to create a much much better way of living. If we’re lucky.
I watched the UK television programme on Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist of Auschwitz, which showed how shockingly evil the Nazi ideology of the 1930s-1940s was and how dreadfully the Jews of Germany suffered. And now we see the descendants of those victims behave just as their persecutors did to the people they see as 'other' and 'inferior' - in fact it is difficult to think of a country so thoroughly evil as Israel. The only difference between Nazi Germany and Israel is that we, in the UK and USA are aiding them - to our lasting shame.
No, I don't forget, but that has nothing to do with my main point, that an Israeli right-wing nationalist party is committing genocide on those it considers 'other', 'human animals' or 'inferior' today, just as the Nazis thought of the Jews c.1930-45. (It is no crime to resist Occupation.) 'Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return' (Auden) We should all remember that Jews, mainly from Europe, who had suffered in the Holocaust revisited their sufferings on the Palestinian inhabitants of the land that they so badly wanted for themselves. Two peoples with an equal claim to the same territory, one of conquest in '48, the other of 3 centuries of living there, should talk to each other not murder each other.
I disagree that it has nothing to do with the genocide currently happening in historical Palestine. Germany's Nazis didnt come from 'nothing'. Neither did the 'threatened' British aristocracy who supported the Nazis. Similarly, the current USA/EU/Israel ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank has to do with more than 'just' the Israelis and Palestinians living in that region. Hence - more that 'just' Israelis and Palestinians talking to each other is required. There have been and are numerous Israeli Jewish and Catholic, secular, Muslim Palestinians groups 'talking' to each other - now and over the decades. So - why is it disintegrating? Who and what benefits? Who and what pays?
Hi Chris, I'm a big fan and subscriber from 'down under'. Thank you for your enlightening discussions filled with care, compassion and information. Without authenticity we are just wandering in the darkness.
I would love to see you interview Shahid Bolsen...might this be possible? What do you think?
Much gratitude and appreciation for your work and many years of self-sacrifice in revealing truth, Bryony
Shahid Bolsen is quiet optimistic about the future of humanity. He has a unique way of analysis and reasoning. Me too, I would love to hear him at Chris Hedges Report.
Thank you for a thorough examination of our road to perdition Chris.
It is a long time in the making. Nazism was then, as is Zionism now, the culmination of hundreds of years of capitalism that is now choking on its own gluttony. Capitalism in its broadest sense is running out of oxygen. Although the genocide in Palestine has multiple causes and motives, capitalism’s decline is another manifestation of this.
I just watched watched Trump and Yetanyahu praising each other at a press conference. Both belong in prison.Trump's plans for Gaza a Middle East Atlantic City. With leaders like that our better angels don't stand a chance. To unite the world against our common enemy, climate change won't happen. We will continue to demonize each other and the military/industrial/political complex will lead us all over a cliff. Unless climate gets there first. Oh, I forgot there's also nuclear weapons.
What we have wrought in Palestine is coming for us sooner than later. And it will likely play out with a Red and Blue civil war on top of climate change, an economic crash and so forth and so on. The arc of the USA has always been coming down to this dystopian future, of which the genocide in Gaza is a prelude to the shit show of the ever accelerating collapse of the USA. The only way to stop that collapse is if every citizen of all political stripes, including the cultural bigots and anyone who have divided themselves from others, is for all of them to band together and say: WE WILL NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE! Could that ever happen in the USA with how far it has descended such outright division. I guess that is for the future to unfold.
If hate is not part of your nature, if love of earth and animals and children is...........then there might be hope.
Because in truth, we have little to fear from most of our fellow humans, and much to gain. The trick is to slow down, find time to feel, and refuse fear............we are sometimes so close to the new world waiting to be born, than as Arundhati Roy said years ago......we can almost hear it breathing.
I’m reminded of that old saying: The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth. I suspect if that ever happens, by then the earth will look like the equivalent of the destruction in Gaza. I hope it’s not a death rattle we can almost hear. I would love for your vision to play out, but there are those who say cynics are more in touch with reality than optimists. And I am clearly on the cynical side when it comes to observing the world.
I'm often full of despair myself. But it doesn't have to be this way. We could get over our fears of each other.....over our idiocy about anything communal or collaborative being bad...........and come together to build a better world.
We are likely too far gone in capitalist denial to do that.........but the fact remains: There are options.
Time will tell how it all plays out. I take some strange comfort in the thought of infinite multiverses whereupon some humans have figured out how to get along with each other, without billionaires and inequality, living in balance with nature and no fossil fuels powering everything, etc. I’ve also thought for decades (now that I am 70) that I got off at the wrong bus stop when I incarnated on this world.
Me too my friend.....me too.
Still..........I was remembering the pony I had when a girl last night...I have a cold and couldn't sleep. Her beauty...and my love for her, came back as if it were yesterday. I cried......remembering how long her bones have lain in a bit of prairie abandoned now by our family.......and how much we loved each other when I was young.
It has been good to live....even with all the wars, and fires, and petty meannesses. Imagining what it might be like if we renounced War and exclusions....if there were no old white men trying to claim their superiority over others.....gives me the energy to keep speaking.
Another world is possible.
Your analysis is spot on. It may, however, downplay how much genocide has been the bedrock of whatever passes for western civilization, and the United States, in particular. I wrote a post exploring those unfortunate themes shortly after Israel escalated the genocide in Gaza two years ago. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/indigenous-lives-matter-from-north
Also, I published another post just yesterday about a number of voices who have inspired and informed my own. I listed you among them and will always be grateful for your work—and especially for your independence. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/voices-of-insight-in-a-time-of-ignorance
Humanity is at the end something. Genocide is occurring against life itself. It appears to be unstoppable. What we have regarded, lionized, as civilization, needs another name. A word that embodies an inherent suicidal cruelty and stupidity. Decency, compassion, empathy, are increasingly being treated, by the system as a whole, as a weakness, as a pathology, as an impossibility, as entirely unrealistic. This is a lie. Human beings, individually, if not collectively, can choose life over death. We, as a global species, can recognize, that to choose life this must mean all life. The Whole Enchilada. We may fail to secure a coherent and meaningful survival against an insane, extravagant, mega-settler, death cult, colonialism, that apparently despises life itself. But in the end, we, or our descendants, may be picking through the rubble, like the People of Gaza, starting from the bottom, working to create a much much better way of living. If we’re lucky.
I watched the UK television programme on Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist of Auschwitz, which showed how shockingly evil the Nazi ideology of the 1930s-1940s was and how dreadfully the Jews of Germany suffered. And now we see the descendants of those victims behave just as their persecutors did to the people they see as 'other' and 'inferior' - in fact it is difficult to think of a country so thoroughly evil as Israel. The only difference between Nazi Germany and Israel is that we, in the UK and USA are aiding them - to our lasting shame.
Dont forget that a number of English - particularly amongst the aristocracy - supported the Nazis.
No, I don't forget, but that has nothing to do with my main point, that an Israeli right-wing nationalist party is committing genocide on those it considers 'other', 'human animals' or 'inferior' today, just as the Nazis thought of the Jews c.1930-45. (It is no crime to resist Occupation.) 'Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return' (Auden) We should all remember that Jews, mainly from Europe, who had suffered in the Holocaust revisited their sufferings on the Palestinian inhabitants of the land that they so badly wanted for themselves. Two peoples with an equal claim to the same territory, one of conquest in '48, the other of 3 centuries of living there, should talk to each other not murder each other.
I disagree that it has nothing to do with the genocide currently happening in historical Palestine. Germany's Nazis didnt come from 'nothing'. Neither did the 'threatened' British aristocracy who supported the Nazis. Similarly, the current USA/EU/Israel ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank has to do with more than 'just' the Israelis and Palestinians living in that region. Hence - more that 'just' Israelis and Palestinians talking to each other is required. There have been and are numerous Israeli Jewish and Catholic, secular, Muslim Palestinians groups 'talking' to each other - now and over the decades. So - why is it disintegrating? Who and what benefits? Who and what pays?
Hi Chris, I'm a big fan and subscriber from 'down under'. Thank you for your enlightening discussions filled with care, compassion and information. Without authenticity we are just wandering in the darkness.
I would love to see you interview Shahid Bolsen...might this be possible? What do you think?
Much gratitude and appreciation for your work and many years of self-sacrifice in revealing truth, Bryony
Shahid Bolsen is quiet optimistic about the future of humanity. He has a unique way of analysis and reasoning. Me too, I would love to hear him at Chris Hedges Report.
Thank you for a thorough examination of our road to perdition Chris.
It is a long time in the making. Nazism was then, as is Zionism now, the culmination of hundreds of years of capitalism that is now choking on its own gluttony. Capitalism in its broadest sense is running out of oxygen. Although the genocide in Palestine has multiple causes and motives, capitalism’s decline is another manifestation of this.
Totally agree ... and not 'just' in historical Palestine.
I just watched watched Trump and Yetanyahu praising each other at a press conference. Both belong in prison.Trump's plans for Gaza a Middle East Atlantic City. With leaders like that our better angels don't stand a chance. To unite the world against our common enemy, climate change won't happen. We will continue to demonize each other and the military/industrial/political complex will lead us all over a cliff. Unless climate gets there first. Oh, I forgot there's also nuclear weapons.
Fabulously accurate Chris!
The American led Global Empire is Trump and Nutanyahu’s shit on Christ and GOD himself.
This is so depressing. I pray and hope that God Almighty help us regain our humanity.