The Holocaust is often considered the defining, unique act of evil for people in the West. Lesser known are the many other genocidal escapades of Western governments.
My pure SWAG is that many a non-Israeli Jew feels duty-bound to support Israel, regardless of what it does, because of the sense that they as Jews will be tagged with Israel's crimes, no matter what their misgivings.
Israeli demands for double standards and special pleading fuel antisemitism, which in turn makes Jewish people feel that group solidarity is the only path to survival. I wonder whether Boers in the old Republic Of South Africa felt the same way.
He failed to mention, which is important, that the Zionists saw Palestine as a land without a people, and of course it was not, and parts of Palestine under Ottoman control were well developed and even engaged in trade, and had a railroad system in the developed areas. The colonial mindset of England which it still holds on to in my opinion allowed them after the fall of the Ottoman empire to hand it over. My biggest problem as I noted below with his commentary was joining Trump and Netanyahu at the hip, basically one and the same. Gee, that will go over with people who voted Trump into office when he gets to the basic premise of his book. I turned him off and have no idea whether he went into detail about Netanyahu's violent past when it came to the treatment of Palestinians, or that they were imprisoned in relative squalor.
Cynicism, a rather benign word in reference to what followed. their mindset was no different then that of colonial Europe who saw the Arab world as less then, a prejudicial mindset that has persisted for decades and is still in play. It seems our recent middle eastern wars and the genocide in Gaza would show that reality to be true. Well, unlike the presidents that preceded Trump there were no new middle eastern wars during his presidency. Was he perfect, by no means, but to equate him with a genocidal killer like Netanyahu who blocked every opportunity for a greater sense of equality between the Palestinians and Israeli's throughout his long genocidal career is not only fallacious, but offensive. Rabin's wife accused Netanyahu of his murder and rightfully so, since he staged an event where he followed his coffin under the pretense he was already dead which stirred the imagination of his killer who put a bullet in his back. The hate so pronounced for Trump during his presidency is now in full play on a number of sites, and those very sites were non-critical of Biden as their bombs slaughtered men women and children in full site.
I want to believe so badly in what? As far as Trump goes I did not vote for him since he was so wiling to take Adelson's money to clear out the West Bank. I am not operating under any illusions. What bothers me is the various networks lashing into him because of his efforts to bring an end to the war in Ukraine which he will do, if we let him. And it was absurd to have someone compare Trump to Netanyahu. Maybe you are not even aware of how Netanyahu's middle eastern wars became our wars. How his lies about Iraq and the nuclear threat he said they posed became our lies about a country and a people. Not to mention AIPAC and the control through pay offs also controls our political scene. Feral don't dismiss me as a dreamer.
But this is not "the networks" nor representatives of that mind. Trump hate is most disturbing in the way it absolves the democratic war machine, and accomplishes little to change minds. That said Trump is clearly on board with genocide and is powerful enough to be a similar threat as Netanyahu. People do want to believe Trump will bring peace to Ukraine but we are at decision time and he is backing away fast yesterday and trying to arrange an impossible deal that only delays progress.. I will believe there is peace when Russia makes an agreement after all, the terms of what they will accept are already public. Trump is widely viewed as wily and clever, but what if his chaos is just his ineptitude and ignorance and ego and not directed at anything but self aggrandizement. If it walks like a shallow mob boss and quacks like a shallow mob boss, maybe it's because it is a shallow mob boss.
I should not go off topic discussing whether or what Trump will do in Ukraine (remember how he fucked up Syrian withdrawal by the lure of being able to plunder Syrian oil? The oil, as everyone knows, was a pittance, but Trump is stupid and is falling for it again in Ukraine), but recall my words - Trump has already done enough to join himself at the hip with Netanyahu.
That's not a word of praise of Biden, and nobody made Trump do that.
I watched it up to the point where he claimed Netantahu and Trump are much alike, since both are more motivated by self interest. Good grief!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just finished reading an article in Consortium News by Patrick Lawrence which was very positive in terms of Trump putting an end to the war in Ukraine and I have no doubt he will, and establish better relations with Russia which we have never attempted to do since WWII. The article, by Lawrence also covered, and was quite positive about Trump and his administration putting a real dent in the deep state which is also part of their agenda. Then I turn to CNN and listen to their putting Trump down, and pushing more war in Ukraine. To compare Netanyahu, a genocidal bastard, to Trump is sickening. Why even cause that kind of distraction when you're talking about genocide both past and present. I certainly don't approve Trump's thumbs up to Adelson and what his plans were initially for Gaza which he has back tracked on, but to make that comparison is to undermine if anything the horror that Netanyahu and his extreme right government has implemented. I think one his devotees in the Israeli government said today they should kill all Palestinian men.
“I just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar, and various other subjects. We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II, remembering that Russia lost tens of millions of people, and we, likewise, lost so many! We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together. But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine. President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE….’ “
Since the telephone call, of course, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Trump officials have met in Riyadh with Russian counterparts, effectively serving as sherpas in advance of a Trump–Putin summit at some point this spring, if all goes to plan.
It's pointless trying to illustrate Trump's self perceived intellect as similar to Putin's. Trump has no sense of history...and is not even in the same class. "Tens of millions" says Trump? It was about 9 million people that Russia lost in WWII, not 10's of millions. The U.S.--lost about a half million. Not even comparable. Apparently Trump is too lazy to even do a quick check with an internet search engine in order to get his facts in order. Also Stalin entered into a non aggression pact with Hitler at the start of WWII. Big mistake by Stalin in my opinion. Obviously the U.S. never staked out such a duplicitous political stance during WWII. With that in mind, it's hard to have sympathy for the way Russia elite ate crow when it came time to dice up the spoils in the aftermath of WWII. However, it was the Russian people and army who paid the real price-- and they have never been given the proper credit for preventing Nazi Germany from consolidating their power over all of Europe (and probably the middle east) in the form of a Third Reich that was gearing up to dominate the globe for a thousand years. IMO, the non aggression pact, while shortsighted, is no reason to hold a grudge against a key member of the Allied Forces of WWII. Indeed, it is insane to hold it against the Russian people forever.
I think Putin understands the real history...and will mollify his diplomatic counterparts with Trump's own platitudes (the way a parent lets a child suck on a pacifier) in order to just move beyond the current military operation in Ukraine. In the larger picture, for the U.S. to enter into a perpetual Cold War over Russians simply wishing to claim a decent share of the spoils was nothing more than the U.S. military industrial complex being spoiled and wanting to continuously enrich themselves globally-- just as they fantastically did in WWI--at any cost. Arguably, that cost is now reaching $36.5 Billion of U.S. taxpayer debt. The big poker player Putin must play against is NATO which is obviously the U.S. MIC's play on entrenching their power back in 1949. It was a smart play by the U.S. to capture the military interests of the bulk of Europe and has been a tough nut for Russia (on up to Putin) to crack in terms of negating being played for an absolute villain for its oversized role in disposing of Hitler. However, for the U.S. and much of Europe to continue NATO's hegemony to this day by constantly demonizing Russia (and, by proxy,Putin) is absolute folly in terms of easing world geopolitical tensions that has "civilized" society 99 seconds from midnight on the Doomsday clock. The insanity must end.
Russia lost some 26 or 27 million people, both military and non military loses during WWII, not 9, or 10. If it were not for Russia we very well may have lost that war, and yes Stalin did enter an agreement with Hitler, with the desire to prevent it, to no avail. Trump may skew some of the numbers, but that's okay with me if he can end this horrific war initiated by a neocon agenda of bringing Putin down. That was made even clearer on Biden's return trip after meeting Putin, when he said after he arrived home "Putin has got to go." Look we instigated a coup under Obama in 2014 and assisted a bunch of neo-nazi's to do it. We promised Gorbachev no new states in NATO when he brought down the wall dividing Germany and what did Clinton do by the end of his run? 3 more states in NATO and now how many? 32! Who is the aggressor here? We are!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not afraid of Russia, I'm afraid of US! Personally I think NATO has got to go, since it serves no good purpose. It's troubling to here so many anti-Trumpers attack his plan to negotiate peace. MSNBC and CNN are trying to regain their lost rating by attacking Trump and his being "duped by Russia." I'm sick of US. Agree insanity indeed describes it.
I apologize, I was not clear. By people, I was referring to Russian soldiers lost in military fighting during WWII. Most history scholars agree it was approx 9 million. I did not reach that conclusion personally. As far as how many Russian civilians died in total as a cause of WWII I've read everything under the sun. Some estimate 40 million! Can you somehow connive your way statistically to "prove" that number; sure. But I say hogwash to that. At any rate, YOu and I will never know the real number of total civilian casualties as it is forever lost in time and tons of Russian propaganda. We can debate it til the cows come home--with no possible resolution. I will leave my main point at: The human losses between the U.S. and Russian were not even in the same ballpark during WWII. We do NOT share a common history with Russia in this regard. For Trump to infer such is nonsense.
BTW, the same gross discrepancy in civil casualties is going on as we speak as a result of the genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli Army upon the Palestinian people. Most resources count 40-50k Palestinians murdered. Some, like Hedges, believe the "real" number is closer to 300k. I'm sure you can find sources that currently peg it at half a million. 20 years from now you could probably find a source citing 1 million to date. Again, the point would be the losses between Israelis and Palestinians as a direct result of Oct. 7, 2023 is not even in the same ballpark. There is no "likewise" or shared history there either.
So, not so much the evil of grand designs as the evil of petty interests, the kind of evil that might exist in any of us just writ much, much larger. Perhaps individual members of the (Jewish) diaspora feel this but are not aware of it attributing their support for the ‘homeland’ of Israel to cultural, historical or religious ties, real or imagined.
This submissive, idolizing, self-interest-driven behaviour is exactly what drives support for Trump and his form of nationalism only in his case the ‘homeland’ invoked - the ‘America’ as in MAGA - is temporally remote rather than physically remote (as with Israel and the Jews
in the diaspora). So any civilisation can do this; you just need a mythical past. And a convenient victim to sacrifice for your individual and collective glory.
The era of the ‘cultural bully’ is well and truly upon us and it would seem most of us in the West are signed up to this. We just don’t like to think about it. It’s… ‘complicated’.
Humanity is so, so many and so, so tired. Is it really our DNA that we cannot share this round world?
The mentally ill run this world because 1) the psychiatrists (learned doctors of
anything)are fascinated by them and 2) the only demonstrable spirituality that humans have is that we are all going to die. So what the hell? Thanks a lot dad. Do what thou will.
That's what's so hard about peace, love and understanding.
Anybody who speaks from their heart instead of their head is branded as infantile, unequipped to handle the ruthless, relentless, unending savagery that is the result of our mental illness. The illness of the mind that thinks this is what and who we are, and we are all gonna die so do what you will with 'your' time.
Unfortunately, even as we destroy now as we have destroyed always, we will learn nothing. It is clearly demonstrable that the discontent will persist. So the mind must seek a way out of the mind and stop hanging on its every word.
Your wordless presence, your awareness that you are, is the common umbilical cord that begets us all.
In a different key, I honor and respect and learn from and love the love that you demonstrate here in the commitment to figure this shit out.
This article is so relevant to US political avoidance concerning the fascistic misbehavior of empire, and equally relevant to the ‘west’ s sordid history of economic and military colonialism. When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, in the powerful moral aftermath of WW2, US media constantly harped on about how free Americans were to speak out and dissent compared to the secret police controlled Communist countries. They said we would never follow the path of secret surveillance, detention of dissidents, and war atrocities. Yet when we intervened in Vietnam after the JFK assassination the press and politicians quickly forgot JFK's warnings against preventing peaceful revolution, and for freedom of speech, and lined up in favor of US military intervention to continue colonial control of Vietnam. We violated every legal and moral constraint outlined in the Nuremberg trials, dousing Vietnam in agent orange, bombs and Napalm, lying about Gulf of Tonkin aggression and committing numerous war crimes including a secret bombing war in Cambodia . Only when it became obvious that we were going to lose and opposition to the war was going to keep growing did our patriotic fervor begin to falter. 50,000+ US soldiers died in combat; many came home with permanent injuries, and 53,000+ US soldiers committed suicide in shame or despair over what they did and what the war did to them.
Many of the factors that set us on this course, a course we are still on after " kicking the Vietnam syndrome", are discussed powerfully in this article: the careerism in politics, press and the military; the slow purging of dissent from academia; the habits of the majority of Churches to despise peacemaking and heroize the military. The Nazis became the ultimate evil despite a long history of similar imperial behavior throughout human history. But the fascists’ behaviors were anathematized in a very selective way( no movies were made about the the Gypsies or communists, or homosexuals who died in death camps, no mention of how the Russians were key to the defeat of the German army.) The result is that most citizens in the US or the emergent western alliances are never compelled to reckon with our own complicity in criminality and fascistic nationalism no matter how clearly it is exposed by dissident voices or clear historical records.
Several things shape us internally and culturally in our effort to avoid a reckoning with conscience and to avoid the hard work needed to establish new habits based on universal truths like the golden rule: 1) scapegoats are created to externalize evil and heroize wars and coups ( ie., communists, anti-American Americans, self hating Jews, uppity women and people of color, Islam, Chinese, Russians, etc.) 2) propaganda replaces huge parts of history( the role of communists in defeating fascism in WW2 is deleted, Hiroshima becomes a necessary evil, Nazis are hired into the CIA, the creation by the US deep state of subservient military dictators, and the murder of elected leaders is labeled as a triumph of democracy, Slavery becomes unmentionable along with our historic treatment of indigenous peoples, Afghanistan and Iraq are fallsely blamed for 9-11, The Nakba disappears); 3) The purpose of education loses moral or spiritual values or integrity and becomes focused on financial success regardless of ethical or environmental violations. 4) antiwar and anti colonial dissent is relegated to the fringes in the arts and news-media and voicing this dissent becomes the ultimate offense against social civility while both major political options become bipartisan in support of war and censorship. The net effect of this suppression of conscience allows criminality to become psychologically heroic; it allows mass slaughter to become the necessary cost of vaguely defined but universally embraced concepts like freedom and progress.
It is the harbinger of fascism.
The potential extremity of this behavior is now evident in the Zionist final solution in Gaza and US bipartisan compliance with this genocide. It was evident in what we did in Iraq, It is evident in our sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to our failed proxy war. A reckoning is due and it will most likely not be pretty. It can be an internal transformation or the chaos of endless war. We are not spiritually or morally powerless in this reckoning, but our own habits and comfortable addictions are implicated. The deep state is not just the powerful few, it is an internalized condition. Fascism can lo longer be talked about as a future to be avoided. It is implicit in paying taxes, in our knowledge that we are being monitored and cannot expect due process of law. It is embraced as salvation and surrounds us as violence, hate and chaos. The reckoning is upon us.
My pure SWAG is that many a non-Israeli Jew feels duty-bound to support Israel, regardless of what it does, because of the sense that they as Jews will be tagged with Israel's crimes, no matter what their misgivings.
Israeli demands for double standards and special pleading fuel antisemitism, which in turn makes Jewish people feel that group solidarity is the only path to survival. I wonder whether Boers in the old Republic Of South Africa felt the same way.
He failed to mention, which is important, that the Zionists saw Palestine as a land without a people, and of course it was not, and parts of Palestine under Ottoman control were well developed and even engaged in trade, and had a railroad system in the developed areas. The colonial mindset of England which it still holds on to in my opinion allowed them after the fall of the Ottoman empire to hand it over. My biggest problem as I noted below with his commentary was joining Trump and Netanyahu at the hip, basically one and the same. Gee, that will go over with people who voted Trump into office when he gets to the basic premise of his book. I turned him off and have no idea whether he went into detail about Netanyahu's violent past when it came to the treatment of Palestinians, or that they were imprisoned in relative squalor.
I suspect that the Zionist "land without a people so we'll just occupy it!" was always pure cynicism.
Trump does enough on his own to join himself with Netanyahu. He doesn't need the commentariat here to do that.
Cynicism, a rather benign word in reference to what followed. their mindset was no different then that of colonial Europe who saw the Arab world as less then, a prejudicial mindset that has persisted for decades and is still in play. It seems our recent middle eastern wars and the genocide in Gaza would show that reality to be true. Well, unlike the presidents that preceded Trump there were no new middle eastern wars during his presidency. Was he perfect, by no means, but to equate him with a genocidal killer like Netanyahu who blocked every opportunity for a greater sense of equality between the Palestinians and Israeli's throughout his long genocidal career is not only fallacious, but offensive. Rabin's wife accused Netanyahu of his murder and rightfully so, since he staged an event where he followed his coffin under the pretense he was already dead which stirred the imagination of his killer who put a bullet in his back. The hate so pronounced for Trump during his presidency is now in full play on a number of sites, and those very sites were non-critical of Biden as their bombs slaughtered men women and children in full site.
We get it. You want so badly to believe.
I want to believe so badly in what? As far as Trump goes I did not vote for him since he was so wiling to take Adelson's money to clear out the West Bank. I am not operating under any illusions. What bothers me is the various networks lashing into him because of his efforts to bring an end to the war in Ukraine which he will do, if we let him. And it was absurd to have someone compare Trump to Netanyahu. Maybe you are not even aware of how Netanyahu's middle eastern wars became our wars. How his lies about Iraq and the nuclear threat he said they posed became our lies about a country and a people. Not to mention AIPAC and the control through pay offs also controls our political scene. Feral don't dismiss me as a dreamer.
But this is not "the networks" nor representatives of that mind. Trump hate is most disturbing in the way it absolves the democratic war machine, and accomplishes little to change minds. That said Trump is clearly on board with genocide and is powerful enough to be a similar threat as Netanyahu. People do want to believe Trump will bring peace to Ukraine but we are at decision time and he is backing away fast yesterday and trying to arrange an impossible deal that only delays progress.. I will believe there is peace when Russia makes an agreement after all, the terms of what they will accept are already public. Trump is widely viewed as wily and clever, but what if his chaos is just his ineptitude and ignorance and ego and not directed at anything but self aggrandizement. If it walks like a shallow mob boss and quacks like a shallow mob boss, maybe it's because it is a shallow mob boss.
You want to believe that Trump will fix things.
I should not go off topic discussing whether or what Trump will do in Ukraine (remember how he fucked up Syrian withdrawal by the lure of being able to plunder Syrian oil? The oil, as everyone knows, was a pittance, but Trump is stupid and is falling for it again in Ukraine), but recall my words - Trump has already done enough to join himself at the hip with Netanyahu.
That's not a word of praise of Biden, and nobody made Trump do that.
I watched it up to the point where he claimed Netantahu and Trump are much alike, since both are more motivated by self interest. Good grief!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just finished reading an article in Consortium News by Patrick Lawrence which was very positive in terms of Trump putting an end to the war in Ukraine and I have no doubt he will, and establish better relations with Russia which we have never attempted to do since WWII. The article, by Lawrence also covered, and was quite positive about Trump and his administration putting a real dent in the deep state which is also part of their agenda. Then I turn to CNN and listen to their putting Trump down, and pushing more war in Ukraine. To compare Netanyahu, a genocidal bastard, to Trump is sickening. Why even cause that kind of distraction when you're talking about genocide both past and present. I certainly don't approve Trump's thumbs up to Adelson and what his plans were initially for Gaza which he has back tracked on, but to make that comparison is to undermine if anything the horror that Netanyahu and his extreme right government has implemented. I think one his devotees in the Israeli government said today they should kill all Palestinian men.
Trump.
“I just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar, and various other subjects. We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II, remembering that Russia lost tens of millions of people, and we, likewise, lost so many! We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together. But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine. President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE….’ “
Since the telephone call, of course, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Trump officials have met in Riyadh with Russian counterparts, effectively serving as sherpas in advance of a Trump–Putin summit at some point this spring, if all goes to plan.
It's pointless trying to illustrate Trump's self perceived intellect as similar to Putin's. Trump has no sense of history...and is not even in the same class. "Tens of millions" says Trump? It was about 9 million people that Russia lost in WWII, not 10's of millions. The U.S.--lost about a half million. Not even comparable. Apparently Trump is too lazy to even do a quick check with an internet search engine in order to get his facts in order. Also Stalin entered into a non aggression pact with Hitler at the start of WWII. Big mistake by Stalin in my opinion. Obviously the U.S. never staked out such a duplicitous political stance during WWII. With that in mind, it's hard to have sympathy for the way Russia elite ate crow when it came time to dice up the spoils in the aftermath of WWII. However, it was the Russian people and army who paid the real price-- and they have never been given the proper credit for preventing Nazi Germany from consolidating their power over all of Europe (and probably the middle east) in the form of a Third Reich that was gearing up to dominate the globe for a thousand years. IMO, the non aggression pact, while shortsighted, is no reason to hold a grudge against a key member of the Allied Forces of WWII. Indeed, it is insane to hold it against the Russian people forever.
I think Putin understands the real history...and will mollify his diplomatic counterparts with Trump's own platitudes (the way a parent lets a child suck on a pacifier) in order to just move beyond the current military operation in Ukraine. In the larger picture, for the U.S. to enter into a perpetual Cold War over Russians simply wishing to claim a decent share of the spoils was nothing more than the U.S. military industrial complex being spoiled and wanting to continuously enrich themselves globally-- just as they fantastically did in WWI--at any cost. Arguably, that cost is now reaching $36.5 Billion of U.S. taxpayer debt. The big poker player Putin must play against is NATO which is obviously the U.S. MIC's play on entrenching their power back in 1949. It was a smart play by the U.S. to capture the military interests of the bulk of Europe and has been a tough nut for Russia (on up to Putin) to crack in terms of negating being played for an absolute villain for its oversized role in disposing of Hitler. However, for the U.S. and much of Europe to continue NATO's hegemony to this day by constantly demonizing Russia (and, by proxy,Putin) is absolute folly in terms of easing world geopolitical tensions that has "civilized" society 99 seconds from midnight on the Doomsday clock. The insanity must end.
Russia lost some 26 or 27 million people, both military and non military loses during WWII, not 9, or 10. If it were not for Russia we very well may have lost that war, and yes Stalin did enter an agreement with Hitler, with the desire to prevent it, to no avail. Trump may skew some of the numbers, but that's okay with me if he can end this horrific war initiated by a neocon agenda of bringing Putin down. That was made even clearer on Biden's return trip after meeting Putin, when he said after he arrived home "Putin has got to go." Look we instigated a coup under Obama in 2014 and assisted a bunch of neo-nazi's to do it. We promised Gorbachev no new states in NATO when he brought down the wall dividing Germany and what did Clinton do by the end of his run? 3 more states in NATO and now how many? 32! Who is the aggressor here? We are!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not afraid of Russia, I'm afraid of US! Personally I think NATO has got to go, since it serves no good purpose. It's troubling to here so many anti-Trumpers attack his plan to negotiate peace. MSNBC and CNN are trying to regain their lost rating by attacking Trump and his being "duped by Russia." I'm sick of US. Agree insanity indeed describes it.
I apologize, I was not clear. By people, I was referring to Russian soldiers lost in military fighting during WWII. Most history scholars agree it was approx 9 million. I did not reach that conclusion personally. As far as how many Russian civilians died in total as a cause of WWII I've read everything under the sun. Some estimate 40 million! Can you somehow connive your way statistically to "prove" that number; sure. But I say hogwash to that. At any rate, YOu and I will never know the real number of total civilian casualties as it is forever lost in time and tons of Russian propaganda. We can debate it til the cows come home--with no possible resolution. I will leave my main point at: The human losses between the U.S. and Russian were not even in the same ballpark during WWII. We do NOT share a common history with Russia in this regard. For Trump to infer such is nonsense.
BTW, the same gross discrepancy in civil casualties is going on as we speak as a result of the genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli Army upon the Palestinian people. Most resources count 40-50k Palestinians murdered. Some, like Hedges, believe the "real" number is closer to 300k. I'm sure you can find sources that currently peg it at half a million. 20 years from now you could probably find a source citing 1 million to date. Again, the point would be the losses between Israelis and Palestinians as a direct result of Oct. 7, 2023 is not even in the same ballpark. There is no "likewise" or shared history there either.
So, not so much the evil of grand designs as the evil of petty interests, the kind of evil that might exist in any of us just writ much, much larger. Perhaps individual members of the (Jewish) diaspora feel this but are not aware of it attributing their support for the ‘homeland’ of Israel to cultural, historical or religious ties, real or imagined.
This submissive, idolizing, self-interest-driven behaviour is exactly what drives support for Trump and his form of nationalism only in his case the ‘homeland’ invoked - the ‘America’ as in MAGA - is temporally remote rather than physically remote (as with Israel and the Jews
in the diaspora). So any civilisation can do this; you just need a mythical past. And a convenient victim to sacrifice for your individual and collective glory.
The era of the ‘cultural bully’ is well and truly upon us and it would seem most of us in the West are signed up to this. We just don’t like to think about it. It’s… ‘complicated’.
Humanity is so, so many and so, so tired. Is it really our DNA that we cannot share this round world?
The mentally ill run this world because 1) the psychiatrists (learned doctors of
anything)are fascinated by them and 2) the only demonstrable spirituality that humans have is that we are all going to die. So what the hell? Thanks a lot dad. Do what thou will.
That's what's so hard about peace, love and understanding.
Anybody who speaks from their heart instead of their head is branded as infantile, unequipped to handle the ruthless, relentless, unending savagery that is the result of our mental illness. The illness of the mind that thinks this is what and who we are, and we are all gonna die so do what you will with 'your' time.
Unfortunately, even as we destroy now as we have destroyed always, we will learn nothing. It is clearly demonstrable that the discontent will persist. So the mind must seek a way out of the mind and stop hanging on its every word.
Your wordless presence, your awareness that you are, is the common umbilical cord that begets us all.
In a different key, I honor and respect and learn from and love the love that you demonstrate here in the commitment to figure this shit out.
Have you yet to run across this: ThePeoplesUnionUSA.com
We must come together in numbers to stop this current mental illness, Find things to unify us. But what is our spirituality to be?
This article is so relevant to US political avoidance concerning the fascistic misbehavior of empire, and equally relevant to the ‘west’ s sordid history of economic and military colonialism. When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, in the powerful moral aftermath of WW2, US media constantly harped on about how free Americans were to speak out and dissent compared to the secret police controlled Communist countries. They said we would never follow the path of secret surveillance, detention of dissidents, and war atrocities. Yet when we intervened in Vietnam after the JFK assassination the press and politicians quickly forgot JFK's warnings against preventing peaceful revolution, and for freedom of speech, and lined up in favor of US military intervention to continue colonial control of Vietnam. We violated every legal and moral constraint outlined in the Nuremberg trials, dousing Vietnam in agent orange, bombs and Napalm, lying about Gulf of Tonkin aggression and committing numerous war crimes including a secret bombing war in Cambodia . Only when it became obvious that we were going to lose and opposition to the war was going to keep growing did our patriotic fervor begin to falter. 50,000+ US soldiers died in combat; many came home with permanent injuries, and 53,000+ US soldiers committed suicide in shame or despair over what they did and what the war did to them.
Many of the factors that set us on this course, a course we are still on after " kicking the Vietnam syndrome", are discussed powerfully in this article: the careerism in politics, press and the military; the slow purging of dissent from academia; the habits of the majority of Churches to despise peacemaking and heroize the military. The Nazis became the ultimate evil despite a long history of similar imperial behavior throughout human history. But the fascists’ behaviors were anathematized in a very selective way( no movies were made about the the Gypsies or communists, or homosexuals who died in death camps, no mention of how the Russians were key to the defeat of the German army.) The result is that most citizens in the US or the emergent western alliances are never compelled to reckon with our own complicity in criminality and fascistic nationalism no matter how clearly it is exposed by dissident voices or clear historical records.
Several things shape us internally and culturally in our effort to avoid a reckoning with conscience and to avoid the hard work needed to establish new habits based on universal truths like the golden rule: 1) scapegoats are created to externalize evil and heroize wars and coups ( ie., communists, anti-American Americans, self hating Jews, uppity women and people of color, Islam, Chinese, Russians, etc.) 2) propaganda replaces huge parts of history( the role of communists in defeating fascism in WW2 is deleted, Hiroshima becomes a necessary evil, Nazis are hired into the CIA, the creation by the US deep state of subservient military dictators, and the murder of elected leaders is labeled as a triumph of democracy, Slavery becomes unmentionable along with our historic treatment of indigenous peoples, Afghanistan and Iraq are fallsely blamed for 9-11, The Nakba disappears); 3) The purpose of education loses moral or spiritual values or integrity and becomes focused on financial success regardless of ethical or environmental violations. 4) antiwar and anti colonial dissent is relegated to the fringes in the arts and news-media and voicing this dissent becomes the ultimate offense against social civility while both major political options become bipartisan in support of war and censorship. The net effect of this suppression of conscience allows criminality to become psychologically heroic; it allows mass slaughter to become the necessary cost of vaguely defined but universally embraced concepts like freedom and progress.
It is the harbinger of fascism.
The potential extremity of this behavior is now evident in the Zionist final solution in Gaza and US bipartisan compliance with this genocide. It was evident in what we did in Iraq, It is evident in our sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to our failed proxy war. A reckoning is due and it will most likely not be pretty. It can be an internal transformation or the chaos of endless war. We are not spiritually or morally powerless in this reckoning, but our own habits and comfortable addictions are implicated. The deep state is not just the powerful few, it is an internalized condition. Fascism can lo longer be talked about as a future to be avoided. It is implicit in paying taxes, in our knowledge that we are being monitored and cannot expect due process of law. It is embraced as salvation and surrounds us as violence, hate and chaos. The reckoning is upon us.