People call me heroic, but I don’t feel heroic; I usually feel as though what I’m doing is the only possible choice, or at least the only moral one. – “Divided We Stand”
For as long as I’ve written this blog, I’ve been pointing out several times a year (especially on July 4th and November 5th) that the US “was born with an ugly birth defect which doomed it from the start, and the monstrous doppelganger which grew like some loathsome fungus inside of its carcass would not be worthy of saving even if that were possible. Nor are the majority of modern Western nations any better.” European nations, including the US, grew and enriched themselves by invasion, land theft, pillage and enslavement of less-advanced peoples, and even after they disavowed that racist, colonialist history they have continued to be every bit as shitty to those formerly-subject peoples, albeit obliquely and under the guise of beneficence. It’s absolutely true that up until recently virtually all peoples, regardless of skin color, religion, time period or level of advancement, grew and enriched themselves by exactly those same means, but only the Western ones developed an intellectual tradition, generally known as “Western liberalism”, which allowed free and open discussion of ideas and paid lip service to basic human rights while continuing to allow their rulers to behave in the same abominable manner as rulers always have and always will behave. If anything, the tradition has encouraged rulers to behave even more abominably than in the past by simply thinking up some bullshit excuse for the evil and then feigning offense when called on it. For example, less-advanced peoples could be conquered by labeling them “savages” and pretending that more-advanced (i.e. white) people were only trying to “help” them by enslaving them. Europeans proclaimed they had a “right” to steal the land of non-Europeans by a pettifogging bit of legalistic chicanery called the “Doctrine of Discovery“, and that it was OK to exterminate them when they resisted conquest (in much the same way that modern cops charge their victims with “assault on a police officer” and “resisting arrest” for daring to defend themselves when they’re beaten, raped or tased). Modern rulers claim “legitimacy” by a long series of Byzantine pretenses and procedures no more moral, just or rational than “Divine Right of Kings” was, then claim that their subjects somehow agreed to obey due to something called a “social contract” by virtue of being born within a particular set of imaginary lines the rulers drew on a map; the fact that nobody can “choose” when, how or where to be born is pretended to be irrelevant, and the rulers claim the “right” to inflict violence – including assault, maiming, robbery, rape, child-abduction, locking them in a cage for decades and even murder – if the subject violates any of a vast, confusing, vague, broad, and ever-increasing body of arbitrary rules called “laws” which are invented by the rulers as excuses to expand their own power, destroy their enemies (especially rebellious subjects) and suppress everyone who isn’t a member of the ruling class.
This edifice of bullshit has achieved its highest development in the fascist semi-republics which are incorrectly labeled “democracies”; most people believe that they’ve acted freely as long as they’re given a “choice”, even if that choice is between two equally-awful representatives of entrenched political parties who agree on every important issue and make a huge and dramatic show of opposing each other on a few cosmetic ones. Similarly, the lie of “choice” is used to brutalize, cage and banish refugees from countries ruined by centuries of European exploitation and decades of proxy warfare (yes, that includes the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terrorism”), as if “stay in your native country and watch your children starve while you’re being raped” is some kind of valid choice. We’re told that Africans trying to reach Europe and Latin Americans trying to reach the US in search of a better life (you know, the same reason Europeans came to North America) are “illegals” who deserve to be caged in brutal conditions until they die of preventable diseases; that those who assist them are “criminals” (usually “human traffickers”); and that deporting them is “rescue” and “helping them get home to their families”. If you want to participate in this vast charade on the off-chance of sparking some kind of butterfly effect which will eventually make things marginally better, please do so with my blessing. I, however, prefer not to get into the mud with the pigs; all I can do is follow my moral compass so that even if things don’t get better, at least I know that I had no part in making them worse or excusing the multitudinous sins of the powerful.
