Tag Archives: violence

The fascist conundrum that is Israel

May 20, 2018Over the edge...American terrorism, Empire, Gaza massacre, History, Israel, US military, violence, warJohn Eden

The Gaza Massacre–as it’s now being accurately referred to by some–is horrible and sad and yet another black mark against the thugs who run Israel and the thugs who run America.

Another great post from Caitlin Johnstone, although it’s a week old now, lists a number of the things that make it difficult to write about or have conversations about Israel. When most people in America simply support it because “they are God’s chosen people,” it’s hard to even know where to begin if you want to talk to someone about it.

But we need to have that conversation, because this latest massacre is likely just the beginning of a full-scale genocide against the Palestinian people, and it’s our problem because we support it. In fact we more than support it, we are it. The Israeli government and military are really just proxies for us, and it’s our tax money that bought what killed those Palestinians.

A deeper understanding of the relationship is that we’re both just proxies for some overriding oligarchy that uses the illusion of nation-statehood to further its own interests everywhere. As Johnstone says,

There’s good conspiracy theory and there’s bad conspiracy theory. People who say America controls Israel or Israel controls America are engaged in bad conspiracy theory. We don’t live in a world where the lines between nations mean anything to those with real power; in reality “Israel” and “America” are both purely conceptual constructs which only exist to the extent that people believe in them. There is no actual “Israel” which can exert control over an actual “America”, and vice versa. It isn’t nations and governments pulling the strings of real power in the world, it’s a class of plutocrats who aren’t ultimately answerable to any government. This class of plutocrats uses governments like Israel, the US, the UK, and the KSA to advance its agendas to exploit, loot and plunder the rest of humanity.

Our support for Israel also is the primary factor that keeps terrorism going in the Middle East, as they all see Israel as their ultimate enemy and the biggest threat to their existence. The terrorists have made no secret of the fact that it’s their main reason for attacking us and regarding us as the Great Satan. Immediately after 9/11, Bin Laden put out a statement, publicly explaining that the reason for the attack was that we continued to support Israel and we maintained bases in Saudi Arabia.

But you’ll struggle to find any of that mentioned in the national dialog. Not in the media, even most progressive media, nor in the political rhetoric at any level. It’s toxic to mention it because so many people think Israel is a holy cause and to fail to support it would be bad faith or something.

There is plenty of reason of course, not to support Israel… look up Jews for Justice — I suppose they still exist — and you’ll find a well-documented, clear and rational explanation of just how horrible Israel is and always has been. And obviously they’re not anti-Semitic. In fact it seems even anti-Semitic folk love Israel. Maybe because they’re such fascist and racist assholes that they miss the fact that most of the people in Israel are Jewish, even though it’s not a religious state, and even though most of those Israelis probably are not practicing Jews, they’re Jewish nonetheless.

The simple fact is that Israel’s horribleness has nothing to do with it being Jewish and everything to do with it being an outpost of the Empire. So that’s another factor that makes it very hard to talk about in a rational way. People are in denial about the very existence of the Empire, so it takes a long and patient workup to get them to see anything related to that dominant reality of the world.

That point is also addressed in a great forum in the June Harper’s Magazine. The forum “Combat High” is an excellent, though depressing, read. (It may require membership to access, but here’s a link: Combat High.) The participants all seem to agree that Americans in general don’t know enough about what’s happening in the world–especially in the machinations of Empire–to care.

In the discussion of where and how many U.S. troops are stationed around the world, Jason Dempsey, who served as an infantry officer in both Iraq and Afghanistan and is an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a senior adviser to the Columbia University Center for Veteran Transition and Integration, says, “Most Americans don’t know enough to care.”

It’s a sad commentary. A nation of people who claim to embrace Christian and democratic values and yet we don’t care that our military and its subsidiaries around the world kill people for little or no reason other than to support the oligarchy and protect its financial interests.

Power moves

December 21, 2017Over the edge...current events, political power, power, sexual abuse, violenceJohn Eden

Most of the problematic tendencies in our disaster-prone society seem to be aspects of one simple principle: being willing to use your power to gain more power is the way to success and general approbation.

I suppose this is an unsupported generalization, and that I’m painting things with a broad brush. I’d certainly be hard-pressed to come up with a large array of supporting instances of this principle, but it is an idea that’s been growing in my mind for some time now.

The most recent events on the national stage that have brought this up for me are the Republican tax bill, which they’ve finally managed to pass–an act of pure power in itself–and the flurry of defensive rationalizations around the men who’ve been accused of sexual predation. Though these two things seem to be unrelated, they share an etiology: abuse of power.

The tax bill is essentially a bold, crass move by the people who hold the reigns of power in the U.S. (the wealthy owner class, not the pathetic politicians who do their bidding for the crumbs from the table) to consolidate their gains as they become more and more in control of everything. They don’t really need more money, but they have an insatiable need for power, and that’s what control of so much of our national wealth gives them: nearly unlimited power. Including the power to keep us convinced that it’s in our interest.

Why they want this power is a question for deeper psycho-social analysis than I’m equipped to make, but it seems to be a product of some pretty deep-seated emotional hurt and fear that just grows as it is fed. I’ve long been convinced that most anger and hatred and evil-doing is based in fear, which usually has come from some kind of hurt. Like most of our negative psychological states, when we feed it the emotional poison of exerting our will over that of another, the negative state grows and requires bigger and bigger doses of power to assuage the pain.

In the same way, the sexual predators are not really interested in sex, they’re much more into the wielding of power over others, because that’s what seems to satisfy the need for self-reification and aggrandizement that drives them. Since sex is, in some ways, the ultimate thing one can give another person, it’s also the ultimate thing one can forcibly take from another person when one has some kind of power over them.

I can’t imagine how such so-called sex could actually bring the kind of gratification that sex does, because in these kinds of forced sex, one would be aware that the only reason it was happening was because of the power relationship. The truly bonding and gratifying aspects of sex, the source of the happiness it brings, are that it is freely engaged in between people who love and appreciate each other and who give of themselves to each other. Willingly. Elements which are totally lacking in forced sex.

Whether the power is physical, as in the normal idea of rape, or some kind of control over the conditions of the others’ life, as with bosses or directors or such relationships, it’s still power, and it’s the abuse of that power that is wrong.

Putting the other person in the position of having to make a difficult decision… assent or lose a vital job, role, or other aspect of ones life, that is the crux of what makes this behavior wrong. Saying, as some defenders have, that the victim should have ‘just said no’ or some other facile notion of resistance and refusal, ignores the true nature of the power relationship between the perpetrator and the victim in these cases.

Digging into this national pathology is painful, but it seems necessary if we are to grow and develop in constructive ways as a society.

Police violence is even worse…

December 19, 2017A War Journal, Over the edge...police violence, violenceJohn Eden

I know we have mostly good police officers in our area, but people everywhere are not so lucky.

Depressing but something we need to acknowledge is the fact that police shoot a huge number of people and most of the time it’s not justifiable, yet they almost never are held accountable.

In a report from the online magazine The Establishment, “Police shoot a lot more people than previously known” by Kali Holloway, the details of this, and the sources, are laid out.

This report shows the true extent of racism and violence at the heart of this country. Even more disturbing is the fact that the current national administration is backing down on efforts to improve things, and continuing to allow the lack of a comprehensive reporting system.

It’s a pretty long and not-so-fun read, but it’s something Americans must come to terms with if we are to be a rational, moral society.

Son of Baldwin…

June 19, 2017Over the edge...James Baldwin, non-violence, racism, self-defense, Son of Baldwin, violenceJohn Eden

[Re-blogging from Medium.com – Son of Baldwin on James Baldwin…]

On James Baldwin and How Oppressors

Try to Misuse Him to Shame Me

by Son of Baldwin, Medium.com

This is a great article on Baldwin with some fiery quotes I’d not heard. Much like Malcom, he was non-violent, but only to a point. As Malcolm said, we have the right of self-defense. Understanding that of course, is always tricky. This article is in response to people who criticized the author for suggesting that oppressed people should not feel constrained to follow traditional moral standards in protecting, saving, or helping the lives of their oppressors. I responded to the original article, “Let them fucking die”, by suggesting that though I understand the impulse, as Gandhi said, “An eye for eye will leave the whole world blind.” His response to me was:

“But it seems, John F. Eden, that white Americans are only concerned about a “true objective moral standard for our common humanity” when they fear that it may be them who are in danger, that it may be that their own lives are on the line.

Black people are expected to Mammy and Uncle Remus everyone else, to always, perpetually worry about the lives of others and to treat those lives as though they matter more than our own, but when we’re victims, everyone else uses sophistry and inhumanity to somehow blame us for our own predicaments.

We say Black Lives Matter, and white people lose their fucking minds at the thought, and simultaneously want to shoot us and want us to take bullets for them.

No. No longer.

I’m not advocating violence, but I am, indeed, advocating that white people, and any other anti-Black/anti-Queer people be left to their own devices.

The wages of bigotry is death and I say let bigots get what they paid for.”

“People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.”

Sounds a lot like what Malcolm said about the chickens coming home to roost.

It’s an interesting article, and I have found all his writing that I’ve read well-done and thought-provoking in the extreme.