So I've been listening to this podcast called <a href="https://blowback.show/" author="Brendan James and Noah Kulwin" source="">Blowback</a>. It's an American history podcast, but with a focus on foreign policy. I started listening to the fourth season, which is about Afghanistan. It's in progress and up to episode 8 of 10 as of yesterday. When I'd caught up to episode 7, I started in immediately on their inaugural podcast, S01, which is about Iraq. It's not just about the invasion of in 2003. It starts in the early 20th century, explaining how British machinations kicked off the whole modern-day colonization of Iraq. <pullquote align="right" width="10em"><bq source="Blowback S01 E10">Blowback isn't a bug; it's a feature. It's part of the algorithm of Empire.</bq></pullquote> Don't skip the bonus episodes because the interview with Naomi Klein was fantastic.<fn> She noted that members of the Trump administration were absolute pikers as plunderers of public coffers, when compared with the Bush administration, which stolen dozens of billions at once. It's a very worthwhile podcast. I like to think that they---perhaps subconsciously---named the podcast after the excellent and important book by <i>Chalmers Johnson</i>. The following essay is a mix of notes that I took while listening to the podcast interwoven with real-life experiences talking to people about similar topics during that time. <h>The utter sociopathy</h> In the first half of S04E07, the hosts discuss America’s attack on Afghanistan, illustrating very clearly why America doesn’t care about Israel’s cruelty. America recognizes that Israel's cruelty is nothing compared to its own. I wrote part of this before I'd listened to S01, which just piled on the shocking cruelty and disdain for human life inherent in every move made by the American Empire. The hubris, the greed, the pettiness, the small-minded focus on personal gain---it's breathtaking. I lived through all of this; I was politically awake, paying attention. The names are <i>all</i> familiar. Most of them have been recorded multiple times on this blog (search <a href="https://www.earthli.com/news/search.php?search_text=wolfowitz&title=1&description=1&state=1&folder_search_type=context_none&creator_id_search_type=constant&creator_id=&time_created_search_type=constant&time_created_after=&time_created_before=&modifier_id_search_type=constant&modifier_id=&time_modified_search_type=constant&time_modified_after=&time_modified_before=&publisher_id_search_type=constant&publisher_id=&time_published_search_type=constant&time_published_after=&time_published_before=&sort_1=&sort_direction_1=asc&sort_2=&sort_direction_2=asc&sort_3=&sort_direction_3=asc#search-results">Wolfowitz</a>, <a href="https://www.earthli.com/news/search.php?search_form_submitted=1&debug=0&id=&quick_search=0&type=article&search_text=cheney&title=1&description=1&state=1&folder_search_type=context_none&creator_id_search_type=constant&creator_id=&time_created_search_type=constant&time_created_after=&time_created_before=&modifier_id_search_type=constant&modifier_id=&time_modified_search_type=constant&time_modified_after=&time_modified_before=&publisher_id_search_type=constant&publisher_id=&time_published_search_type=constant&time_published_after=&time_published_before=&sort_1=&sort_direction_1=asc&sort_2=&sort_direction_2=asc&sort_3=&sort_direction_3=asc#search-results">Cheney</a>, <a href="https://www.earthli.com/news/search.php?search_form_submitted=1&debug=0&id=&quick_search=0&type=article&search_text=bush&title=1&description=1&state=1&folder_search_type=context_none&creator_id_search_type=constant&creator_id=&time_created_search_type=constant&time_created_after=&time_created_before=&modifier_id_search_type=constant&modifier_id=&time_modified_search_type=constant&time_modified_after=&time_modified_before=&publisher_id_search_type=constant&publisher_id=&time_published_search_type=constant&time_published_after=&time_published_before=&sort_1=&sort_direction_1=asc&sort_2=&sort_direction_2=asc&sort_3=&sort_direction_3=asc#search-results">Bush</a>, <a href="https://www.earthli.com/news/search.php?search_form_submitted=1&debug=0&id=&quick_search=0&type=article&search_text=condaleeza&title=1&description=1&state=1&folder_search_type=context_none&creator_id_search_type=constant&creator_id=&time_created_search_type=constant&time_created_after=&time_created_before=&modifier_id_search_type=constant&modifier_id=&time_modified_search_type=constant&time_modified_after=&time_modified_before=&publisher_id_search_type=constant&publisher_id=&time_published_search_type=constant&time_published_after=&time_published_before=&sort_1=&sort_direction_1=asc&sort_2=&sort_direction_2=asc&sort_3=&sort_direction_3=asc#search-results">Condaleeza</a>, or <a href="https://www.earthli.com/news/search.php?search_form_submitted=1&debug=0&id=&quick_search=0&type=article&search_text=rumsfeld&title=1&description=1&state=1&folder_search_type=context_none&creator_id_search_type=constant&creator_id=&time_created_search_type=constant&time_created_after=&time_created_before=&modifier_id_search_type=constant&modifier_id=&time_modified_search_type=constant&time_modified_after=&time_modified_before=&publisher_id_search_type=constant&publisher_id=&time_published_search_type=constant&time_published_after=&time_published_before=&sort_1=&sort_direction_1=asc&sort_2=&sort_direction_2=asc&sort_3=&sort_direction_3=asc#search-results">Rumsfeld</a>). But the power of the podcast is such that it's so well put-together that it's more overwhelming when seen all at once. <h>Calling a spade a spade isn't judgmental</h> While some might see an anti-American slant in this history podcast, there absolutely isn't one. It's just an honest assessment of what happened, complete with testimonials by the major players. They hang themselves with their own words. The podcast even includes America's own justifications but, shorn of their mythical power, they're made to stand on their own, which they do, in a way. They are obviously purely Machiavellian considerations of personal and national and empirical power---but there is no way to read any moral or ethical standing in them. These people did it for power and because they're powerful. They did it for the money. That's also the point of discussing the situation in Israel. It's only complicated if you lend any credence to obvious propaganda. Just focus on the facts. There are enough facts to decide. Once you've looked at history---at what actually happened rather than what Israel says happened or the justifications they give---Israel does not come out looking like an enlightened, democratic, or moral nation-state. Instead, it seems to decide things based on protecting what it considers to be its own and lending as much empathy to human beings outside of their group as they would to stones in their front yards. In all of those ways, Israel is just like its big brother across the Atlantic. That's not judgmental! It's just accepting reality. Once you've learned history---and this history isn't controversial; no-one's denying it; they brag about it!---you can't unlearn it. Like Israel, the U.S. also has special rules for special people. It has different laws for how Americans are to be treated versus foreign nationals. Do you remember the whole debate about spying after Snowden's revelations? The only problem was that they'd been accused of invading the privacy of <i>Americans</i>. The rest of the world is just fine. Gotta keep an eye---and an ear---on those psychos in the rest of the world. There's no telling what they might do. Better to get them before they get us. Most Americans think that the Constitution applies only to American citizens. This is the attitude of nations like this. It's not pretty, but there's nothing judgmental about recognizing it. You'd be a fool not to, given the overwhelming evidence. <h>Chatting about Israel</h> The Israeli government itself offers only half-hearted and incredibly obviously mendacious defenses of its own moral basis for this system, but it doesn't really care who believes it. Israel's defenders, on the other hand, are incredibly invested in talking about anything but what has actually happened. I was given a muddled history lesson on the Balfour Declaration of 1917 one night, as if that has anything to do with what is going to happen next---or with what has happened in the last 40 or 50 years. It's incredible how focused people are on vaguely justifying Israel's behavior when they (A) don't seem to understand what that behavior actually is---i.e., the depths of depravity to which they go---and (B) how little that has to do with determining what happens next. What is the world going to do about an obvious genocide unfolding in a very important place? Some countries have cut off diplomatic ties, while others offer full-throated support for genocide, including regular weapons shipments. They will all be judged by history. People who are not involved have a chance to remain outside of the fray, but have a duty to inform themselves and understand what is actually, really happening---and what has actually, really happened. Which events are supported by incontrovertible evidence? Which ones are not? Why are the ones without a shred of proof taken at face value while those with a preponderance of evidence are ignored? Those are the interesting questions. <h>Calling bullshit</h> It is not discriminatory to notice when someone is being an asshole and to then point it out. Israel has trained the world to believe that focusing on its actions is antisemitic. There are other countries that do the same or much worse. Yes, that's true! But those countries---e.g., Saudi Arabia or Myanmar, for two examples---don't also demand that we simultaneously treat them as <i>enlightened democracies</i>, as leading lights of human civilization. They've had it both ways for many decades. It's just coming to a stop now (hopefully). It doesn't matter that the U.S. never seems to get its comeuppance. That's relevant only in a discussion of <i>relative justice</i>. The fact that the U.S. gets away with worse stuff all the time doesn't absolve Israel of its own crimes. That's not how crime and punishment and justice works. Myanmar is apartheid; they have official second-class citizens. So does India, actually, with its caste system. A <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_apartheid_by_country" source="Wikipedia">bunch of countries</a> have some form of apartheid or another. But they don't claim to be better than that---or they're not surprised when they're not taken seriously. We know that they are the way they are. Israelis wants to be an apartheid theocratic state, but wants to <i>identify as a democracy</i>. How very modern. We should not allow that. It makes no sense for us to accept all of those claims. We don't have any skin in the game, so we don't have to accept it. <h>Israel learned it from the master</h> What strikes me the most is how similar the U.S. military attitude is to war crimes to the one that Israel has. Israel isn’t covering new territory here. The U.S. has done everything horrible that Israel is doing—and more. The U.S. gets away with slaughter on levels that Israel could never dream of. It discusses its war crimes just as brazenly as Israel does. No-one who matters dares open their mouth about it. It's shocking the level of U.S. sycophantism you'll encounter in Europe. They're totally blind to U.S. war crimes, almost all of the time. When challenged on it, they'll usually admit it---but their default attitude is to never think about the Empire or the degree to which its crimes have damaged the world. They support NATO, convinced that it's a defensive organization. They don't see NATO as being the hand-puppet of the U.S. This cripples the politically and gets them unquestioningly supporting very dubious, immoral, and self-destructive policies. The Israelis bombed Palestinians on supposedly safe roads to which they'd directed those refugees? They learned it from the U.S. Look up <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=highway+of+death&t=opera&iax=images&ia=images">highway of death</a> from the first Gulf War in 1991. Iraqi forces were retreating from Kuwait, as directed by the U.S. They had given up. It was a hodge-podge of civilian vehicles and half-broken-down military vehicles. The U.S. bombed every last one of them while they were trapped in a giant column in the desert. Fish in a barrel. There was nowhere to go. U.S. jets incinerated them all. There are close-up pictures of people carbonized behind the wheels of their vehicles. <img src="{att_link}highway_of_death_in_bahrain_and_iraq.jpg" href="{att_link}highway_of_death_in_bahrain_and_iraq.jpg" align="none" caption="Highway of Death between Bahrain and Iraq" scale="75%"> Bombing civilians? There was the nuclear-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was the fire-bombing of Tokyo. There was the relentless fire-bombing of Dresden. Israel regularly cites all of these as precedent. They're just doing what Daddy did. <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUXb7do9C-w" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/KUXb7do9C-w" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="" caption="PSA - I learned It By Watching You!"> Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. No justice ever for any of those civilians. I get it! It must be frustrating for Israel. They can truly whine about being under the magnifying glass when their benefactor never seems to suffer the same fate. That's because the Empire determines where the magnifying glass goes. They run all of these international agencies. They threaten to withdraw funding if those agencies don't focus on the official enemies. There is no way you can focus on the U.S. and, usually, Israel. Now, after multiple decades, the wall of support is crumbling for Israel. Israel is no longer getting away with having its cake and eating it, too, as it has for almost six decades. So they cry "antisemitism". <h>Inhaling Israel's Propaganda</h> It's absolutely Israel's prerogative to call everyone who disagrees with any of their most-cherished policies an "antisemite". But you're a fool if you allow it to influence your thinking in any way. It's not a fact of history. It's subterfuge. It's chaff. You'll just tire yourself out fighting an endless stream of lies. Still, The U.S., France, Germany, and Britain are falling all over themselves to make derogatory talk about Israel---let's face it, anything less than <i>fawning</i> is basically unsupportive and therefore hostile---equivalent to anti-semitism. If you're going to end up being called an antisemite the second you no longer express full-throated support for every Israeli policy, then you might as well get it over with early. Don't waste a second of your time with information that isn't factual or is evidence-free. Don't waste a second of your time trying to please an entity that's going to throw you under the bus the <i>second</i> you're no longer useful to it. I get to hear about students chanting antisemitic slogans on college campuses. Interesting. Is there video? No? Not even after a month of allegations that this is happening? Not a single video? Not a single recording? Huh. That's weird. Misdirection. Chaff. Subterfuge. Dissembling. Bullshit. I guess I don't have to take it seriously then. If this phenomenon was as prevalent as they say, so prevalent as to be worth prioritizing as a real concern, it shouldn't be difficult at all to show a few seconds of evidence. And yet...there is none. So, you can just ignore the allegation until some evidence shows up. It's remarkably easy. That didn't stop a Soviet-style show-trial in Congress, though. <h>Stop pigeonholing. It's lazy.</h> You don’t have to be that moron that engages in a discussion just long enough to figure out which of the two possible sides to an argument they will put their opponent in. Instead of having a discussion about what each person knows and where there are opportunities to learn something, these people are there to teach the other person one thing: why the speaker is right and the listener, should they disagree with any detail, is, at best, misguided, and, at worst, the enemy. And so it goes. Even if you try to hold yourself above the fray, people will struggle mightily to put you in a box, a pigeonhole. Oh, do you not believe every Israeli lie with your whole heart? Ah, then you must be pro-Palestinian. Pro-truth and pro-justice and pro-fairness is not an allowed position. I've done a tremendous amount of reading and thinking about world affairs over the last 20--25 years, and more than my fair share of writing. I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to distill my entire viewpoint into a one-dimensional sound-bite or tweet within the first minute of our conversation. I’m personally not specifically against any country. Most countries are filled with lovely, innocent people---especially if you just leave them alone. I’m against countries doing horrible bullshit at the expense of their own or other countries’ peoples. I will admit that it especially sticks in my craw when it’s mixed with hypocrisy. On this point, the Israelis are occasionally refreshingly open—when they’re not lying their faces off. The U.S. generally tries to stay on its high horse much longer. This pigeonholing has got to stop. When I recently heard someone recite the history of the Middle East that they learned from their right-of-center, very neoliberal newspaper from Switzerland (NZZ, if you’re wondering), then I don’t think to myself "this person is obviously pro-Israel." I think to myself that this person has put in some time to learn about the history, which is great! But they spent their time with a reliably partisan source, from which they won’t learn enough real history. It meant that there was an irrational focus on the Balfour Treaty—like anybody today gives a shit what the British think now, or thought then—and on agreements that the Palestinians had failed to sign. <h>They brought it on themselves 🤷‍♀️</h> They say, now do you see? Do I see what? What argument are you actually making? That the Palestinians' suffering is actually all their own fault? That's your argument? <img src="{att_link}stop_hitting_yourself_-_nelson_muntz.jpg" href="{att_link}stop_hitting_yourself_-_nelson_muntz.jpg" align="none" caption="Stop Hitting Yourself - Nelson Muntz" scale="50%"> Stop beating around the bush, then. Just come right out and say it. You can't? Why not? Because it sounds <i>fucking ludicrous</i> when you say it out loud? Because it utterly lacks empathy? Because you've never imagined what it would be like for you to have to agree to something like the Palestinians were being asked to agree to? You know, after they'd been bent over the last few times they signed things or had things signed for them? (Now the Balfour Treaty is relevant. 😉) A failure to agree to penurious conditions enforced on one in a quasi-legal, but obviously coercive process is sold to people by publications like the NZZ as the Palestinians being unable to agree to live with Jews. <h>Their bullshit detectors are <i>kaputt</i></h> I found myself thinking that these people are in such a hurry to learn what their viewpoint is expected to be—learning history takes time and effort and they’ve got other shit to do—that they leave their empathy, common sense, and bullshit detectors out of it, entirely. When someone tells you that the history of Israel is of the poor Jews/Israelis just trying to figure out how to fit into a place that they consider their ancestral home and the current residents being greedy with their land—no bullshit detector goes off? They don't wonder whether that's the whole story? These people don’t ask themselves—<i>empathetically</i>—what they themselves would do if someone came along and just said that half of canton Zürich just belonged to a bunch of Ukrainians now! Would they sign those documents making the annexation legally binding? Of course not. But they very quickly believe exactly that story when it's told about somewhere else. I don't think that they're <i>pro-Israeli</i> (as they quickly accused me of being <i>pro-Palestinian</i>).<fn> I do start to think that they lack empathy and common sense. They don’t wonder where 75 years of history went in their story. They don’t bother to try to find out what’s happening today. Their only defense would be that they are <i>utterly</i> unaware of what Israel is currently doing in Gaza. If they know, and they still think that’s OK, then they have completely lost their ethical and legal moorings. You’d have to forget about talking about the Middle East and determine what their attitude is toward justice, fairness, human rights, international law, or equality. Because if you think Israel has any right to do what it’s been doing for decades, then <i>you can only believe that might makes right</i>. In that case, you are a giant, giant hypocrite because you would never want to switch places with the Palestinians. You don’t have principles. Principles are those rules that you apply equally, regardless of whether the target is a friend or foe. If it’s bad for Iran to be a theocratic state, then why is it OK for Saudi Arabia or Israel? I'll wait. <h>The militaristic binary: with us or against us</h> Oh. Because we have an empire to run. No you don't! You live in Switzerland! You don't have to kowtow to Empire! You don't have to buy into this militaristic us-or-them binary. Be. An. Adult.<fn> The person I was talking to the other night about Israel also laid out for me that the <i>only</i> solution to the current situation was for Israel to occupy the Gaza Strip again, to tighten the noose on those unruly bastards again. That will bring peace. I mean, what an idiotic idea! It’s completely belied by literally every single instance of such a situation in the past! It has literally never worked that way. But it doesn’t stop fools like this from constantly proposing that the only possible solution is to provide even more weapons and money and support. Well, actually, he said that the solution is to cut off funds—but he meant to the Palestinians! He’s convinced that they’re the ones getting tons of support! It’s incredible. Just an utterly broken bullshit detector. Either that, or he has literally no idea what the power differential there is, what’s actually going on. In that case, it’s more a dereliction of duty, as he was the one who horned his way into a conversation about Israel to let us all know how it <i>really is</i>. I tried to stop him, but at least I got an interesting essay out of it. <h>Our global system is <i>plunder</i><fn></h> In a highly related matter, the article <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/12/23/308656/" author="Jeffrey St. Clair" source="CounterPunch">Made in the USA</a> discusses the closing of the Red Sea by the Houthis. <bq>The 10 Nation Red Sea coalition effort–called <b>Operation Prosperity Guardian</b> includes the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles, and Spain. <b>Not one country on the Red Sea agreed to join and only one Arab country–Bahrain–is a member. How’s that for diplomacy?</b></bq> <bq><b>The US and Saudis have been “hitting them hard” enough to cause the deaths of 400,000 people (through bombs, drones, starvation and disease) since 2014.</b> The US “escalation dominance” in Afghanistan ended with the Taliban stronger than it was before the war. It’s one thing not to have learned lessons about the self-defeating arrogance of Imperial power from Tacitus. <b>It’s another level of stupidity altogether, for Atlantic Council gunslingers like Kroenig, to have elided the memory of the last 20 years of murderous futility, from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.</b></bq> But this is how every one of these morons thinks. This is how nearly <i>everyone</i> thinks. They split the world into "our side" and evil. Anything that gets in their way must be eradicated by military means, never by means of trade or just <i>paying for stuff that other people have that you want.</i> What a concept! No. Plunder is the only way they know. A shockingly large part of the so-called civilized world cannot think outside of the confines of this binary: with us or against us. Anyone who refuses to allow themselves to be mugged by us must be against us. It is therefore valid to eliminate them before they eliminate us. So we kill them, the money pops out like in GTA, and we continue along our way, whistling down the sidewalk into a rosy sunset, full of love for ourselves and our piety. Everyone goes into a pigeonhole. With us or against us. Most people are NPCs. They don't understand anything about the world other than what's been programmed into them. If you don't agree with Party A's talking points, then you must be in Party B. And vice versa. Think outside the box! What if the world just stopped selling weapons to the Saudis? What if the world paid to restore Yemen? The Houthis would knock it off immediately. That literally doesn't even offer itself as a solution. It's not military, so it's not possible. It's giving in to their violence---rather than them giving in to ours. These people have no principles, no morals, not ethics. They are rudderless and garbage human beings. I don't think they're incapable of changing, of rehabilitation, but they need a lot of work before they can consider themselves to be moral beings, civilized members of a civilized society. Their inherent lack of empathy and knee-jerk, unthinking racism colors everything they do. <h>It's more than sort-of racist</h> Is it racist? Yeah, it kind of is. They tend to think differently when the victims are brown than when they're white. When the perpetrators are white or European (or Israeli), they are very generous in their interpretations, very forgiving of perceived crimes. When the perpetrators are official enemies, they believe anything and everything unquestioningly. Yeah, it seems that people in Europe and America are pretty unilaterally being told that history began on October 7th and they’re absolutely delighted to believe it. I spoke to one person who winced when I said that history didn't start on October 7th, so he's definitely been primed to pigeonhole the <i>shit</i> out of anyone who uses that phrase. It was like watching the Manchurian Candidate awaken. These people swallow loads of Israeli lies like they’re working a bathroom stall in a truck-stop bathroom. They don’t question because they don’t really care. Their instincts---bred into them by decades of propaganda---have already told them what they're going to think. They think that the worldwide protests are a bunch of Jew-hating, whiny young people who don’t understand how to fight terror. Typical pussies, the youth. No stomach for genocide when it's necessary and right. <h>Time is a merciless, uncaring wheel</h> And we're back to Blowback. It's the same thing all over again. it's the same same story as in Gulf Wars I and II. it's the same story as in Afghanistan, as in Syria. These people don’t care about being catastrophically wrong again and again, as long as they themselves feel good about their opinion, as long as the solution is exclusively a military and not a moral one, and <i>as long as they don’t pay a single tiny bit of a price for it.</i> And why should they care? They all fail upwards. They are rewarded for their behavior because ours is a savage, uncivilized world. In that sense, we keep hearing about atrocities---and then we...don't. They just kind of go away. Our lives basically don't change. The U.S. or its clients commit war crimes. Some people get mad. It goes away. Nothing happens. <c>GOTO 1</c>. So I can understand these people’s point of view: Palestine’s been a humanitarian crisis for a long time---our whole lives, for most of us. It’s worse now, but these people have never been forced to give a shit before, so why should they give a shit now? People don’t think about justice, about fairness. They think about <i>which opinion have they been told to have.</i> <h>It's easy being an uncaring fool</h> They have the luxury of having whatever opinion is the most convenient, because it has no effect on their lives anyway. And their consciences are clear because they honestly don’t care if idiots whose opinions they don’t care about think they’re bad people. They never have. They have no moral compass, not really. They don’t get worried about things. They never doubt that they’re right. They spend a couple of hours watching TV—which has never lied to them before—and then start calling everyone else antisemites and terrorist-lovers and "Putinversteher". It’s so easy to be a goddamned moron. And they almost always end up backing the solution that will actually end up making the thing that they’re complaining about worse. When it gets worse, they complain about it more, and then believe the first fucking solution offered by the same idiots that made it worse the last time. They never learn. They can only think in terms of "bigger, better, faster, more", where what satisfies those conditions is spoon-fed to them by the companies that stand to profit the most. If something doesn’t go the way they only just recently started believing it should, then we should blow up whoever’s impeding it until they get out of our way. Blow them up with the military! Sanction them economically! Starve those socialists! Kill those pesky Houthis! They're blocking my Amazon shipments! They're bad for my business! Growth is king. There is no other solution to any problem. You can only grow or invent your way out of problems. You can’t ever wonder whether we’re on the wrong track. Reduction is never an option. <h>I hope they can be saved</h> And the people that they claim to admire! It's impossible to even fathom that they know anything about what these people really stand for---I have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're just wildly uninformed about their heroes rather than that they're true monsters. You can tell that I'm talking about people I care for---otherwise I might be less generous. They love Trump, Biden, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama---all sorts of monsters. They have no problem with entire cabinets full of the most dickish, mendacious monsters. I have to cling to a shred of hope that my friends and family simply don't know anything about history, they know nothing about what these people have said, what they've done, what they stand for. <hr> <ft>The review of Iraq-war movies with Matt Christman was pretty good, too.</ft> <ft>This has been happening to me for over two decades, so I'm used to it. But discussions where you're constantly forced to waste time explaining that you can't defend viewpoints that you don't have, that have been ascribed to you by the person demanding justification---those discussions aren't very fruitful. It's bad enough when there is a massive information imbalance---I'm usually at fault here, as I have a <i>lot</i> more time and discipline to read hundreds of pages of news per week---but when your interlocutor is shooting for a quick and cheap checkmate, it's even worse. I've been told I love Obama, John Kerry, Joe Biden, etc. It's all very tiring. Just read the several thousand pages of my blog to find out what I really think, already. God, what the problem? The YouTube algorithm is getting better! Just after posting this article, I was offered this video that illustrates <i>perfectly</i> what it's like to be labeled and pigeonholed by a know-nothing know-it-all. <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD7Ol0gz11k" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/JD7Ol0gz11k" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Novara Media" caption="I'm Literally a Communist You Idiot"></ft> <ft>I was reminded of this silly thing again when I read an article called <a href="https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/12/us-congress-recommends-placing-assets-at-lagrange-points-to-counter-china/" author="Eric Berger" source="Ars Technica">US Congress recommends placing assets at Lagrange points to counter China</a> about the LaGrange points—and that <i>China</i> is trying to take over the one on the dark side of the moon. There is no notion of cooperation. There is only competition. Either "we" get it or the Chinese do. There is no non-military, no non-aggressive solution. Children in a fucking sandbox. We're doomed. </ft> <ft><abbr title="hat tip">h/t</abbr> to Naomi Klein in the Blowback bonus episode who provided me with this word. I've been calling it "piracy", which is correct by its classic definition, but is kind of bound up with other principles these days. "Plunder" is much better.</ft>