I hate the simple minded people who say we should suffer the injustices of this world silently and earn a reward in the “next” world. Yeah, right. Some existential sleight of hand going on there.
Favorite fog-noun-phrase: the (self-appointed) Masters of the Universe. You know the ones, who without irony or remorse use phrases like “acceptable losses” and “narrative management” to describe atrocities and their coverups.
Would it comfort you at all to recognize that as horrific as the incidents you recount (and many more besides) are, the USA’s track record is actually below average in evil-per-capita by historical standards? History’s catalog of horror fills libraries to bursting. Its study scars the heart with a thousand little cuts.
Could we do better? Perhaps. Should we strive for better? Absolutely. But should we pick the dark grains of sand off of the beach of our history, and pour the bucket of those and only those out on the lectern, claiming that a beach full of light and color is black as the darkest night and deserves destruction?
I argue that we should not. That’s the path Chomsky, Zinn, and Hannah-Jones want us to take, with their one-sided retellings; to hate ourselves so much for our crimes that in collective shame and nausea we tear our nation down, or in paralyzed apathy allow it to be torn down around us.
You gave the fog-noun, a good one . “Acceptable losses” is a price somebody set. “Narrative management” is a story installed where an audit should be.
On the average, I’ll concede it entirely. The US isn’t uniquely evil, history’s catalogue is bottomless, and I don’t claim otherwise. But notice where the concession leaves us: below-average-evil-per-capita has no address. You can’t subpoena a historical mean. It’s my own fog, one level up, arguing for the defense. Leopold’s Congo doesn’t discount Purdue’s invoice.
And I didn’t pick the dark grains. They were entered into evidence by the people who made them: declassified, pleaded to, settled, filed.
Where we agree: I don’t want this torn down either. The ending of that piece is that undirected rage runs downhill onto whoever is nearest and least defended, changes nothing, and leaves you angry, right, and miserable. That’s the paralysis you’re warning about, and I named it as the failure mode. Subpoena, statute, clawback, roll-call vote — those are maintenance operations.
So: the Masters of the Universe. Give me one. A name, a date, a desk. I’ll bring the docket.
Would that it were so easy. The list is long. But the function of a privileged class is to insulate itself from consequences. More than anything else, the rich intend to remain rich, and the powerful to remain in power, while impeding too much entry of new players that would dilute their wealth and power.
Some of us pray for justice in the next world, because there is so little of it here.
I suppose that with the limited power of outsiders the best we can do is to steal a page from Alinsky’s book: pick a target, paralyze it, polarize it. But of the many rogues available, which is most worthy? The Bushies who invented WMDs as an excuse for war? The Obamaites who let Wall Street walk away from subprime in exchange for funding all their NGOs and causes? The coterie of grifters within and around the Trump circle? Or the intelligence community that lied and worse to try to be rid of him?
Diogenes is still carrying his lamp, looking for an honest man…
How do you measure evil? By just the amount it takes to make non-existence a reality. For example, anti-or-apathetic Whites who work against their own people in nihilistic ways, some even under the auspices of Universal "love," ironically enough. I think evil is the removal of consciousness from reality - deliberately through conscious means or unwittingly, via ignorance and obtuse natures, and lack of introspection. We should add those who attempt consciousness and seek objective reality, as far as it can be measured, also are evil - if they remain inert in physical reality, and think only their thoughts, doing - being - nothing. Struggling not against their enemies, but allowing the slaughter of beauty and truth.
Thanks for your treatise and for acknowledging the uselessness of othering! They, them, wall street, etc gets us know where. The post of who did what with a name and an address, AND what can each of US (WE) do... is the next step. We got here, because a whole lot of "us" just stayed asleep or oblivious, or saying some such, "that's too bad for "them"... and here we are now, each of us is "them." Beware. Much appreciation! And to take action... do ______.
I feel so sorry for you! There is joy and beauty all around you, but you can’t be blind to it. There are good people in our towns and cities, our churches. Find some good ones, make friends, go to church, talk to God. Look at he beauty around you, the sky, the trees, the flowers, the bees, animals, pets. Take a drive to a park, a river. Visit your loved ones. Yes, humanity has an evil side, thanks to Satan….kick him out of your life! Invite Jesus in. You are free to fight against the evil you see, be part of the solution.
Don't blame Satan for the evil-doings of humans. Satan was made up by some control freak a very few hundred years ago in order to shift blame for wrongdoings. Jesus is known for speaking Truth to Power, both in religious establishment and in government. Jesus cared for the poor, the marginalized, and the vulnerable. This rant that we both just read doesn't deny beauty all around and that there are good people. It calls on the good people to Get Involved in holding the evildoers to account for their many transgressions, as it were.
Before I could walk I listened to my mother and aunts discussing the appallingly rude behaviour of american soldiers in our Australian cities; except for the influence of the noble ‘american dissidents’ of my teenage, that disgust remains with me into my eighties.
So to me ‘yanks’ is a suitable label for them that I constantly use because it is a very ugly word still applicable despite a few sympathetic yankee friends over the years who I do admire.
At present that awful present president nicely reinforces my age-old conviction.
I am ashamed of the yankeeness of present Australia and encourage all my compatriots recognise the obvious fact that money is a lousy yardstick for value.
With salutations and best wishes for an enlightening day.
My fog? MK Ultra. The records that will never be found. The criminals who lived long, full lives and many of whom are now dead while I still live the record every day within a fog that never lifts. There is a name though. I found it this past January, a name to a photograph of a person I recognized. She is the link between MK Ultra and the Epstein Files. I'm certain of it. The name is Lynn Hasbrook Riley, long dead now, but infamous in my cellular memory, the specifics of which can be found in a segment of my autobiography *The Yod* published on my Substack, entitled "Wild Eyed Southern Boys and Lynn H. Riley".
Catch this. The most important paragraph that I want to put into a single, stand-alone restack, Substack is refusing to restack as that. I have restacked other paragraphs before and after the essential one Substack is rejecting. Now that's laser-surgery style censorship.
Impotence. I had to skim through it all to get to the bottom (and I enjoyed much of it) - because while it was a world class rant, it was still a rant - and I get ranting, and I appreciate the amount of dedication to research and seeking and knowing - but it is still ranting. Where to "mail this"? To ourselves. To anyone not doing something in material reality - and writing counts as "doing" to be sure, but only so far - at some point one must get out of the chair and try to create real relationships in the real neighborhood and try for some hard-core real life street/community/neighborhood activism using the real body - this is my two cents. Everything else is impotence. Which I hate. And find ugly.
Shiit. Me too. ☝️
I hate the simple minded people who say we should suffer the injustices of this world silently and earn a reward in the “next” world. Yeah, right. Some existential sleight of hand going on there.
Favorite fog-noun-phrase: the (self-appointed) Masters of the Universe. You know the ones, who without irony or remorse use phrases like “acceptable losses” and “narrative management” to describe atrocities and their coverups.
Would it comfort you at all to recognize that as horrific as the incidents you recount (and many more besides) are, the USA’s track record is actually below average in evil-per-capita by historical standards? History’s catalog of horror fills libraries to bursting. Its study scars the heart with a thousand little cuts.
Could we do better? Perhaps. Should we strive for better? Absolutely. But should we pick the dark grains of sand off of the beach of our history, and pour the bucket of those and only those out on the lectern, claiming that a beach full of light and color is black as the darkest night and deserves destruction?
I argue that we should not. That’s the path Chomsky, Zinn, and Hannah-Jones want us to take, with their one-sided retellings; to hate ourselves so much for our crimes that in collective shame and nausea we tear our nation down, or in paralyzed apathy allow it to be torn down around us.
You gave the fog-noun, a good one . “Acceptable losses” is a price somebody set. “Narrative management” is a story installed where an audit should be.
On the average, I’ll concede it entirely. The US isn’t uniquely evil, history’s catalogue is bottomless, and I don’t claim otherwise. But notice where the concession leaves us: below-average-evil-per-capita has no address. You can’t subpoena a historical mean. It’s my own fog, one level up, arguing for the defense. Leopold’s Congo doesn’t discount Purdue’s invoice.
And I didn’t pick the dark grains. They were entered into evidence by the people who made them: declassified, pleaded to, settled, filed.
Where we agree: I don’t want this torn down either. The ending of that piece is that undirected rage runs downhill onto whoever is nearest and least defended, changes nothing, and leaves you angry, right, and miserable. That’s the paralysis you’re warning about, and I named it as the failure mode. Subpoena, statute, clawback, roll-call vote — those are maintenance operations.
So: the Masters of the Universe. Give me one. A name, a date, a desk. I’ll bring the docket.
Would that it were so easy. The list is long. But the function of a privileged class is to insulate itself from consequences. More than anything else, the rich intend to remain rich, and the powerful to remain in power, while impeding too much entry of new players that would dilute their wealth and power.
Some of us pray for justice in the next world, because there is so little of it here.
I suppose that with the limited power of outsiders the best we can do is to steal a page from Alinsky’s book: pick a target, paralyze it, polarize it. But of the many rogues available, which is most worthy? The Bushies who invented WMDs as an excuse for war? The Obamaites who let Wall Street walk away from subprime in exchange for funding all their NGOs and causes? The coterie of grifters within and around the Trump circle? Or the intelligence community that lied and worse to try to be rid of him?
Diogenes is still carrying his lamp, looking for an honest man…
How do you measure evil? By just the amount it takes to make non-existence a reality. For example, anti-or-apathetic Whites who work against their own people in nihilistic ways, some even under the auspices of Universal "love," ironically enough. I think evil is the removal of consciousness from reality - deliberately through conscious means or unwittingly, via ignorance and obtuse natures, and lack of introspection. We should add those who attempt consciousness and seek objective reality, as far as it can be measured, also are evil - if they remain inert in physical reality, and think only their thoughts, doing - being - nothing. Struggling not against their enemies, but allowing the slaughter of beauty and truth.
Me too.
I hate the institutionalized racism.
I hate the culture of greed and normalized corruption.
The willful ignorance that permeates every facet of the is god forsaken place.
The nationalistic tribalism diguised as patriotism.
But alas I’m too poor to go anywhere else. 😪
Finally someone hates this country and the cunts who run it just as much as I do. Great read
136231
Thanks for your treatise and for acknowledging the uselessness of othering! They, them, wall street, etc gets us know where. The post of who did what with a name and an address, AND what can each of US (WE) do... is the next step. We got here, because a whole lot of "us" just stayed asleep or oblivious, or saying some such, "that's too bad for "them"... and here we are now, each of us is "them." Beware. Much appreciation! And to take action... do ______.
I feel so sorry for you! There is joy and beauty all around you, but you can’t be blind to it. There are good people in our towns and cities, our churches. Find some good ones, make friends, go to church, talk to God. Look at he beauty around you, the sky, the trees, the flowers, the bees, animals, pets. Take a drive to a park, a river. Visit your loved ones. Yes, humanity has an evil side, thanks to Satan….kick him out of your life! Invite Jesus in. You are free to fight against the evil you see, be part of the solution.
Don't blame Satan for the evil-doings of humans. Satan was made up by some control freak a very few hundred years ago in order to shift blame for wrongdoings. Jesus is known for speaking Truth to Power, both in religious establishment and in government. Jesus cared for the poor, the marginalized, and the vulnerable. This rant that we both just read doesn't deny beauty all around and that there are good people. It calls on the good people to Get Involved in holding the evildoers to account for their many transgressions, as it were.
Thats called White Washing
lauriemillerjade.com
And on top of all those things pointed out, Is junk food,
Generational brain damage from years of eating SH*T.
And they know its as bad as say tobacco, but like tobacco,
Its legal to producce and sell the stuff.
lauriemillerjade.com
The vague thing I hate is how is how "they" would rather destroy the world than just release the damn Epstein files
Before I could walk I listened to my mother and aunts discussing the appallingly rude behaviour of american soldiers in our Australian cities; except for the influence of the noble ‘american dissidents’ of my teenage, that disgust remains with me into my eighties.
So to me ‘yanks’ is a suitable label for them that I constantly use because it is a very ugly word still applicable despite a few sympathetic yankee friends over the years who I do admire.
At present that awful present president nicely reinforces my age-old conviction.
I am ashamed of the yankeeness of present Australia and encourage all my compatriots recognise the obvious fact that money is a lousy yardstick for value.
With salutations and best wishes for an enlightening day.
My fog? MK Ultra. The records that will never be found. The criminals who lived long, full lives and many of whom are now dead while I still live the record every day within a fog that never lifts. There is a name though. I found it this past January, a name to a photograph of a person I recognized. She is the link between MK Ultra and the Epstein Files. I'm certain of it. The name is Lynn Hasbrook Riley, long dead now, but infamous in my cellular memory, the specifics of which can be found in a segment of my autobiography *The Yod* published on my Substack, entitled "Wild Eyed Southern Boys and Lynn H. Riley".
Catch this. The most important paragraph that I want to put into a single, stand-alone restack, Substack is refusing to restack as that. I have restacked other paragraphs before and after the essential one Substack is rejecting. Now that's laser-surgery style censorship.
I hate hypocrisy, cruelty and injustice. And the absence of empathy , comprehension and love ❤️
Impotence. I had to skim through it all to get to the bottom (and I enjoyed much of it) - because while it was a world class rant, it was still a rant - and I get ranting, and I appreciate the amount of dedication to research and seeking and knowing - but it is still ranting. Where to "mail this"? To ourselves. To anyone not doing something in material reality - and writing counts as "doing" to be sure, but only so far - at some point one must get out of the chair and try to create real relationships in the real neighborhood and try for some hard-core real life street/community/neighborhood activism using the real body - this is my two cents. Everything else is impotence. Which I hate. And find ugly.
I recommend, if I may, another great post I just read - about fighting the good fight: https://theacademyofideas.substack.com/p/nietzsches-most-important-tool-for?r=3mhpv9&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Hate is good - but only up to a point. Let it motivate you to love your own people and help to save them - and yourself. xo.
Ecclesiastical abuse
Take the pledge of allegiance for example