The Bath 2024. Oil on canvas, 20 x 20"
Hi Blurt,
We’re almost caught up with my ongoing project to get poor while the U.S. partakes in genocide. This was written on President’s Day:
Several of my readers are friends. I never want to estrange those who I like and love, but a reason I have ever accepted friendship with any person in the first place was by the mutual assumption that certain things are good, and some stuff bad. Like socialized medicine, good, and stockpiling of WMDs, bad. So naturally, I stayed away from those affected by the propaganda machine enough to vocalize its spin into stubborn arguing points such as “Universal health care will cripple the economy”, and “Without an arsenal of over 3,000 nuclear bombs, our grandchildren will take their SATs in Mandarin”. Fact is, healthy people save economies that are inclusive to things like trees and animals, and nuclear Armageddon kills everything, even scholastic aptitudes. All conventional bombs too, are just bad, really bad, bad, bad. Cash cows dropped by cowards on brown people so top bureaucrats at Boeing and Congress can afford Audis and hair replacement.
So the people I know and like tend to dream of peace. They do yoga, read books, take walks without rancor, hold hands…
But lately there’s something very rotten in the state of this nation state. 20th century social psychologists have tested and retested the superpower of in-groups, and the results ain’t pretty. In-groups have power to determine for its members what they shall deem to be right and wrong. The bigger the membership, the more outreaching influence of the in-group. Followers reference in-group catch phrases, take its litmus tests, obey the platforms. For instance, peanut butter jar recycling. At last week’s Super Duper Bowl, 1000 private planes landed at Las Vegas International airport. Meanwhile, the powerful influence of my previous in-group had me scrub peanut glue out of a glass jar and never expect Taylor Swift to give a 280 character tweet about high speed rail. National political party in-groups have the special ability to make its members ignore crimes of the military, CIA and FBI as long as they’re intimidating or killing the out-group. In the case of the military, the out-group is any nation that does not have an air force to fight back with fair and square. Likewise, those who tend to vote Democrat, (or Republican depending on the decade) overlook enormous propaganda (and capital) crimes committed by the CIA and FBI. A recent example would be Russiagate, (and here too). Months of zero-evidence corporate-state media propaganda has led to over 500,000 Ukranian casualties, and only one dead American—a “journalist” killed in a Ukrainian prison because he wrote anti-NATO-ly (instructive to see a U.S. state magazine’s account of the deceased). Billions of tax dollars sent to a corrupt regime to kill both Russians and Ukrainians and enrich weapons dealers. What golden joy for Boeing and its evil twins! (State magazine again)
Want to test this in-group/out-group theory for yourself? Below are two statements for discovery:
Genocide is really bad.
Ethnic cleansing is really bad.
Agree or disagree with one or both and know your true in-group without stating your political party affiliation. Then begin the search for like-minded comrades. If you are one to agree with both statements, but more importantly, manage to free yourself of what others once expected you to think, then battle half won. Now, stop by for a beer and we’ll plan and play out our resistance to the groupthink. That is, if you’re in my in-group. Genocide-deniers. Go eat cheese.
At a national level, what is the most obvious, non-violent option of resistance if one agrees with either of the statements, and, at the time of critical thinking, is not an actual slave?
Of course! Abstain from voting for any candidate who has an opposite public reaction to the above statements, or refuses comment as they pertain to the ongoing, U.S. enabled hell in Palestine. That’s obvious. Yet easier said than done. One wants to believe in liberty, and then the non-genocidal psychologists remind her, not without their own inner dirges of dissonance, that she is just a social animal fearing, more than death, in-group disfavor.
From Caitlin Johnstone:
If you can even excuse genocide to justify your continuing support for a nation or political party, then you can excuse literally anything. There is absolutely nothing the leaders of your political faction could possibly do that would cause you to stop supporting them. If this isn’t your red line, then you don’t have any red lines.
What this means is that your politics are not actually guided by any interest in truth or ethics; they are guided solely and exclusively by arbitrary team loyalty. You cheer for your side for the exact same reason someone born in Texas cheers for the Dallas Cowboys. You might make up some grander reasons for your support which involve appeals to truth and morality, but you’ve made a liar of yourself and proved those reasons false by the fact that you are currently excusing an actual, literal genocide.
Oh well. High spending this week, but worth it. $259.88. Still under the IRS radar, though, which means this: Voice in wilderness, meet rice and beans, at least for as long as it takes this terror government to stop killing children.
Here is a brief opinion-essay of a 102 year old Frenchman that cuts a wee bit into the power of in-groups whose leaders are vicarious murderers.
Vive la résistance!
Ron
P.S. For those who watch broadcast news, listen to NPR, basically consume media filtered through corporate headquarters, may I suggest surfing the Internet when there is time on your hands? I used to go to Twitter to get first hand accounts from on-the-ground journalists in Gaza. Then Israel killed all the journalists in Gaza. Now most of Twitter is a wait and see what Israeli “soldiers” post on Tik-tok (we live in insane times). Lots of war crimes there, and the International Court of Justice is taking note.
It’s a genocide folks. A vote for Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Robert Kennedy, or any of the 75 Senators and 366 Congresspeople left taking bribes, is a vote for mass murder of a civilian population. Hopefully world justice will take them out of action before the next lifeless limbless 7-year old girl hangs out a Rafah window.
In-groups are powerful monsters. Draw your lines!
Don’t Vote . 🇺🇸 They are all criminals.
I won’t!