Privilege always comes at somebody else’s expense
Nanjala Nyabola writes about seeing a white boss belittle a Haitian teacher — “I hate it because I sense that my empowerment as a foreign woman is expected to come at the cost of this man’s dignity. He cannot stand at full metaphorical height: he must slouch a little forward in order to make everyone just a little more comfortable. Privilege like this always comes at somebody else’s expense.”
I think about this often. What’s the harm of white privilege? What’s the harm in white people working in NGOs? What’s the harm in white people writing a Sri Lankan cookbook? In the abstract it seems harmless, but we don’t live in the abstract do we? Nyabola made me really think about who gets the bill. …
Chickens have come home to roost
America has been a violent empire for decades. America maintains over 800 military bases and is actively killing in 14 countries right now. Their own violence has come home, and white pundits are somehow surprised. They say, “this looks like Afghanistan or Iraq now.” No shit. This is you.
As Shailja Patel sarcastically said about the Capitol mob, many of them ex-stormtroopers, “Just unfathomable that Americans indoctrinated, trained, and paid to overthrow other governments, and destroy other countries, on the orders of their Commander-in-Chief, would try to overthrow the government of this country on the orders of their Commander-in-Chief.”
Now your active stormtroopers are in your Capitol, in the classic ‘oops we broke it, now we have to occupy it’ trick that America does all over the world. This is not something unusual happening to you. This is you happening to you. Ask the world you oblivious tits. America has been at continuous war for decades. Did you think it would never come home? Any old farm boy could’ve told you. Chickens come home to roost. …
Welcome to the bloody spin cycle
Despite fighting ‘terrorism’ for 20 years, Americans have no idea what it is. I lived through 30 years of terrorism and I can tell you this, terrorism is just one weapon of war, not particularly more heinous than the others, and it does one thing very well. Terrorism takes media. Terrorism doesn’t need to occupy territory, not at first. It lives rent-free in your mind.
Perhaps you watched the Capitol Attack and thought “how wrong, all Americans can unite against this.” LOL no. You thought you were watching the news, but millions of Americans were watching an ad. That’s how terrorism works. …
Quitting the demon app is not for everyone, but it’s possible
9 months ago I fell in the pool and just never replaced my smartphone. I got a Nokia banana-phone which is honestly about as useful as a banana. As a result, I couldn’t use WhatsApp. When I logged into my wife’s phone to finally delete the app, however, all hell broke loose.
For other people.
Indi has left the groupThis is what lashed across the screens of my relatives, my old work mates, my friends, my world. The app doesn’t say:
Indi left WhatsApp because it sucksIt says:
Indi has left the group because you suck, and he's probably mad at you. …America is exceptionally fucked
America is choking to death on its own mythology. The ‘strongest nation in the world’ cannot defend its own Capitol. The ‘oldest democracy in the world’ is attacking the right to vote. The ‘richest people in history’ are broke and dying in lakhs upon lakhs.
(White) Americans consistently refuse to believe what is happening to them because it’s not supposed to be happening to them. Our democracy cannot be collapsing, it’s so old. The pandemic cannot be out of control, we’re rich. …
You don’t beat fascism this easy
It doesn’t matter what the rules of checkers are if your opponent flips the table over. That’s what’s at stake here. Democrats are trying to win elections while Republicans are trying to overturn them. This is the runoff America finds itself in. Not for the Senate. For democracy itself.
It is important to remember that Hitler rose to power thru democracy. If even a minority of people want fascism, democracy will do that. It has no inherent value judgements of its own. It is also important to remember how slowly Hitler did it. From 1920 to 1932 Hitler chipped away at German democratic norms, playing the game until he got in. …
An important film, showing the tragedy and triumph of the first outbreak of COVID-19
CoroNation is Ai Weiwei’s guerrilla documentary covering the outbreak in Wuhan. It’s an intense film and I will include some graphic images in this review because frankly I think you need to see them. Watching CoroNation is the most I’ve felt the horror, the boredom, the sacrifice and the loss that is COVID-19.
What Weiwei’s film accomplishes is that it feels less like a film than just visiting people in Wuhan. It’s honestly boring sometimes, but that’s life. This is life and death in Wuhan.
The Boredom
Because the filming was essentially illegal and the director in exile, what you get is the result of hundreds of hours of footage edited together. The result is that there is no central narrator or even narrative. You also spend so long with most characters that even their narratives muddle into reality. …
Rich, white greed (and incompetence) will prolong this pandemic for years
Israel is not a vaccination success. It’s a crime. Israel is rapidly vaccinating Israelis, but not Palestinians in occupied territory. What Israel really demonstrates is the vaccine racism that has swept the world. Humans are divided, and the virus conquers.
Rich, white countries have catastrophically failed at basic public health measures and now they’re messing up vaccines. Vaccines are supposed to be a global public good, distributed strategically across the world. Instead they’re being hoarded and held back for profit. Behind all the scientific news, global vaccine distribution is a crime against humanity.
The most criminal act is that these countries are blocking a global, patent-free vaccine at the WTO. During a pandemic, they’re protecting drug company profits, global health be damned. Remember their names. The US, UK, EU, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Australia, Brazil, Japan. …
Everyone has the right to move. Even brown and black people you monsters
Let me start from a simple fact. Your children are no better than mine. Yet this is not where we live. All children today are born into a world of passport apartheid, on very different sides.
Citizenship keeps us down
My children were born with a kick-me sign on their backs — a Sri Lankan passport. This entitles them to concentration camps in Australia or drowning in the EU. Meanwhile rich/white children can go wherever they want. White children can see the world while brown children sweat in visa lines.
Well, fuck your kids. They’re no better than ours. We are all born free. We are all born with the same God-given right to walk the Earth, and it is only denied to the Dirty South by systematic violence. Your vaunted citizenship. …
How could it be worse?
Why do we have politicians? Please just think about this for a minute. Couldn’t you just select random people off the street and have them do a better job, or at least a less professional job of looting? This is in fact how democracy was supposed to be. Ask Aristotle:
It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election.
Athenian citizens — all being equals — literally drew lots for most positions. Athens didn’t have a semi-permanent political class because that would inevitably become a ruling class, AKA an oligarchy. Which is what we have today. We just vote on which branch of the oligarchy screws us, and call it a democracy. Aristotle would laugh. …
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