“It is not for Us to say whether there existed a distinction between Italians and Fascists. It is for your conscience to say so. When a whole nation accepts and maintains a government in existence, it means that the nation recognizes that government…We refrain from judging [Mussolini]. He is dead and what purpose is served by passing judgment on the dead? Death changes everything, sweeps everything away. Even mistakes. We dislike mentioning hatred or scorn in connection with a man who Is no longer able to answer Us. The same applies to the other invaders of Our country: Graziani, Badoglio. All dead. Silence is fitting.”
His Majesy Haile Selassie I, King of Kings and Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah
Welcome to another Weed Church. I had to cut this quote from a blog for Defector because blogs don’t get quotes in front of them. So now you guys get to read it. Smart readers like you don’t need me to tell you how the quote is applicable to current events.
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Tewahedo
One of the benefits of being off of social media is that I am no longer subjected to what a Rastafari friend once called “simulated telepathy.” Rasta have a way of finding phrases that sound great even when they’re complete nonsense, so I had to sit with that one for a little bit before deciding if I agreed with it. I think I only started to really get it once I got off the text based platforms; once I thought about it from the perspective of intrusive thoughts rather than “mind reading.” The hell of X (The Everything Platform) isn’t just that it’s a voluntary consumption of bad opinions, but the injection of thoughts that would’ve otherwise disappeared into the ether.
None of these opinions are even the important ones! And here we are getting mad at them. If an opinion has merit, it at least goes into an email. People pause before sending an email. No reason to pause before texting or tweeting (or X’ing). There’s probably something to be inferred by the separation between the two.
I had a piece go up on Defector and it was my first time publishing online without “being online.” It was a nice change of pace because while my ego-driven desire to know what people thought about the piece was still there, the only way I could access that information was to access the comment section. Accessing the comment section is the kind of thing that brings me great shame thus, like the person pausing over the send button for the unprofessional email, I am often able to control myself. Sometimes I’ll ask my pals in the group chat for the general vibes if I want to indulge, but reading specific comments is like grating my own fingernails.
It was nice to not know again, much like when my Twitter following was very small. My email is linked in the piece, thus people could email me their thoughts if they felt compelled. Rather than the manufactured feedback of social media impressions, the only way to hear how I’d done is if someone felt compelled to reach out. I got some nice notes from former military, which made me feel like I was able to maintain some sense of fairness to working stiffs while critiquing American imperialistic violence. I only got one mean note and it wasn’t even that mean. It was just really stupid.
I was accused of “both sides-ing” the issue of Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation because the article happens to briefly mention that voters will be unable to impact foundational American foreign policy in the 2024 election. To save my readers from the mundane argument likely copied from a facebook post, the gist was that Trump will be worse than Biden for all ongoing conflicts, thus any critique that doesn’t also include a disclaimer for a Biden vote is akin to treason. I’m certainly not going to quibble with the idea that Donald Trump is a disaster waiting to happen, I guess, but a) you have to admit it would be funny (albeit fantasy) if Donald Trump negotiated an Israeli - Palestinian peace and b) what does that have to do with anything, bud? Aaron Bushnell didn’t self-immolate to bring attention to the danger of Donald Trump, so can it with the self-obsessed faux-alarmism.
There’s this really dumb thing from social media I don’t miss where people would post about “gifted kid” problems. Ah jeez, you know you were a gifted kid if you get anxious when you see an unsolved equation. Stupid stuff like that. “Both sides” when deployed as an insult feels like a remnant of that debate club culture stuff, where the task is to rationalize some immovable state of existence — and somehow come up with a “right” answer for the chaos. If you do a good enough job, the teacher gives you a good grade, but nothing otherwise changes.
Sometimes I think that America needs to rediscover God if only so the gifted kid agnostics stop turning this country into a dualist shithole. If the first task the mind undergoes while watching a man self-immolate is to quickly consider how it may impact the electoral chances of one’s preferred presidential candidate, that person should consider a lobotomy. I have no patience for these people anymore.
What does “both sides” even mean? Issues have two sides, three sides, ten sides. Hell, I can think of a handful of topics that have about a million sides. Even something simple like cooking rice — you’d think that was settled but there’s actually quite a few ways to tackle the task. To the cable news morons this complex life and these complex behaviors have two sides, often conveniently demarcated by how the issue relates to the major political parties in the world’s most illiterate culture. This is the crux of their identity, which is why America is paradise for carnival barkers with the right college degrees.
It’s not just the one reader email I received. Lots of articles are being written by other idiots like me. Most of them are about the implications of Bushnell’s protest on the 2024 election and how it’s going to set the tone for debate. Very few of the articles are about the war machine and its trillions. Politicians and media proxies are going to toss Bushnell’s corpse around for 8 months or so here without any earnest intent on honoring the spirit of his protest.
I guess if you’re a real dumb person with a pile of leftover casserole for a brain, you could probably find two sides to that and pick the one that makes you feel like you’ve found a moral path through Babylon. I’m more of a Dharma guy, personally, so I don’t have that problem. This life has sucked for longer than anyone can measure, so I’m not sure why American life would be any better. Chin up.