TRAVEL OBSERVATIONS
Everywhere we travel on this tour, it’s the same, familiar political situation: the so-called liberal party has abandoned the left and the population is suffering more as a result, the so-called liberal party’s support has collapsed, and fascism is getting a field day. Anybody who still believes that so-called liberal politicians compromise with the far right “to win votes” is truly a fool. This fascist comeback we are all enduring is absolutely deliberate, and so-called liberals are helping it right along. The left are the only ones standing in the way.
Why fascism specifically? Not because some new evidence has come to light proving the inherent superiority of caucasians (or Jews, as the case may be). Rather, every other excuse for continuing our politico-economic system has crumbled to dust. Now that so much “Western civilization” sweet-talking has been exposed as lies, many desperate whites cling to any idea, no matter how preposterous, that might maintain what remains of their privilege. Latter-day white supremacy is the last throes of the denial that our politico-economic system was a mistake.
The function of camera-hog extremists like Trump, Netanyahu, and the IDF’s most visible sadists, is to repeatedly distract from the banal, everyday violence inherent to our political systems. They legitimize things like genocide by being extra-bad apples at it, so that so-called liberals can swoop in as the less offensive, more competent administrators of the very same genocide.
Today's lesser-evil liberalism is no more than a facade, disguising a barbarism as genocidal and racist as the far right. The so-called liberal’s role is to make genocide, apartheid, and mass rape more palatable. They’re the polite face of atrocity. They’re here to keep abandoned, angry populations quiet, by self-righteously accusing anyone who dislikes war crimes of being a racist, or worse, a litmus tester. The far right staves off impending revolution a little longer with violence and fear, the so-called liberals stave off impending revolution a little longer with pacification and guilt-tripping.
Ever notice how it’s always “Trump’s ICE,” “Trump’s Middle East wars,” “Trump’s racism,” “Trump’s outrageous Pentagon budget,” “Trump’s tax breaks for billionaires,” “Trump’s climate destruction,” “Trump’s attack on international law,” “Trump’s attack on democracy”…as if all these things weren’t the ordinary, everyday features of our politico-economic system, consistently supported and sustained by both parties?
For example, when Republicans interfere with basic electoral processes by redistricting, that’s a clear attack on democracy. But when so many Dems take AIPAC money and the party refuses to stop this foreign interference in our elections, that’s also a clear attack on democracy. When the Democratic party illegally prevents candidates or parties to their left from getting on ballots or participating in debates, that’s an attack on democracy. When Dem politicians consistently enable policies that are the direct opposite of the good policies voters want and need, that’s an attack on democracy.
On the plane I watched our friend Michael Shannon star in Nuremburg. The historical lesson was crystal clear. The Holocaust happened because people let it happen. Because they didn't stand up until it was too late. After the Holocaust, the tribunal was based on a few simple principles: All must be answerable to the law. Civilization can afford no compromise by dealing ambiguously or indecisively with genocides, military conquests, and war crimes. When governments commit crimes so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because civilization cannot survive their being repeated. This is of course even truer now, with the looming threat of WWIII between nuclear-armed states than it was at the end of WWII.
After the Holocaust, the world created laws to make sure genocide would never be allowed to happen again. That worthy achievement is exactly what Democrats, Republicans and Israel are systematically dismantling before our eyes. The frameworks, institutions and consequences created to ensure the peace of world are now being demolished with the help of so-called liberals, in order to make an exception for Israel, because Israel’s violence is profitable to certain sectors of the so-called liberal economy.
If you care enough about the Holocaust to study its history, you know that Joe Biden and his team belong at the Hague. The Nuremberg laws were created to prevent genocide under any circumstances. No exceptions for revenge, no exceptions if you are traumatized, no exceptions if your economy is propped up on weapons sales. Israel, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party are collaborating to throw those lessons and frameworks and international agreements from the aftermath of the Holocaust into the garbage. Together they defile the memory of the Holocaust and its victims.
When we say Chuck Schumer, Hakim Jeffries, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, their cabinet and spokespeople are sell-outs, we don’t just mean they are corrupt or greedy. We mean that they are literal war criminals. They will go down in history as having assisted the attempted annihilation of an entire ethnicity. They are living symbols of racial hatred, terrorism, and profitable violence. Their crimes are so malignant, repulsive, and evil that people have been hanged for less.
The lesson so-called liberals are now taking from the Holocaust isn’t that genocide is wrong, but that you have to look sad when you do it. Trump and Netanyahu offend so-called liberals because they smile as they kill. They violate the codes of etiquette that govern the liquidation of peoples. The fact that neither Israelis nor Americans are safer as a result of their governments’ ceaseless violence is not the issue. The breaking of international laws meant to prevent future holocausts is not the issue. In fact those laws apparently deserve to be broken, and using your money.
Voting records are clear. Today’s so-called liberals stand for nothing less than profitable genocide, profitable slavery, profitable rape centers, profitable computerization of mass killing, profitable land theft and resulting real estate deals, profitable ICE raids, profitable apartheid, and profitable demolition of international laws put in place after the Holocaust. They stand for funding and investing in the murder of journalists, doctors, teachers and aid workers. So-called liberals are building a world in which even the vilest criminals face no consequences. And they will probably succeed, because they have a friend in the White House.
When a so-called liberal says they intend to continue the good work that Biden or Obama did, they are saying they believe that there shouldn’t be any rules governing the use of force on Earth. This is your indication that they are comfortable with the world as it is. They are comfortable with its inhabitants being slaughtered, so that their billionaire donors don’t get annoyed. Society collapses while the war machine gets more and more of your income.
Current so-called liberals are also comfortable losing elections to the far right. This way they can continue to raise money off of scaremongering. They can sustain the bipartisan policies of bombing Middle Eastern countries, enslaving incarcerated Americans and Congolese children, building up ICE and the police and the Pentagon and the border wall, while letting Trump or whoever currently leads the far right take the PR hit. No matter how far off the deep end the latest far right policy goes, you can count on so-called liberals to insist we must meet the fascists halfway.
In fact current so-called liberals themselves fulfill the key definitions of fascism. They promote, sustain and defend genocide, illegal invasions, crimes against humanity, enslavement, torture, apartheid, and forced starvation. They pass policies that are the opposite of what their voters want. “But at least they’re not fascist.” Liberal “rights” are meaningless when they can be swiped away in a flash whenever there’s an “emergency,” and the people creating and declaring the emergencies are the same people doing the swiping. Liberal “hope” is meaningless when the world is this close to nuclear armageddon and environmental collapse.
Today’s nation-states offer voters a choice between genocide deniers and genocide champions. You’re asked to argue which style of genocider is worse, and then pick the other one. Then feel self-righteous about having just enabled the worst crime humans have ever invented. Only the left offers any alternative. Their policies are popular, but the war criminals often succeed in tricking voters into believing that it is an unrealistic pipe dream to support policies, candidates, or parties that are remotely humane or sustainable.
How is this situation possible? Opposing genocide is hardly a lefty fringe policy. It’s not “going too far.” Talking about genocide is not “being too strident.” What’s going too far is genocide. What’s strident is genocide. Genocide is an extreme-right fringe policy, regardless where the person in charge has a “D” next to their name. Most people on Earth are absolutely disgusted by it and rightly so.
What makes this absurd situation possible, at least in the U.S., is simply that our political system runs on legalized bribery. Someone with lots of money offers to finance your campaign in return for an agreement that you will do as you are told. If you don’t, the superPAC or corporate lobbyist representing Big Oil, Big Tech, Israel, or the military industrial complex, will simply fund your opponent’s campaign.
Obviously the only hope of a candidate representing voters’ interests is if their backbone is stronger than their desperation for campaign funds. If a politician has already proven themselves susceptible to corporate or military influence, they can never again be trusted. The pressure on a politician from war profiteers doesn’t magically decrease when they reach some higher point on the totem pole of power. Exactly the opposite.
The field of so-called liberal politicians is littered with sell-outs. AOC has already folded. She epitomizes the politician who campaigns on values matching those of voters, only to have those values crushed once they attain power. AOC has pivoted from being a member of the left, to dismissing the left as people who are never satisfied. In this, she apparently is referring to the majority of her own voters, who hold the outrageous fringe belief is that genocide is bad. We can do better than that. A lot better.