From childhood on, every occasion when and where I’ve ever had to defend myself in a fistfight, and there has in all guilty honesty been a few hundred because when you grow up poor enough then you cannot afford to lose a fight, it was never against Russians or Chinese or Liberlandians or whichever boogeyman of the fifteen minutes, but against American citizens. The worst people that I have ever known, the worst relationships, the worst landlords and the worst neighbors, the worst employers and the worst co-workers, were all from among the populace here in the USA. I have never been used or abused by a non-citizen. In dealings online or off, the persons I have dealt with who lied or cheated or stole in ways affecting or afflicting my life were each and everyone a USA citizen. I’m not saying that those outside the states are living saints, but I am saying that those within our imaginary boundaries are by my experiences no more saintlike. And it is foolish to declare otherwise, a sign of limited experience or of limited cognition or both.
The masses as a society pride themselves in a governance which purports to hold some truths to be self-evident, but in practice, that is possibly the biggest lie to keep the engines running. The finest example being the bible itself. One nation under god, a god with a testament never to kill while the nation itself spends over half its budget on warring and destruction, generates half its national revenue from selling weapons to the extent of being the world’s largest arms dealer, with no sense of irony. Oblivion, know thyself. Openly depriving others of liberties is not a defense of one’s own, but god forbid anyone say that aloud.
Every language whether written or spoken has its own peculiarities, with Christians giving little to no thought insofar as how no two languages are flawlessly relatable to one another. In our modern lexicon for example we have the word “duty” and its according definition, yet the ancient Greeks, those first executors of something approaching a Democratic governance, held no word or concept which translates perfectly to this duty we understand today. Every time the bible was translated into a different language, it was made to adapt to whichever differences in context and syntax both, whether minor alterations or dramatic changes. Many non-Catholics use the King James version, evidently in some denial for how he was not appointed by the church for such a massive re-write, but rather was operating on pure ego, scrapping entire books he personally objected to without rhyme or reason beyond said personal objection. Years later, in the 1400s or so, the church in Rome did officiate an official updating as governments across Europe were evolving beyond monarchies. Maybe the Magna Carta just proved to be such a bestseller, owners of the biblical IP wanted to keep its place on nightstands guaranteed. There is actually evidence that Shakespeare himself was one of those solicited to work on the reinterpretations with specific wordings and phrasings of the Book of Psalms, by far the more poetic of all the books of the bible, simply not existing prior to earlier usage from Shakespeare himself in his plays.
Yet despite historical evidence to the contrary, Christians today emphatically presume that the bible has gone unedited these past two millennia, with differing denominations yet still insisting theirs to be the one true interpretation despite literally none of these denominations but Roman-Catholicism existing at the time of actual authorship. As with sainthood today being a matter actually bought and sold, ivy league colleges have become laughable for offering little more than costly degrees not for those who can earn them but for those who can afford them. Which is a huge distinction, while the masses for the most part fail to put the two and two together of such good publicity for the wealthy certainly being a thing the wealthy can afford for themselves. And in spite of this, the general public allows itself to be sold on the notion that keepers of wealth are more intelligent than themselves, to the extent of Presidents reading and writing at grade-school levels viewed as aberrations as opposed to emblematic. One of the most noxious conspiracy theories is that Shakespeare himself did not actually compose his own stories, serving as a face for Francis Bacon or some member of royalty who did not wish to have their own name attached to the inherent frivolity of fiction, as though an unschooled person would simply be incapable of such imagination or originality.
Fuck, count all the syllables I’m slinging in this very article with the understanding that I myself am a high school dropout.
Glenn Greenwald is on the nose posing questions to some political establishment figures elsewhere given a free ride, but his recent assertions that results are all that matter, declaring bigger scoops are what’s important, is suggesting that ends justify the means. The man can be right about a lot of talking points, but ethically he is no less conflicted or convoluted than those many pundits jealous of whatever ground he breaks. Outside of marketing, mercenaries never have the moral high ground. I mean, as I’ve stated before, the pathology of might making right is the pathology implored by rapists and murderers and GI Joes the world over. There is no lesser of evils, just as there is no lesser way to rape someone. There is no cause whatsoever for self-contradiction, especially when the task of news-gathering is demeaned as some contest, a matter not at all in the service of truth or stemming from virtue. He’s only offering another brand of sensationalism, regardless of merits to be found in the outcome. In all likelihood from the few thousands killed on 9/11 there may have been a child molester or two, but nobody would praise the terrorists for that. For that matter, Glenn’s insistence that the Bush administration was more destructive than the Trump administration is an insult to the quarter of a million Americans and counting dead from coronavirus. Writers should write about what they know, but residing outside the country reveals how the millions booted from the food stamp program because billionaires like his own erstwhile employer desired those resources as well, could teach him quite a fucking lot. Yes, the blood of a million Iraqis is on American hands and yes, Trump neither invented or reinvented assholery, but he has done nothing to slow the machinery of war. In fact he’s sold hundreds of billions more in weaponry to the Saudis while getting one of the neighborhoods occupied by Israelis named for him. His resistance to NATO was nothing more than objections to American interests not benefiting directly or fastly enough. All of which means that ideologically, Trump co-signs on the devastation in Iraq, and elsewhere. Making comparative statements in regards to evil is liberating an evil. Even if it’s at cost to a different evil, some evil is defended, which I believe was similar to the argument you yourself used against your fellows at the self-destructing Intercept, Mr journalist-lawyer.
Consciously or not, turning a blinded eye to nefariousness from something you like, or replicating its pathology for one’s own gain, is not vanquishing evil no matter how much you dislike whatever is on the receiving end. It manifests a loophole for evil to prevail. And if simply wanting a thing to be true made it so, modern art and music would have considerably nothing to talk about. If it were that simple, why bother with prayer at all?
Months before the election, the ACLU found massive evidence that hundreds of thousands of voters had been illegally purged from databases in Georgia and in Pennsylvania. None of these people did anything wrong, just that they voted democrat in prior elections. But this means they waited and waited for their ballots to arrive in the post before learning too late that they were no longer registered, without explanation. I am not defending the Dems, but it’s infantile to ignore matters like this while accepting Trump’s accusations free of any evidence but social media gossip. I’ve no doubt liberals are doing bullshit too, as the parties excel only in blaming the other for what they themselves have wrought, but where is the proof that it’s on the same scale as the conservatives in this election? Nothing on facebook is real. People don’t get truths there, going there explicitly to avoid reality. Social media is nothing but DIY segregation no matter the high horses. If your chosen platform never questions your favorite pundits or celebrities, it is proactively being disingenuous to you, but if you sincerely believe that your favorite pundits or celebrities are beyond reproach, you are being disingenuous to yourself, and to the world around you.
Something else to consider is how many of the national-level liberal pundits view Mitch McConnell as more of a threat than Trump, because even if Trump goes the senate majority leader apparently has the authority to veto the president (in this case, Biden) on anything whether justified or not. If the DNC were in any position to cheat this time around, I doubt they’d let him keep his chair. If there was anything tangible to prove illegal activity, attorney general Barr would have no qualms about throwing vote-counters into black vans. Trump and Fox have both said no republicans are participating in the vote counting, even when live-streaming says otherwise. It is scary for everyone when so many want to believe the opposite of reality. One lady interviewed by fox said no republicans were allowed into the counting in PA, but then a reporter from CNN showed that same lady less than 24 hours earlier participating in the count herself. She knew she could state otherwise because most Fox viewers do not watch CNN, just as most CNN viewers do not watch Fox, with the obvious issue then being that not one of them is exposing themselves to more than one side of any given story narrative. It’s like I said about how local media treats local cops, power to convey information is the power to manipulate information, to downplay or to over-inflate or to ignore altogether. Paid media means paid to sell something, left or right. If an outlet is incapable of self-critique, it’s questionable across the board. Nobody is infallible, especially not the women I have fucked, but platforms or personas refusing to acknowledge faults or fallacies of their favorites are overlooking a lot no matter who it is they are supporting.
I have quoted Frankie Boyle in the past because I agree with many points his comedy has raised, but when he makes such a comment as this, he could not be more wrong by insinuating that reason might ever validate ego, much less it even remotely being the norm. My lifetime has been wasted cleaning up after proper members of society. Everyone may not in truth have an opinion, contrary to the adage, but ego is everywhere, and it being everywhere by no means makes it just.
My last few essays have been about the entitlement everyone feels for deciding which powers ever get held to account, when it should be all powers, all the time or this is not a representative government. And it’s not. There is nothing democratic about electoral votes. The half of the population that never votes, by not voting, would appear to know the real score. There are no such thing as heroes, and there are no happy endings to this.