With no hint of irony and regardless of nationality, although the American variant is clearly the loudest, patriotism defines itself by the eagerness to see one’s fellows suffer and die needlessly. Its adherents confining themselves to whichever safe spaces, echo chambers, news bubbles, comfort zones and gated communities both physical and metaphysical allowing for the mass of reality to be blockaded, the most vocal patriots can’t even see the inconsistencies of their own beliefs. If you oppose all wars generally and gun ownership specifically, they don’t count you among their number no matter how many fewer American lives you’d risk. If you endorse universal free healthcare generally and pandemic precautions specifically, by their definitions you ain’t no real patriot, because you’d be seeking to save American lives from suffering. They earnestly believe the best way to convey their love of god is by obsessing over all the people, places and things comprising its creation they’d do without, and they believe love of country is only possible by insisting huge swathes of its population sight unseen deserve lesser rights, resources and opportunities. Like any other symbol, the American flag is just a thing to shield one’s own biases, desires, fetishes, quirks, wishes and whims beside, anything uncomfortable or unfamiliar openly regarded as a threat to esteem as though survival of life or liberty depend on nothing else.
Considering tiktok’s controversies, the terror is 100% down to financial competition. Selling user data and control over user experiences to third parties is what all the FAANG corporations do as business model, but the fact it’s an outsider profiteering is the real offense. The militaries of China and Russia combined have a tenth our budget, a hundredth of our military presence globally, but their capitalism is younger than ours, ours gone over the hill by fabricating demand to meet preordained supplies rather than the versa vice of manufacturing goods and services to meet existing demand. If the mere lack of dominance amounts to any threat to our well-being or livelihood, then our industry leaders are only getting a taste of what we put the rest of the world through across generations. Most mothers tell their kids they’re special, but nobody really has to take that so literally.
This is absolute truth, while our culture disregards anything unfamiliar or unflattering as untrue as if truth could not possibly hold any other function. And I think it’s further complicated by the nature of the digital socials being the self-containment that is DIY segregation, with the practice of fan-fictionalizing reality in real time having gotten so popular people expect the same from their news media and schools, to never be met with anything unflattering or unfamiliar regardless of the cost. Growth doesn’t come from that though, only stagnation and self-destruction. Without this silly need to follow or be followed, placating egos be they our very own or the most promising, we’d be more self-dependent, and thus have more to offer the world that carries us. Rather than destroying anything not ready, willing or able to prioritize our favored thoughts and feelings. If we give more weight to symbols than the people they represent, the people pay the price. If you want to hate most of the world just say so, don’t hide your thoughts and feelings behind a thing claiming ownership of you when it should be the other way around. Nobody anywhere deserves blame or credit for anything I ever say or do. What problems do I manifest, living that way? Contrary to the convictions of MAGA particularly, freedom is not the ability to end the civil or basic human rights of others. I like how they think the devil’s big deal is temptation, yet only comes at them through the things they hate. I think all of DC lacks any sense of accountability or personal responsibility, but the further rightwing one goes the more offended they get by the prospects. It’s the stuff we give our lives to that hold the most sway over said lives, extending from our creature comforts on up to the people, icons and institutions we are obliged or compelled to carry water for. If you require others to have less than yourself, you’re not superior, you are codependent, as codependent as those people, icons and institutions who rely fundamentally on the sacrifices of anybody and everybody save themselves. Pride and comfort have jack to do with survival, but how quick this society is to misconstrue that personally and collectively. I’ve around a million words in essays at my site, and not once have I made the argument that anybody deserves more than you. I’ve often argued nobody deserves less though. Yet every politician is just a competing flavor of rightwing at this point in space and time, emphasizing their select fantasies over the verifiable life or death needs of others. Ego ego ego when and where the universe laughs if it notices at all.
By my refusing to even pretend that I myself am by any means consequential, do the standards of proper society thus declare me as unsuccessful. I give everything to avoid making demands of others, of any other. I do not knowingly impose myself, my thoughts or my feelings anywhere, especially not for influence. And so do I create no problems. Everyone presumes that avoiding troubles automatically implies troubles for themselves, and not avoiding troubles for others. When we only sacrifice for persons possessing more rights, resources and opportunities than ourselves, we empower the very hierarchy which thrives on our lack of problem-solving be it microcosm or macrocosm, but when we sacrifice only for those possessing fewer or lesser rights, resources and opportunities than ourselves, problems get solved. The acts of helping and killing lead to very different outcomes, as differently as does condoning efforts to help and condoning lethal force no matter the story selling its contrivance as requirement. Anything and everything lethal is just plain wrong, and it really doesn’t matter who is arguing on its behalf. Freedom is not the ability to impede the civil or basic human rights of others or to impair the right of others to self-determination. It’s not. And everyone but everyone feels that their own personal exemptions stand, which prevents all manner of democratic societies from achieving or maintaining any happy ending as a whole. Regardless of what the self-serving proclaim, there is always enough resources and opportunities to grant everybody a worthwhile life. There’s enough responsibility too, but the self-serving argue against that all the more.
Associating with no person or persons means that I cannot be held liable as culpable alongside anybody’s placeholder for villainy. Which is not difficult in achieving for no person or persons is trustworthy, in the sense that trust is for those who believe fate can be bargained with. I am simply not worth knowing by anyone, as I am a bad person, and I am a bad person because I believe that nobody is worth knowing. I will help save any life but I’ll be damned if I need their friendship or love. I’d rather a world where my little sister and her husband do not exist in abject terror of what proper society takes for granted. I’d prefer more people be willing to help others than be willing to co-sign lethal force used upon others. My aligning with absolutely nobody’s conceptions of evil personified and my enriching absolutely nobody are two convictions not at all unrelated.
I’m 45 now as of the Ides of March, and the older I grow the more adamant is my conviction that indulging the fantasy of ego, especially one’s own, is the root to every problem in existence, from the personal to the global every problem resulting from some ego insisting on being catered with its thoughts and feelings prioritized by others enduring their own. And Americans only hero-worship the most self-serving among them, not the self-sacrificing who define heroism. Of course most every comment online would entail idiots arguing over which marketing they’ve been sold on, all believing greatness comes by osmosis or just really wanting it badly enough. Most of human history involved identity informing culture, not the other way around.
Colonizers of old saw progress in gentrification, recreating their homes whenever and wherever they could have just stayed home. Modern colonizers work with even more polluted principle and conviction, seeing progress in the thoughts and feelings of others being made subservient toward their own. Instead of sticking with familiar and comfortable TV shows for example, they require for all other shows to be recreations of what’s familiar and comfortable for them. Today’s world casts the concept of progress as changes eternally demanded of others, when real progress comes from making no demands of sacrifice by anybody but ourselves. When you’re not sharing in the burdens of a society you share nothing, rather are you taking away from its potential. And failure to oppress, no matter how preferable the will, is the furthest cry from being oppressed oneself. True justice, true equality and equanimity alike, could and should mean that none have power or authority over the thoughts and feelings of others, over the self-determination where their life may lead them. If life or liberty or pursuits of happiness are only made possible by others having less than ourselves, we further the credence for those users and abusers already possessing more through lying, cheating and stealing. We do not have to actually love anybody to function as adults or as contributing members to a society, but taking that as free license to lie or cheat or steal is nothing but the most lazy and gutless of unimaginative codependency. Doesn’t matter how much we like or feel appeased by the celebrities whose root function is to lie, the politicians whose root function is to cheat or the executives whose root function is to steal, any one of us could live better without those root functions in our lives at all.
And this is why I will to my dying day be an enemy of the state, endorsing no brands, pledging no loyalty oaths of allegiance or praying for forgiveness. All those enriched by brands, by pledges of allegiance and by prayers and forgiveness create all the causes for concern we waste our lives enduring. I endure without the esteem given or taken. Life is actually designed for just that. I align with no person, place or thing, but I oppose everybody who condones lethal force. I will help anybody knowing lesser rights, resources or opportunities than myself, and only those knowing lesser rights, resources or opportunities than myself. This makes me better than nobody, but it does end every friendship and relationship with persons thinking or feeling otherwise. A handful of dirt is worth more than any political career, any stock option or celebrity’s hashtag. And if friends and relations fail to accept such reality, then a handful of dirt is worth more than the comfort levels of their demands too.