For the time being I’ve said all I have to on matters Minnesota. Likewise Gaza, Ukraine and Epstein – though all are connected within the overarching context of a US oligarchy masquerading as a democracy and determined at all costs, up to and including thermonuclear Armageddon, to shore up its weakening but still murderously powerful grip on the planet.
People are like, “Oh yeah right Caitlin, it’s ALWAYS America’s fault. You’re always blaming the US for every conflict, just because it runs a globe-spanning empire which dominates the planet with violence and coercion and works continuously to keep all the other countries subjugated to it.” It’s a lot like saying, “Okay sure we’re trapped in a room with a tiger, and sure we keep getting eaten, and yes your leg is missing and you’ve got a large bite out of your torso, but you can’t blame ALL of that on the tiger. It’s not fair. Some of it might be Steve’s fault. Steve’s kind of a jerk.”
As it happens, the issue uppermost in my mind, as we await answers to the question – is war in West Asia imminent? – is one on which many have opinions, me included, 1 but few rush in to call. Allow me then to use the relative and doubtless short-lived calm to reflect on why “Steve’s kind of a jerk” is music to the ears of the nearest thing on this earth to evil incarnate.
Early in my February 3 post, From mea culpa to Milosevic, I apologised for having described as ‘idiots’ those who whether explicitly or implicitly – and whether unequivocally or bothsidesedly – promote the warped narratives of those who want a a US war on Iran. I went on to vow to do as the Christians counsel by hating the sin but loving the sinner.
Condescending? If you say so. But why not take me up on my evidenced reasoning as set out in countless posts on this site?
A dear and fiercely intelligent friend, first generation Irish immigrant raised in dirt poverty by Catholic parents of the most bible literalist kind, wrote in BTL response:
I know intimately the evil of religion having grown up in a tyrannical and dogmatic religious system that led my father to try and kill me twice when I ran away from its anti-life poison into freedom. A country like Iran, where women are not allowed to dance or sing, they are haram, where people are killed because they enjoy love in their body, where children are indoctrinated and turned stupid by idiotic fanatics, is the evil twin of the psychopathic killing machine of the U.S.
A personal comment, before I return to a profoundly impersonal issue. Our both being writers brought us together, courtesy a mutual pal, but we have other things in common. Relevant here are (a) an interest in non dogmatic readings of Marx, (b) a loathing of religious indoctrination (I did a five year stretch in a Baptist children’s home) and (c) our both being graduates of non Christian ‘spiritual’ cults in later life.
Just so you have the backdrop to my relationship with this magnificent and indomitable spirit despite – because of? – having endured much …
I replied:
I’m a non believer who no more supports Shia dogma than Vatican. I have Iranian friends (a tiny and skewed sample I grant you) who fled as the 1979 revolution to expel the detested Shah was hijacked by a theocracy which went on to liquidate the communist Tudeh Party. As apostates they’d upbraid me on similar grounds to your take on, inter alia, Catholicism.
But for reasons set out many times on this site, it is currently impossible to call for the downfall of the Iranian government – just as it was the secularist government in Damascus – without in effect calling, however sincere our opposition to both, for the expansion of US imperial power.
Nor is such delusionality confined to Owen Jones and the ‘soft’ radical left. It infects the ‘hard’ left too. (Syria: how Trotskyism got it so wrong.) Some of the finest thinkers in the West continue to embrace the fantasy of a third force – the international proletariat – riding in at one minute to midnight to bring down both a murderous empire and the flawed governments standing in its way.
Anne replied with the grace that’s made her, though we’ve met face to face only twice, a most valued friend. And there we left it.
There too, though there’s much more to say, I must leave the matter of why, despite ‘Steve being kind of a jerk’, I refuse to condemn him when the prime beneficiary, given global realities in play now and for the foreseeable, will be a US oligarchy masquerading as a democracy and determined at all costs, up to and including thermonuclear Armageddon, to shore up its weakening but still murderously powerful grip on the planet the tiger …
* * *
- In my February 1 post, More on empire’s zugzwang, I wrote of
Cause for stern optimism in the deterrent effect of some voices at least in America’s deep state knowing that neither Beijing nor Moscow can stand idly by, whereas the US does have the option – humiliating though it may be – of backing off.
But even when seeing grounds for hope, I stressed the limits on human ability to gauge with the requisite accuracy the cross currents at work here. It would take one braver or more foolhardy than me to call it. Nor do I wish to make the very error – of conflating national with oligarchic interest – I counsel against. To the casual eye, Tehran, Beijing and Moscow have more skin in this game. But let’s not underestimate the danger facing the US ruling class from the decline of dollar hegemony, and with it the ‘exorbitant privilege’ it conferred.