These are disturbing times for the even partially awake. To monitor and as best we can draw attention to the criminality of those who, beneath a thinning veneer of ‘democracy’, rule the Western world may lead us into the realms of nightmare; whether subjective or, in the case of heroic souls like Julian Assange, all too objectively real.
My decade long journey into political awakening was preceded by a decade of ‘petit-bourgeois life-stylism’; itself preceded, prior to disillusionment with a flawed ‘guru’, by one of – I hate the term but haven’t a better one suitably succinct – spiritual seeking. 1 I can’t say I ever managed to fuse ‘political’ with ‘spiritual’ awakening. In fact I long ago stopped trying and maybe that, in its way, is a form of spiritual surrender – hineni.
One of those insisting on that fusion is the Melbourne blogger, Caitlin Johnstone. But “seeking” implies a someplace where we are not; a point B where we are at point A trying to figure out the route. Might it be more accurate to think of Letting Go; shedding barriers, internal and artificial, to seeing the indivisibility of life? As a fellow escapee from that flawed ‘guru’ put it to me years ago: what use can a spiritual life be if it fails to engage with the political? Which I’ve learned to translate into, stop making a big deal about a contradiction that isn’t.
Be that as it may, two things drew me to Caitlin’s posts. One was her extraordinary capacity to frame in simple terms – harder than it seems unless you’ve tried yourself – ideas that push back against the power-friendly narratives pumped out by mainstream news media, and beyond that in the ideological air we breathe – some call it The Matrix – an interwoven Weltanschauung we absorb through arts and entertainment, religious values, schooling and every other aspect of our culture; an air so pervasive it presents as common sense, while counter narratives no matter how fact-based and humanistically logical invite instant suspicion as extremist.
The other is her – again I baulk at the term but haven’t a better one to hand – spirituality.
Both are reflected in today’s offering.
Ukrainians And Americans Are Done With This War, But It Keeps Escalating Anyway
And we were told this war was all about protecting democracy.
The IDF dramatically increased its bombing campaign in Lebanon on Tuesday in the hours preceding an expected ceasefire with Hezbollah.
Israel always does this, and it’s so gross. Normal people get a ceasefire agreement and think “Good, this means we can finally stop fighting.” Israel gets a ceasefire agreement and goes, “This means we have to hurry up and kill as many people as possible before it takes effect.”
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The Biden administration is now pushing Ukraine to lower its minimum draft age from 25 to 18 in order to provide more cannon fodder for the war against Russia.
Polls say that both Ukrainians and Americans want this US proxy war to end, but instead of ending it Washington is pressuring Kyiv to throw teenagers into the threshing machine of an unwinnable conflict.
And we were told this war was all about protecting democracy …
Read in full. The piece isn’t long – hers never are – and you may even find time to follow the link in the final paragraph .
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- I’ve a good many decades to reflect on. My ‘spiritual seeking’ one was itself preceded by years of ‘political activism’ informed by a model I now see as preposterous, positing that the West’s rulers – armed to the teeth, versed in the dark arts of counterinsurgency, and with surveillance capacities beyond the wildest dreams of 20th century totalitarianisms – can be overthrown by workers’ militias.