Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): Here are five noises western liberals often make to avoid having to take a real position on Gaza: 1. “It’s heartbreaking!” 2. “It’s complicated!” 3. “BUT TRUMP!” 4. “I really hope there can be peace there someday!”
Ah, but as minorities in the brutally and murderously policed mass incarceration country called America would tell you….these are not liberals. They are genteel reactionaries, who are only a well placed camera away from going into full Karen mode. Much like Peloisi!
And Americans do believe in bombing their way over everything,, mass killing civilians, getting nowhere with it - then pretending it worked. See their failures Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria:
American 'liberals' were discredited long ago when they signed up for the Forever Wars en masse. The Genocide & Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine is simply going to be the Final Nail in the Coffin:
US 'Liberals' will from now on be viewed as nothing more than War Crime Apologists whose 'opinions' are not worth the pixels they are typed upon.
Jews own BlackRock. With their trillions, they could buy a chunk of Germany and relocate Israel there. Give Palestine back to the Palestinians. OK. Is that a solution?
It's not just "liberals", so-called. You think most "conservatives" want any relief for the Palestinians anymore than "liberals" do? It is most "Americans" of whatever partisan persuasion who don't take a stand one way or the other. We've been raised on constant warfare, love of violence (video games, TV and movies), and with the "example" of most people not taking a stand on anything, or almost anything, sloughing off discussion of all such matters ("it's negative", "let's change the subject to something positive"), and usually if not always avoiding and denying what is really going on, especially if they convince themselves, as most do, that there is nothing they can do about it anyway, so they just move on to seeking to "survive," and to "get ahead" which you gotta be a crook to successfully do.
Most "Americans", and the people in most of the world for that matter, live in avoidance and denial of reality, because they've been indoctrinated and conditioned since they became conscious, to "live" that way. "That's what everybody is (or most people are) doing." Deny and avoid facing that the "Matrix" control grid, mass-insanity of most people, and "living" in nothing but a fantasy world, exists. The majority acts like "it's just the way the world is...", etc. To now completely change and reverse course, and truly face reality, and to now take a stand concerning reality, is too drastic a change for people who have been brainwashed and programmed all their lives to "live like the Jones'", to conform, and to not question the many evil ways in which the world operates, getting worse and worse every year.
It's not an excuse for not making that change no matter how painful it is, but the way the world really works is so bleak, with only a thin patina, or veil, covering over the reality of our mass-suffering world, so most people bury their heads in the ground in order to avoid the pain of facing it. THE TRUTH is what sets us free, not living in avoidance and denial, but "everyone is doing (the latter)"; and again, "there's nothing we can do about it anyway". So, once more, it isn't only "liberals" who "live" this way, it is the vast majority of people, especially the vast majority of "Americans" and other people of the Western, so-called "democratic" countries. Most people don't know what liberty, freedom and rights mean anymore, and actually believe that those who stand up for them "are in the wrong" and "deserving" of whatever ill-will and/or violence that is inflicted on them for doing so.
Do you think most people are going to break out of that mindset and entire way of "living"? Most of them are "living" like everything is "hunky-dory", or at least like it is "just the way it is", and they're not going to, "liberal" or "conservative", upset their "reality" by making such a complete, drastic change in their "lives" for a truly set-free life that faces just how extremely bad most things all around us are, and for becoming, as a result, a pariah to most people around them, and a so-called "threat" because they no longer conform to the status quo. For example, if they are UN"vaccinated", they have become "untermenschen", only worthy of wearing "a yellow star", and being separated from "decent" society, and/or being eliminated altogether. Most people have been permanently turned into cowards, and wouldn't become truly-brave if you paid them a significant sum of money to do such.
I get really angry and loud sometimes about what is happening in Palestine. Then I get chastised by the "pacifists". Some say they just can't listen. When I say that if people had spoken out when it was clear that a holocaust (genocide) was happening in Germany, they quietly nod, but they still do not go to any demos or read anything other than the mainstream news. It is sometimes difficult not to start yelling like a madwoman at this kind of behaviour. And these are not people with political power. They are regular people who don't seem to really get it.
"This is a crime which requires outrage and punishment, not empty crocodile tears."
This. Neoliberals just can't help but give cover to the war crimes of Israel. That's why I shed crocodile tears whenever their candidates get voted out of office. They deserve to lose and lose badly. The world can do much better without them and their corporate paymasters.
"Look into the eyes of the orphaned infant above and tell her you just aren’t up for it. That you are too busy. That you have some shopping to do. That you are too stressed out. That you are too bummed out. Buck up." https://mark192.substack.com/p/america-can-you-look-into-her-eyes
Reparations? How in the world will that work? 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza x (let’s say) a miserely $100,000 = $230 billion dollars. That’s just to repay their approximate personal losses, nevermind all their public infrastructure, assets and businesses! The amount of reparations would be in the trillions. Who’s going to make the Israeli’s pay for it? It’ll never happen. Gaza was “flattened”. I’d say it’s probably in worse shape than North Korea was after the Americans bombed it to smithereens. The Gaza situation is beyond comprehension and beyond any viable solutions for any foreseen time in the future. Israel purposefully made it that way. And they have thus far gotten away with it. It’s beyond genocide… it’s Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima rolled into one. Never before in modern history have so many displaced, occupied people been subjected to such outright genocidal and abject misery on top of their existing misery. This is Dante’s Hell.
The first sentence of your next-to-last paragraph is something that I devoutly wish could happen. But I cannot see it happening all at once. And with the Biden administration bad and a Trump administration worse, it is hard to even conceive of a pathway toward it. The only person speaking out now is Bernie Sanders. Four years ago the Democratic moderates did not think he could beat Trump, so they (Buttigieg and Klobuchar) threw their support to Biden. Now it is Biden who is polling badly. The only person I can see saving us now is Sanders. (It is assumed that Kamala will do as badly or worse against Trump than Biden.) He has stayed out of primaries in deference to Biden and because he is a year older. However, he comes across as younger and feistier than Biden. The only way I can see a hope for Gaza is for the Democratic Convention, if Biden continues to poll badly and lose the young voters because of Biden's well known Zionism, to draft Sanders. The idea is not so far-fetched; in 2016 the republican party considered turning to Romney but the voters were adamant.
"It lets them express their progressive humanitarian feelings without actually taking a meaningful political position against what’s being done in their name with their tax dollars and with their tacit consent."
Shitlibs are nothing if not phony.
"If it was Jewish people enclosed in Gaza while any other ethnicity rained military explosives on them for four months, no liberal in the world would have trouble recognizing what they’re seeing and calling it what it is."
But that is also applicable to conservatives.
"Nothing has exposed the true nature of the Democratic Party like a Democrat president running for re-election during a US-backed genocide."
Actually, nothing has exposed the true nature of the Deep State like a titular president running for re-election during a US-backed genocide.
"By saying you want peace but refusing to say how you want the peace to come about, the “peace” you purport to support could mean anything."
Indeed, it is an empty sentiment.
"Merely flicking an intellectual thumbs-up to empty notions about a “two-state solution” is just more liberal psychological compartmentalization."
There must be a permanent ceasefire in Gaza in order to comply with the ICJ ruling. Not with Palestinians suffering under oppressive conditions, but as a place where all live with peace and equality. It is time for Pope Francis to do more than talk. He must go to Gaza and make a stand for peace and freedom.
I want to address the Trump and Biden bit. I have been shaking my head over the Argentines electing a rabid rightwinger who will take them back to 99 when they had four presidents in a couple months, an IMF default, people taking over their shuttered factories--how could people who'd been through that want to do it again? Then I read an analysis that gave me a clue--it boiled down to, they elected him in an election much like the one we Americans face in November. The Deep State seems determined that it will be Trump versus Biden, no other choices allowed. (Yes, there will be third parties, people like Cornel West and Jill Stein, and I'll vote for one of them--but it doesn't matter, the game is rigged so they can't win). If Trump wins, the world will howl and shake their heads--how could the Americans vote for that clown, especially after four years of his antics in office? If Biden wins, the world will howl and shake their heads--how could the Americans reelect Genocide Joe? The game is rigged.
Someone said we're responsible for Gaza because of our tax dollars, but do we get any say in that? Meanwhile, someone recently showed me the scabs all over his body and told me I really should get the shingles vaccine, so I got it set up for my husband and I to get the shots at WalMart. Yesterday my husband stopped by there, to find out that they demand insurance--we have only Medicare Part A, for any medical care but a hospital stay, you have to keep paying premiums for life. Alternatively he could pay cash for the two shots, totaling $520. How much, if anything, do you have to pay in your country? Drug companies regularly take patents for drugs developed almost entirely on the public dime, then charge 100 times the cost. These vampires are coming for YOUR healthcare system too--all it takes is bribes and lobbyists. The military lobby is even worse, and the fossil fuel lobby is the reason we get nothing but false solutions to climate change. This is not democracy. Absolutely key to this system is corporate media which work in collusion with government/corporations, to manufacture consent.
The US political system is ludicrous when looked at from the outside. It was created to support a right-wing ethos, based entirely around wealth creation. How a country, supposedly the only superpower in the world and a claimed democracy can operate as it does is beyond belief. It has a political judiciary and a completely partisan political system. No one ever votes against their own party and it only takes one seat movement to alter whether the Republicans or the Democrats are the party playing. The choice for president is based on wealth and in several cases that they’ve been in films or on television. There is now a competition between two guys well over 70. There is no suggestion of anyone in the DP running against Biden and little chance there will be anyone running against Trump for the RP. Most news commentary and footage of Biden is him falling over and Trump footage is of a shouty, sneery man with funny hair. Biden looks as though the lights are on but there’s no one home and Trump comes across as, simply, deeply unpleasant. Is this really the best the US, as the world’s (self-proclaimed) most powerful nation can come up with? It is a complete joke, or would be if it were remotely funny. The US has no moral compass and just does what it wants where it wants with no regard for life or anything else, except its own wealth creation and more power. Its only purpose is to take natural resources from other countries basically by stealing them whilst proclaiming it is trying to save those countries from themselves. It is absolute nonsense and a complete lie.
Ah, but as minorities in the brutally and murderously policed mass incarceration country called America would tell you….these are not liberals. They are genteel reactionaries, who are only a well placed camera away from going into full Karen mode. Much like Peloisi!
And Americans do believe in bombing their way over everything,, mass killing civilians, getting nowhere with it - then pretending it worked. See their failures Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria:
https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar
American 'liberals' were discredited long ago when they signed up for the Forever Wars en masse. The Genocide & Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine is simply going to be the Final Nail in the Coffin:
US 'Liberals' will from now on be viewed as nothing more than War Crime Apologists whose 'opinions' are not worth the pixels they are typed upon.
“BUT TRUMP!” - this applies fully to this forum.
Absolute majority of the commenters here are but-trumpers even if they'll squeal to "disagree".
Jews own BlackRock. With their trillions, they could buy a chunk of Germany and relocate Israel there. Give Palestine back to the Palestinians. OK. Is that a solution?
It's not just "liberals", so-called. You think most "conservatives" want any relief for the Palestinians anymore than "liberals" do? It is most "Americans" of whatever partisan persuasion who don't take a stand one way or the other. We've been raised on constant warfare, love of violence (video games, TV and movies), and with the "example" of most people not taking a stand on anything, or almost anything, sloughing off discussion of all such matters ("it's negative", "let's change the subject to something positive"), and usually if not always avoiding and denying what is really going on, especially if they convince themselves, as most do, that there is nothing they can do about it anyway, so they just move on to seeking to "survive," and to "get ahead" which you gotta be a crook to successfully do.
Most "Americans", and the people in most of the world for that matter, live in avoidance and denial of reality, because they've been indoctrinated and conditioned since they became conscious, to "live" that way. "That's what everybody is (or most people are) doing." Deny and avoid facing that the "Matrix" control grid, mass-insanity of most people, and "living" in nothing but a fantasy world, exists. The majority acts like "it's just the way the world is...", etc. To now completely change and reverse course, and truly face reality, and to now take a stand concerning reality, is too drastic a change for people who have been brainwashed and programmed all their lives to "live like the Jones'", to conform, and to not question the many evil ways in which the world operates, getting worse and worse every year.
It's not an excuse for not making that change no matter how painful it is, but the way the world really works is so bleak, with only a thin patina, or veil, covering over the reality of our mass-suffering world, so most people bury their heads in the ground in order to avoid the pain of facing it. THE TRUTH is what sets us free, not living in avoidance and denial, but "everyone is doing (the latter)"; and again, "there's nothing we can do about it anyway". So, once more, it isn't only "liberals" who "live" this way, it is the vast majority of people, especially the vast majority of "Americans" and other people of the Western, so-called "democratic" countries. Most people don't know what liberty, freedom and rights mean anymore, and actually believe that those who stand up for them "are in the wrong" and "deserving" of whatever ill-will and/or violence that is inflicted on them for doing so.
Do you think most people are going to break out of that mindset and entire way of "living"? Most of them are "living" like everything is "hunky-dory", or at least like it is "just the way it is", and they're not going to, "liberal" or "conservative", upset their "reality" by making such a complete, drastic change in their "lives" for a truly set-free life that faces just how extremely bad most things all around us are, and for becoming, as a result, a pariah to most people around them, and a so-called "threat" because they no longer conform to the status quo. For example, if they are UN"vaccinated", they have become "untermenschen", only worthy of wearing "a yellow star", and being separated from "decent" society, and/or being eliminated altogether. Most people have been permanently turned into cowards, and wouldn't become truly-brave if you paid them a significant sum of money to do such.
I get really angry and loud sometimes about what is happening in Palestine. Then I get chastised by the "pacifists". Some say they just can't listen. When I say that if people had spoken out when it was clear that a holocaust (genocide) was happening in Germany, they quietly nod, but they still do not go to any demos or read anything other than the mainstream news. It is sometimes difficult not to start yelling like a madwoman at this kind of behaviour. And these are not people with political power. They are regular people who don't seem to really get it.
"This is a crime which requires outrage and punishment, not empty crocodile tears."
This. Neoliberals just can't help but give cover to the war crimes of Israel. That's why I shed crocodile tears whenever their candidates get voted out of office. They deserve to lose and lose badly. The world can do much better without them and their corporate paymasters.
Liberals don’t want peace. They want quiet.
"America, Can You Look Into Her Eyes And..."
"Look into the eyes of the orphaned infant above and tell her you just aren’t up for it. That you are too busy. That you have some shopping to do. That you are too stressed out. That you are too bummed out. Buck up." https://mark192.substack.com/p/america-can-you-look-into-her-eyes
Reparations? How in the world will that work? 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza x (let’s say) a miserely $100,000 = $230 billion dollars. That’s just to repay their approximate personal losses, nevermind all their public infrastructure, assets and businesses! The amount of reparations would be in the trillions. Who’s going to make the Israeli’s pay for it? It’ll never happen. Gaza was “flattened”. I’d say it’s probably in worse shape than North Korea was after the Americans bombed it to smithereens. The Gaza situation is beyond comprehension and beyond any viable solutions for any foreseen time in the future. Israel purposefully made it that way. And they have thus far gotten away with it. It’s beyond genocide… it’s Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima rolled into one. Never before in modern history have so many displaced, occupied people been subjected to such outright genocidal and abject misery on top of their existing misery. This is Dante’s Hell.
As always, Caitlin, you say it better than any other journalist. You hit us in the gut. Brilliant.
The first sentence of your next-to-last paragraph is something that I devoutly wish could happen. But I cannot see it happening all at once. And with the Biden administration bad and a Trump administration worse, it is hard to even conceive of a pathway toward it. The only person speaking out now is Bernie Sanders. Four years ago the Democratic moderates did not think he could beat Trump, so they (Buttigieg and Klobuchar) threw their support to Biden. Now it is Biden who is polling badly. The only person I can see saving us now is Sanders. (It is assumed that Kamala will do as badly or worse against Trump than Biden.) He has stayed out of primaries in deference to Biden and because he is a year older. However, he comes across as younger and feistier than Biden. The only way I can see a hope for Gaza is for the Democratic Convention, if Biden continues to poll badly and lose the young voters because of Biden's well known Zionism, to draft Sanders. The idea is not so far-fetched; in 2016 the republican party considered turning to Romney but the voters were adamant.
"It lets them express their progressive humanitarian feelings without actually taking a meaningful political position against what’s being done in their name with their tax dollars and with their tacit consent."
Shitlibs are nothing if not phony.
"If it was Jewish people enclosed in Gaza while any other ethnicity rained military explosives on them for four months, no liberal in the world would have trouble recognizing what they’re seeing and calling it what it is."
But that is also applicable to conservatives.
"Nothing has exposed the true nature of the Democratic Party like a Democrat president running for re-election during a US-backed genocide."
Actually, nothing has exposed the true nature of the Deep State like a titular president running for re-election during a US-backed genocide.
"By saying you want peace but refusing to say how you want the peace to come about, the “peace” you purport to support could mean anything."
Indeed, it is an empty sentiment.
"Merely flicking an intellectual thumbs-up to empty notions about a “two-state solution” is just more liberal psychological compartmentalization."
Yes, it is a reaction insouciant people use.
Caitlin, thanks for another enlightening article.
There must be a permanent ceasefire in Gaza in order to comply with the ICJ ruling. Not with Palestinians suffering under oppressive conditions, but as a place where all live with peace and equality. It is time for Pope Francis to do more than talk. He must go to Gaza and make a stand for peace and freedom.
Please sign the petition and share widely.
https://chng.it/CRQ7qw4Gzn
Codepink:
https://www.codepink.org/cnngaza?utm_campaign=12_15_pali_update_alert_3&utm_medium=email&utm_source=codepink
Ceasefire Now
https://www.change.org/p/sign-and-share-this-urgent-petition-calling-for-a-cease
firenow-in-gaza-and-israel
These are a few small things we can do. If we can do more, let us do more.
I want to address the Trump and Biden bit. I have been shaking my head over the Argentines electing a rabid rightwinger who will take them back to 99 when they had four presidents in a couple months, an IMF default, people taking over their shuttered factories--how could people who'd been through that want to do it again? Then I read an analysis that gave me a clue--it boiled down to, they elected him in an election much like the one we Americans face in November. The Deep State seems determined that it will be Trump versus Biden, no other choices allowed. (Yes, there will be third parties, people like Cornel West and Jill Stein, and I'll vote for one of them--but it doesn't matter, the game is rigged so they can't win). If Trump wins, the world will howl and shake their heads--how could the Americans vote for that clown, especially after four years of his antics in office? If Biden wins, the world will howl and shake their heads--how could the Americans reelect Genocide Joe? The game is rigged.
Someone said we're responsible for Gaza because of our tax dollars, but do we get any say in that? Meanwhile, someone recently showed me the scabs all over his body and told me I really should get the shingles vaccine, so I got it set up for my husband and I to get the shots at WalMart. Yesterday my husband stopped by there, to find out that they demand insurance--we have only Medicare Part A, for any medical care but a hospital stay, you have to keep paying premiums for life. Alternatively he could pay cash for the two shots, totaling $520. How much, if anything, do you have to pay in your country? Drug companies regularly take patents for drugs developed almost entirely on the public dime, then charge 100 times the cost. These vampires are coming for YOUR healthcare system too--all it takes is bribes and lobbyists. The military lobby is even worse, and the fossil fuel lobby is the reason we get nothing but false solutions to climate change. This is not democracy. Absolutely key to this system is corporate media which work in collusion with government/corporations, to manufacture consent.
The US political system is ludicrous when looked at from the outside. It was created to support a right-wing ethos, based entirely around wealth creation. How a country, supposedly the only superpower in the world and a claimed democracy can operate as it does is beyond belief. It has a political judiciary and a completely partisan political system. No one ever votes against their own party and it only takes one seat movement to alter whether the Republicans or the Democrats are the party playing. The choice for president is based on wealth and in several cases that they’ve been in films or on television. There is now a competition between two guys well over 70. There is no suggestion of anyone in the DP running against Biden and little chance there will be anyone running against Trump for the RP. Most news commentary and footage of Biden is him falling over and Trump footage is of a shouty, sneery man with funny hair. Biden looks as though the lights are on but there’s no one home and Trump comes across as, simply, deeply unpleasant. Is this really the best the US, as the world’s (self-proclaimed) most powerful nation can come up with? It is a complete joke, or would be if it were remotely funny. The US has no moral compass and just does what it wants where it wants with no regard for life or anything else, except its own wealth creation and more power. Its only purpose is to take natural resources from other countries basically by stealing them whilst proclaiming it is trying to save those countries from themselves. It is absolute nonsense and a complete lie.