For A Westerner, Opposing The Empire Is The Only Path To Dignity

Reading by Tim Foley:

The only way to truly have dignity and integrity as a westerner is to put your energy into opposing the empire under which you live.

Under the individualism of our capitalist society, we are indoctrinated with the belief that the most important and interesting things about us are the personal characteristics which distinguish us from other people: our likes and dislikes, our lifestyle, our interpersonal relationships, our sense of fashion, how successful we are professionally, academically and romantically, etc.

But when you live under the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on the planet, your individual little quirks and facets are a lot less significant than the extent to which you oppose the abuses that your rulers are inflicting upon human beings around the world. If you met a German in 1940, you would probably be a lot less curious about his taste in music and fondness for dapper suits than you would be about his level of support for Adolf Hitler.

That’s you right now. You’re the German in 1940. The most interesting and relevant thing about you is the extent to which you oppose the globe-spanning empire you live under. At this point in history, everything else about you is a very distant second.

I’m sure you’re a nice person. I’m sure you try to be decent to everyone you encounter, and I’m sure you’ve created a really nifty personality for yourself over the course of your life. You probably own some cool stuff and have some fun stories about things you’ve experienced over the years. But as a westerner, none of that matters nearly as much as the degree to which you stand in opposition to the psychopathic dominators who run your society today.

If we lived in Africa, Asia or Latin America, the unique qualities of our individual personalities would have more relevance, because we wouldn’t be materially benefiting from an empire which murders, exploits and steals from the people of the global south. But we are westerners, and the river of blood which feeds our way of life is always the loudest thing in the room.

For us, opposing that river of blood is the only path to a respectable life. We have no control over the fact that right now we live in a society that is fueled by a system of imperialist extraction propped up by the barrel of a gun, but we can control our response to that reality. We can do something every day to throw sand in the gears of the imperial machine. We can help weaken public trust in its propaganda services. We can help open the eyes of our fellow westerners to the reality of what our governments are doing in our name. We can work to foment a revolutionary zeitgeist. We can help construct a robust and widespread anti-war movement.

Your choice to do that or not is the most interesting and significant thing about you as a person. I mean no disrespect to your other wonderful attributes when I say this; that’s just the reality of what it means to be born into this particular slice of spacetime.

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Feature image by David Geitgey Sierralupe from Eugene, Oregon — 2026–02–28 ICE Out and No Iran War, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=190159633