Yeah well, the empire (little gangster state) is just as likely to turn on its colony (usA), by the looks of it. Something I have been warning about for decades about, what you support doing to others, coming back and biting you in the posterior. And how.
I don't think the issue is "no resistance" (as we already see resistance on a global level all over the world across people from all cultures, societies, ages, etc.).
The issue (IMHO) is - will those that resist win the fight/struggle against those in positions of power and authority (that have more 'resources' to fight with) ?
>>"Those in power and authority become haughty, arrogant and eventually self destruct."
You seem to 'underestimate' power (as many others have done throughout history). I'd rather be realistic and prepare with more force/vigor for the upcoming war/battle/fight against 'power' than assume "...oh, such people will eventually self-destruct and the empire will end".
Unfortunately, history's not on your side on this line of reasoning.
Actually, Chang, empires always do fall eventually. All have and this one is on that downhill slide right now and Israel is going with it, along with its western sycophants.
Agree. We are doing nothing as MAGA has all but destroyed the institutions of the US. I was trying to be consoling.
My favorite revolution was the French. And they hadn’t lost their spirit. Several years ago tens of thousands were demonstrating daily because retirement age was to be raised a few years. I might be exaggerating a bit.
Comes down to being a decent human, and putting THAT above nationalist rubbish. Shouldn’t be “rocket science” just common decency: the latter having become sadly UN common these days.
Yes. One of the things that disturbs me most about this system is that it encourages us to hate others. The other day, a person sitting in the park told me that mother nature would set us straight as happened in Nepal. When I said that wasn't mother nature that caused that, it was humans, he just looked blank. This system would encourage him to disparage me and me to look down on him. Solidarity means solidarity with all who are not exerting power over the rest of us. Even if those people don't entirely "get" the situation.
This piece paints a vivid moral picture, but it falls into the exact trap that keeps modern activism politically isolated and practically powerless. Weaponizing shame by comparing everyday citizens to 1940s Germans isn't a strategy for building power—it's an exercise in alienation. Real movements don't demand that ordinary people strip away their basic humanity to prove their worth; they construct broad, welcoming coalitions that give regular people practical ways to force structural change.
This perspective confuses moral posturing with political leverage. When a movement prioritizes its own ideological purity over the unglamorous, tactical work of policy lobbying, targeted economic pressure, and institutional building, it stops being a threat to the status quo and becomes a self-serving echo chamber. Publicly condemning comfortable Westerners might offer a temporary burst of self-righteous satisfaction, but it doesn't shift a single vote, alter a budget, or stop a single weapon transfer.
Worse, reducing all human value down to one's posture against "the empire" is fundamentally dehumanizing. It strips the intrinsic worth out of raising a family, serving a local community, practicing a faith, or creating art—the very elements of human flourishing that political struggle is supposed to protect in the first place. You cannot save the world by demanding that people destroy everything that makes it worth living in.
I DISAGREE with your "framing and characterization" of this article.
The article isn't proposing shame as a coalition-building tactic — it's making a claim about relative moral significance, addressed to the individual reader's self-conception, not a movement strategy memo. So judging it by "did this shift a vote or a budget" applies a standard it was never trying to meet. By that bar you'd have to throw out most writing meant to shift consciousness rather than legislate directly.
And "reduces all human value down to one's posture against the empire" isn't what Caitlin wrote. She explicitly says: "I mean no disrespect to your other wonderful attributes when I say this." That's a direct statement that raising a family, art, community — all of it — still has worth. The claim is that it's 'less significant, by comparison', than material complicity in empire — not that it's worthless or that people should "destroy everything that makes life worth living." That's a big gap between what she argued and what's being rebutted here.
None of this is an argument against tactical organizing, lobbying, or coalition-building either — she doesn't say don't do those things. Believing your personal complicity matters morally and doing the "unglamorous tactical work" aren't in tension; you can hold both.
Where has the lesser of two evils gotten us? Nowhere fast. The Democratic party just announced Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Wesley Bell will be joining the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Jared Moskowitz - will become a ranking member of the Middle East and North Africa subcommittee. Greg Meeks will likely be the next chair of HFAC.
I want to put Caitlin's insights nto the context of rebellion. It was Camus who fit neither into the neat liberal nor neat leftist camp, who said that in a savage world, the only way we can find our humanity is by rebelling against it. That is a lonely path when we one day find we no longer fit into the conformed norms and beliefs we grew up in and with...and so we find ourselve alienated from old friends, family (my brother stopped speaking to me after we argued 55 yrs ago about Vietnam) and even our jobs may become a source of unhappiness. Rebellion begins in the mind and heart and leaves us in the first stage alone, alienated and isolated and thus unhappy. But it is courage and a basic decency that enables us to endure that kind of unhappiness. We become like steel in fire stronger for our pain and almost always our rebellion arose out of compassoin for the injustices and love for the victims of those injustices...and itis this deep love that keeps us from surrendering and retreating
Then something amazing happens...perhaps it has happened to many thru partipating in the community of rebels that Caitlin has created with her writing and painting....we find other we also have taken the step back from the conforming community and expericneed the isolation we have felt and then we bond and this is what Camus called "a strange form of love," because it is deep trust and appreciation that form with strangers (in the sense we are not personal friends)....and that is where the greeting of comrad arose, to identify those who rebel with us, making of me a we, of an alienated rebel harboring his love for the victims of the system she rebels against into an ally in a relationship called comradeship.
And so we see the circle of rebellion, representing a return to wholeness in an opposition that shredded our relationship with the community of support of the system, rooted in a deeper love for the suffering of the victims of that system, which then when we join togethe in our opposition, forms a new kind of community that circles back to loving those who share our love for justice. Along the way there will be hecklers, calling us names, traitors, bots, controlled opposition, posers, etc but this is the impotent insults of those who lacking the inner love cannot share the greater love of a community of opposition.
And it is in the community we find only if we are willing to expatraite ourselves from what is called normal life that we become free in the deepest sense, which is not formal freedoms but rather the existential freedom to be ourselves, which is possible only when we feel surrounded by those we trust.
I like to find the origins of words to get a sense of their radical meaning, going back to the roots, and if we look at rebel, we find it means to fight again, to wage war once more. Why again? I turned to AI (shoot him!) to find out: "Without “again,” the translation would reduce to “to fight”, which loses the nuance that the action is repeated or resumed, reflecting a revolt against an existing condition or authority.
The notion of rebelling inherently implies resisting an established order, which requires the sense of doing something once more—thus “again” is integral to the precise etymological meaning.
"
And cognates have the same nuance: resist, revolt...always again. I think I glimpse the reason; It goes back to the historical division,thru the replacement of the shared commons among equals with private property, which created a new order of the haves and have nots, and that is where Marx's concept of history as class struggle begins. Again, to re-bel (bel being war) is not an act like starting a war but repeating the struggle over and over and over......suggesting indeed, the trajectory of history as a re-petition of rebellions by slaves, workers, the oppressed...revolts resistence, not just opposition but over and over re-suming the struggle, and it is in joining that re-petition of oppositions that we find our community of comrades and the freedom that can only exist when we feel we are among those who share our values and whom we trust.
i am sorry this got so long but at 85, some thoughts have been forming for 60 or 70 yrs and come like a freight train full of ideas and intuitions that once tapped, spill out and over the
decades of cargo cars and fueled by Caitlin's inspirational call to arms to share our moral outrage and find in that sharing, some solace and understanding.
These are very good points you made, Caitlin. People have to be willing to lose friendships and even risk alienation from some family members. When I have engaged in conversations with acquaintances, friends and/or some family members I have received propagandized talking points b/c they still are watching legacy/mainstream media or they are evangelical/ Christian Zionists and take every word in the Bible literally, not understanding that the Bible was written by man and was written eons ago and has been interpreted differently down through the ages. Honestly I don’t know how some of these so called Christians sleep at night while supporting an ethno state such as Israhell. I found it difficult to explain to a family member that Israel is murdering children and is committing genocide b/c he just refused to believe it simply b/c I’m sure his church says it isn’t committing genocide when anyone with their eyes wide open and scrolling on their phones can see it plain as day.😢😪
"Humanity invented the atom bomb. No mouse in the world would think of building a mousetrap." ~ Werner Mitsch. This also applies to the surveillance of humanity: Digital ID, Digital Currencies & SMART Cities https://www.theylied.ca/DigitalControlGrid/
أحسنت النشر والقول – سلام غزة و القدس عليكم - العزة والنصر حليف محورالمقاومة وحلفاءها والذلة والعار لمحور الشر وجماعة أبستين (امريكا و بريطانيا وفرنسا وتركيا والسعودية وقطر والامارات و دول الناتو والنازية الجديدة والماسونية والصهيونية و أسرائيل) وحلفاءه
Good news and greetings – Peace be upon you from Gaza and Jerusalem – Glory and victory to the axis of resistance and its allies, and humiliation and shame to the axis of evil and the Epstein group (America, Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, NATO countries, neo-Nazism, Freemasonry, Zionism, and Israel) and its allies
The system sorta beats the dignity outta you. But somehow, you need to keep the flame alive in your soul. Though the system tells you - you don't have one. So, without a soul - where do you go?
Well sadly, that’s just an incorrect view of our nation. Plus, the majority of nations “feed from a river of blood”.
Not everything needs to be opposed like a child having a tantrum. Some things the big orange man is getting correctly. Like Canada playing fairly with our trade deals for the first time since they started taking advantage of us and ripping us off since the early 1900’s.
We must evaluate and discern what is correct and what is incorrect and act accordingly.
Yes, opposing the empire is our duty. Thank God we have beautiful people who provide truthful information and reality based analysis! Dialog Works, Transition Protocol, Judging Freedom, the Electronic Intifada, Consortium News are among the best. Einstein is reported to have said Any fool can know facts. The point is to understand.
Resist all oppression. The empire should be the focus of those living within it at this time. I supported the Afghani Mujahedin, and not just on paper and in words, and will say no more about what we actually did as I still have a couple of things I need to get done. Young and naive, we were actually on the same side as the CIA. Although I have reason to believe the women have been all but erased, when I talked to an Afghani about this, I got a barrage of racial slurs and stuff about "Western Interference" no denial that the total subjugation of women is a tribal tradition for the current rulers. We have our own "Taliban" to deal with, and that's going to be rough, it's too bad that's all we can do. Liberal excuses for neocon policies don't fly either. The former US, which is where we live, is indeed culpable for so many crimes one loses count. The simple Maoist tropes taken from Sun Tzu and others are not always true. The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend. Revolutionaries that become oppressors almost immediately are not revolutionaries, they are just the next in line. What has worked in the past, until recently, will no longer suffice.
If there is no resistance, whatever has happened in Palestine/Lebanon will be felt in any country the parasitic empire feeds off of.
Yeah well, the empire (little gangster state) is just as likely to turn on its colony (usA), by the looks of it. Something I have been warning about for decades about, what you support doing to others, coming back and biting you in the posterior. And how.
You make a salient and valid argument.
That's what I fear and expect.
I don't think the issue is "no resistance" (as we already see resistance on a global level all over the world across people from all cultures, societies, ages, etc.).
The issue (IMHO) is - will those that resist win the fight/struggle against those in positions of power and authority (that have more 'resources' to fight with) ?
Those in power and authority become haughty, arrogant and eventually self destruct. It’s how empires collapse.
It just takes too long. The US and Israel are beginning their slide into the abyss.
>>"Those in power and authority become haughty, arrogant and eventually self destruct."
You seem to 'underestimate' power (as many others have done throughout history). I'd rather be realistic and prepare with more force/vigor for the upcoming war/battle/fight against 'power' than assume "...oh, such people will eventually self-destruct and the empire will end".
Unfortunately, history's not on your side on this line of reasoning.
Actually, Chang, empires always do fall eventually. All have and this one is on that downhill slide right now and Israel is going with it, along with its western sycophants.
Agree. We are doing nothing as MAGA has all but destroyed the institutions of the US. I was trying to be consoling.
My favorite revolution was the French. And they hadn’t lost their spirit. Several years ago tens of thousands were demonstrating daily because retirement age was to be raised a few years. I might be exaggerating a bit.
The US? apathy reigns.
It ain't just dignity, just basic non-sociopathic decency.
Comes down to being a decent human, and putting THAT above nationalist rubbish. Shouldn’t be “rocket science” just common decency: the latter having become sadly UN common these days.
"Be ruthless to systems, and kind to individuals" - Michael Jamal Brooks
Yes. One of the things that disturbs me most about this system is that it encourages us to hate others. The other day, a person sitting in the park told me that mother nature would set us straight as happened in Nepal. When I said that wasn't mother nature that caused that, it was humans, he just looked blank. This system would encourage him to disparage me and me to look down on him. Solidarity means solidarity with all who are not exerting power over the rest of us. Even if those people don't entirely "get" the situation.
This piece paints a vivid moral picture, but it falls into the exact trap that keeps modern activism politically isolated and practically powerless. Weaponizing shame by comparing everyday citizens to 1940s Germans isn't a strategy for building power—it's an exercise in alienation. Real movements don't demand that ordinary people strip away their basic humanity to prove their worth; they construct broad, welcoming coalitions that give regular people practical ways to force structural change.
This perspective confuses moral posturing with political leverage. When a movement prioritizes its own ideological purity over the unglamorous, tactical work of policy lobbying, targeted economic pressure, and institutional building, it stops being a threat to the status quo and becomes a self-serving echo chamber. Publicly condemning comfortable Westerners might offer a temporary burst of self-righteous satisfaction, but it doesn't shift a single vote, alter a budget, or stop a single weapon transfer.
Worse, reducing all human value down to one's posture against "the empire" is fundamentally dehumanizing. It strips the intrinsic worth out of raising a family, serving a local community, practicing a faith, or creating art—the very elements of human flourishing that political struggle is supposed to protect in the first place. You cannot save the world by demanding that people destroy everything that makes it worth living in.
I DISAGREE with your "framing and characterization" of this article.
The article isn't proposing shame as a coalition-building tactic — it's making a claim about relative moral significance, addressed to the individual reader's self-conception, not a movement strategy memo. So judging it by "did this shift a vote or a budget" applies a standard it was never trying to meet. By that bar you'd have to throw out most writing meant to shift consciousness rather than legislate directly.
And "reduces all human value down to one's posture against the empire" isn't what Caitlin wrote. She explicitly says: "I mean no disrespect to your other wonderful attributes when I say this." That's a direct statement that raising a family, art, community — all of it — still has worth. The claim is that it's 'less significant, by comparison', than material complicity in empire — not that it's worthless or that people should "destroy everything that makes life worth living." That's a big gap between what she argued and what's being rebutted here.
None of this is an argument against tactical organizing, lobbying, or coalition-building either — she doesn't say don't do those things. Believing your personal complicity matters morally and doing the "unglamorous tactical work" aren't in tension; you can hold both.
I could say more, but I'll stop here.
Where has the lesser of two evils gotten us? Nowhere fast. The Democratic party just announced Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Wesley Bell will be joining the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Jared Moskowitz - will become a ranking member of the Middle East and North Africa subcommittee. Greg Meeks will likely be the next chair of HFAC.
That's what the lesser of two evils gets you.
I want to put Caitlin's insights nto the context of rebellion. It was Camus who fit neither into the neat liberal nor neat leftist camp, who said that in a savage world, the only way we can find our humanity is by rebelling against it. That is a lonely path when we one day find we no longer fit into the conformed norms and beliefs we grew up in and with...and so we find ourselve alienated from old friends, family (my brother stopped speaking to me after we argued 55 yrs ago about Vietnam) and even our jobs may become a source of unhappiness. Rebellion begins in the mind and heart and leaves us in the first stage alone, alienated and isolated and thus unhappy. But it is courage and a basic decency that enables us to endure that kind of unhappiness. We become like steel in fire stronger for our pain and almost always our rebellion arose out of compassoin for the injustices and love for the victims of those injustices...and itis this deep love that keeps us from surrendering and retreating
Then something amazing happens...perhaps it has happened to many thru partipating in the community of rebels that Caitlin has created with her writing and painting....we find other we also have taken the step back from the conforming community and expericneed the isolation we have felt and then we bond and this is what Camus called "a strange form of love," because it is deep trust and appreciation that form with strangers (in the sense we are not personal friends)....and that is where the greeting of comrad arose, to identify those who rebel with us, making of me a we, of an alienated rebel harboring his love for the victims of the system she rebels against into an ally in a relationship called comradeship.
And so we see the circle of rebellion, representing a return to wholeness in an opposition that shredded our relationship with the community of support of the system, rooted in a deeper love for the suffering of the victims of that system, which then when we join togethe in our opposition, forms a new kind of community that circles back to loving those who share our love for justice. Along the way there will be hecklers, calling us names, traitors, bots, controlled opposition, posers, etc but this is the impotent insults of those who lacking the inner love cannot share the greater love of a community of opposition.
And it is in the community we find only if we are willing to expatraite ourselves from what is called normal life that we become free in the deepest sense, which is not formal freedoms but rather the existential freedom to be ourselves, which is possible only when we feel surrounded by those we trust.
I like to find the origins of words to get a sense of their radical meaning, going back to the roots, and if we look at rebel, we find it means to fight again, to wage war once more. Why again? I turned to AI (shoot him!) to find out: "Without “again,” the translation would reduce to “to fight”, which loses the nuance that the action is repeated or resumed, reflecting a revolt against an existing condition or authority.
The notion of rebelling inherently implies resisting an established order, which requires the sense of doing something once more—thus “again” is integral to the precise etymological meaning.
"
And cognates have the same nuance: resist, revolt...always again. I think I glimpse the reason; It goes back to the historical division,thru the replacement of the shared commons among equals with private property, which created a new order of the haves and have nots, and that is where Marx's concept of history as class struggle begins. Again, to re-bel (bel being war) is not an act like starting a war but repeating the struggle over and over and over......suggesting indeed, the trajectory of history as a re-petition of rebellions by slaves, workers, the oppressed...revolts resistence, not just opposition but over and over re-suming the struggle, and it is in joining that re-petition of oppositions that we find our community of comrades and the freedom that can only exist when we feel we are among those who share our values and whom we trust.
i am sorry this got so long but at 85, some thoughts have been forming for 60 or 70 yrs and come like a freight train full of ideas and intuitions that once tapped, spill out and over the
decades of cargo cars and fueled by Caitlin's inspirational call to arms to share our moral outrage and find in that sharing, some solace and understanding.
Growing a bunch of vegetables is good for your dignity, too, and helps your microbiome.
Better than becoming a vegetable I suppose.
Out-survive 'em in the hard times which approach...
These are very good points you made, Caitlin. People have to be willing to lose friendships and even risk alienation from some family members. When I have engaged in conversations with acquaintances, friends and/or some family members I have received propagandized talking points b/c they still are watching legacy/mainstream media or they are evangelical/ Christian Zionists and take every word in the Bible literally, not understanding that the Bible was written by man and was written eons ago and has been interpreted differently down through the ages. Honestly I don’t know how some of these so called Christians sleep at night while supporting an ethno state such as Israhell. I found it difficult to explain to a family member that Israel is murdering children and is committing genocide b/c he just refused to believe it simply b/c I’m sure his church says it isn’t committing genocide when anyone with their eyes wide open and scrolling on their phones can see it plain as day.😢😪
"Humanity invented the atom bomb. No mouse in the world would think of building a mousetrap." ~ Werner Mitsch. This also applies to the surveillance of humanity: Digital ID, Digital Currencies & SMART Cities https://www.theylied.ca/DigitalControlGrid/
.
No mouse could write like Jane Austen either.
AMEN, Caitlin!
أحسنت النشر والقول – سلام غزة و القدس عليكم - العزة والنصر حليف محورالمقاومة وحلفاءها والذلة والعار لمحور الشر وجماعة أبستين (امريكا و بريطانيا وفرنسا وتركيا والسعودية وقطر والامارات و دول الناتو والنازية الجديدة والماسونية والصهيونية و أسرائيل) وحلفاءه
Good news and greetings – Peace be upon you from Gaza and Jerusalem – Glory and victory to the axis of resistance and its allies, and humiliation and shame to the axis of evil and the Epstein group (America, Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, NATO countries, neo-Nazism, Freemasonry, Zionism, and Israel) and its allies
But can you put food on the table with dignity alone? Asking for a friend.
Valid point
The system sorta beats the dignity outta you. But somehow, you need to keep the flame alive in your soul. Though the system tells you - you don't have one. So, without a soul - where do you go?
Well sadly, that’s just an incorrect view of our nation. Plus, the majority of nations “feed from a river of blood”.
Not everything needs to be opposed like a child having a tantrum. Some things the big orange man is getting correctly. Like Canada playing fairly with our trade deals for the first time since they started taking advantage of us and ripping us off since the early 1900’s.
We must evaluate and discern what is correct and what is incorrect and act accordingly.
Not just blindly oppose everything like a child.
You nailed it, Caitlin.
The west has always done this, but it's visible to all of us now and is at a fever pitch.
This moment demands that we do all we can to get correct information so we actually know what's going on, and to act accordingly.
Yes, opposing the empire is our duty. Thank God we have beautiful people who provide truthful information and reality based analysis! Dialog Works, Transition Protocol, Judging Freedom, the Electronic Intifada, Consortium News are among the best. Einstein is reported to have said Any fool can know facts. The point is to understand.
Resist all oppression. The empire should be the focus of those living within it at this time. I supported the Afghani Mujahedin, and not just on paper and in words, and will say no more about what we actually did as I still have a couple of things I need to get done. Young and naive, we were actually on the same side as the CIA. Although I have reason to believe the women have been all but erased, when I talked to an Afghani about this, I got a barrage of racial slurs and stuff about "Western Interference" no denial that the total subjugation of women is a tribal tradition for the current rulers. We have our own "Taliban" to deal with, and that's going to be rough, it's too bad that's all we can do. Liberal excuses for neocon policies don't fly either. The former US, which is where we live, is indeed culpable for so many crimes one loses count. The simple Maoist tropes taken from Sun Tzu and others are not always true. The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend. Revolutionaries that become oppressors almost immediately are not revolutionaries, they are just the next in line. What has worked in the past, until recently, will no longer suffice.
Tyranny by Technicality: The Supreme Court Will Not Save Our Republic
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/tyranny_by_technicality_the_supreme_court_will_not_save_our_republic
All War is Evil. No More War.
Stop Paying USA Income taxes.
Stop Supporting these Unending WARS.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/more-wars-no-end-us-iran/5926750
*
Trump is crazy and a WAR Criminal
https://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/tabid/109/ID/5142/Donald-Trump-Should-Be-Removed-From-Office-NOW.aspx
Peace & Love from Oregon