US Politics Are The Whole World's Business
Responding to questions and comments from readers.
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
I thought I’d go through the questions and comments on my various platforms today and tap out some answers to the ones that jump out at me.
Chang writes on Substack:
“Caitlin, I have a question for you -> How do you deal with the outrage building up inside against this other-worldly behavior that has no words to describe it? I’m struggling in my efforts at keeping my constant anger at Western authorities (politicians, oligarchs, administrators, PR scumbags, etc.) in check.”
Inner work. You can’t engage with this shit without copious amounts of inner resources, which for most people can’t come about without extensive inner work. What that looks like will vary from person to person, but some popular expressions of inner work are meditation, mindfulness, energy work, healing practices, therapy, mantra recitation, self-inquiry, etc. Anything that expands your own consciousness of what makes you tick inside so you’re not just flying on autopilot getting whipped about by the unconscious forces within you, and enables you to find a foundation of inner peace.
There are vast oceans of deep peace within you — actually deep peace is what you’re made of — but this doesn’t do you any good if you’re unaware of it. It takes some work. Really deeply question your most fundamental assumptions about who and what you are, what the world is, what thought is, and how perception is ultimately occurring.
Practices like mindfulness have been getting a bad rap in revolutionary circles because they have been harnessed by the machine to train workers to remain functional in this stressful and abusive status quo. But they do that because these methods actually work. If their power can be harnessed to keep you from having a mental breakdown while working a horrible job for shit pay, it can also be harnessed to keep you sane and stable while fighting the machine. And even to open up a lasting shift in perception which gives rise to a better quality of life than you’d ever dreamed possible.
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Too Much Work writes on Substack:
“Caitlin, if you could, a few words about the US stealing an airplane from Venezuela the next you write.”
TMW is referring to the news of the US government’s seizure of the official airplane of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro under claims that it was purchased in violation of US sanctions.
The thing that really struck me about this was a quote from an anonymous US official to CNN, who broke the story:
“This sends a message all the way up to the top,” one of the US officials told CNN. “Seizing the foreign head of state’s plane is unheard-of for criminal matters. We’re sending a clear message here that no one is above the law, no one is above the reach of US sanctions.”
The fact that the unnamed official sees US economic sanctions as “the law” for other countries shows that these freaks really do believe they own the entire planet. They see other countries as their property, and believe they are therefore entitled to seize any property of those countries if they are not sufficiently obedient to the dictates of Washington.
When US officials talk about the “rules-based international order”, what they mean is the US making the rules and giving the orders and everyone else obeying, or else.
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Mike writes on Twitter regarding my commentary on US politics:
“Aren’t you Australian living in Australia?”
Talking about the worst impulses of the world’s most powerful and destructive government requires no justification. It’s not strange and suspicious that I do it, it’s strange and suspicious that everyone else in the world does not.
Before when I’d get hit with these “You’re Australian” retorts I used to respond by pointing out that all these works are co-authored by my American husband, who should get to have a voice on the things his country does. But after a while I realized that this overly-defensive response was missing the point, because US politics are the business of everyone on this planet. I get to talk about the things the globe-spanning US empire does in this world regardless of who I happen to be married to.
A lot of Americans seem to suffer from the delusion that they live in a normal country with a normal government, so they should be allowed to go about their business in private without unwelcome scrutiny from foreigners. But the US is not a normal country with a normal government; it’s the hub of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, which uses its military and economic power to bully and dominate the rest of the world. You don’t get to tell anyone who lives on this planet that US politics are none of their business.
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Dulce writes on Twitter regarding the way Republicans have been accusing Kamala Harris of being a communist:
“Harris being called a communist has to do with her pushing communist ideology. Duh.”
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: Trump supporters are the most gullible people on earth. They’ll believe anything, literally anything, no matter how self-evidently idiotic, if it comes out of Trump’s face hole.
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Noah writes on Substack:
“What Would You Do To Solve It? How would you get the anti-Christ Bibi out of there or amenable to a peace deal that would end his grotesque political career? How would you remove the equally cynical Hamas, PA and Hezbollah? Do you disagree that these must happen?”
I absolutely disagree, yes. The solution to this crisis has nothing to do with removing Hamas or Hezbollah. It’s not even ultimately about removing Netanyahu, if we’re talking about solutions. Get rid of Netanyahu and the Israeli state will still be intrinsically abusive, and its abusiveness will naturally give rise to resistance groups.
The obvious solution is for Israel to stop killing people in Gaza and the West Bank, right the wrongs of the past, and end the injustices of the present. This would likely include ceding large amounts of land, the payment of very extensive reparations from Israel (and ideally its wealthy allies), eliminating all unjust laws and apartheid systems, a comprehensive push to purge society of the toxins of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, the right of Palestinians in exile to return to their homeland, and the negotiation of a peace agreement which yields so much that even the most hardline factions in Palestinian society would be compelled to agree with it.
Something along those lines would be very effective at bringing peace to the region. Israel won’t agree to it, but that’s because Israel is the problem. It’s an extension of the bloodthirsty madness of the US empire, essentially an endless proxy war with a lot of electronic dance music. That proxy war will likely continue to be waged upon innocents in the middle east in one form or another until the empire itself is brought down.
If you have any questions or comments you’d like me to address, leave them in the replies below and I’ll try to get to them in a later article like this one.
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Voting Dem or Rep is learned helplessness.
seizing the plane sends the message "how dare you sell and profit from your own oil, that oil belongs to the US".