Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
It’s so unfair how Israel’s neighbors keep attacking it completely unprovoked while Israel is just innocently minding its own business trying to commit a little genocide in peace.
❖
Activists: Israel couldn’t continue killing Gaza without US weapons
Experts: Israel couldn’t continue killing Gaza without US weapons
Israel: We couldn’t continue killing Gaza without US weapons
Biden-Harris: [sends US weapons to Israel]
Biden-Harris: The killing in Gaza must not continue!
❖
Israeli insiders keep very straightforwardly acknowledging that an arms embargo would bring an end to their genocidal atrocities. Biden and Harris oppose an arms embargo because they want those genocidal atrocities to continue.
❖
The US knows Israel has nuclear weapons but simply pretends it does not know this.
The US knows it’s Netanyahu sabotaging a peace deal but simply pretends Hamas is the real obstacle.
The US knows Israel is committing genocide but simply pretends that saying this is antisemitic.
The US knows Israel is deliberately targeting civilians but simply pretends to believe it is exclusively targeting Hamas.
The US knows Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza which make it illegal to send them weapons, but simply pretends it hasn’t seen solid evidence of this.
The US knows Israel will never agree to a two-state solution but simply pretends to believe a two-state solution is right around the corner.
The US knows there can never be peace and stability in the middle east as long as Israel exists in the way that it exists, but simply refuses to acknowledge this self-evident fact.
US policy on Israel is to simply refuse to acknowledge self-evident realities which can be immediately observed with the naked eye. It’s pretending to believe up is down, day is night, and a spade is a pineapple, while privately knowing that none of these things are the case. It maintains the status quo through narrative control, and it maintains narrative control through tenaciously feigned ignorance.
❖
A lot of liberals say things like “I support the Palestinians AND Israel!”
Yeah me too man, I always support both the victim and the victimizer. I support the battered wife AND the wife beater. I support the molested child AND the child molester. When I watch Schindler’s List I cheer for the Jews AND the Nazis.
❖
Right wing translation guide:
“this is communism” = “this is capitalists doing capitalism”
“this is Marxism” = “this is capitalists doing capitalism”
neo-Marxist = capitalists doing capitalism
globalists = capitalists doing capitalism
technocrats = capitalists doing capitalism
❖
One thing I think about sometimes is the absolute certainty that undiagnosed psychopaths and sociopaths enlist to serve in conflict zones for the purpose of acting out their sadistic fantasies. I’m sure most of the abuses we see in places like Gaza have mundane systemic explanations like the fact that Zionists are indoctrinated from birth to see Palestinians as less than human, but I’m also sure there are people who’ve volunteered to participate in this genocide because they just want to inflict pain and death on other human beings.
I’m sure this is happening in Gaza, and I’m sure this happens in all instances of mass military violence. A war zone is a collapse in law and order where might makes right and whoever has the guns makes the rules. People who normally wouldn’t risk imprisonment for acting out their fantasies of torture and murder have the opportunity during wartime to become one of the people with the guns who make the rules. They have a helpless population at their fingertips to whom they can do anything they like.
War is the worst thing in the world. It’s the most insane thing humans do. So, so much of the trauma and dysfunction of our species are the lingering reverberations from wars which ended decades ago, passed down from generation to generation by soldiers returning home and by civilians who’ve been subjected to unfathomable abuse by those who found themselves free to do anything they want to them.
❖
It’s obnoxious that more western artists don’t denounce the west-backed genocide in Gaza and other western atrocities, but more than this it’s obnoxious that they don’t make it central to their art. When you live in the heart of a murderous dystopian civilization, as an artist you’ve been handed the gift of actually having something to say that’s worth saying. But hardly anyone does.
Most of our art completely ignores the true nature of the freakish hellscape we find ourselves in (or even actually runs cover for it), preferring to make pretty shapes and catchy jingles over actually confronting the giant murder machine right in front of them. Poets write poems about poetry. Hip hop artists rap about rapping. Novelists tell the trillionth story of a budding young romance. Pop artists write songs about what a great time they’re having in this nightmarish freak show and how much cool stuff they own. Screenwriters — the worst of all — type out scripts normalizing the abuses of capitalism and imperialism by depicting everyone doing basically fine under status quo systems and telling heroic stories about western soldiers, cops and spies.
Art can be used to open eyes, but most western artists spend their lives working instead to close them. And of course this is because artists are themselves victimized by the systems under which we live, finding it nearly impossible to make a living doing what they know they were born to do unless they produce very non-confrontational and non-subversive works. In our society it is the wealthy people who benefit from our existing systems that get to decide what art becomes elevated to mainstream attention, so artists look at who’s making a “successful” living at their art and what they’re creating and they model their output on examples which challenge the powerful in no meaningful way.
But there is so, so very much to say about this weird electronic wasteland we find ourselves in if you don’t let the bastards hijack your creativity like that. It takes some learning, some understanding, some insight and some courage, but these are all qualities that every artist must have anyway. Anyone with the artist’s fire burning within them has the power to use their gift to sow the seeds of awakening in some very inconvenient places within our society.
And from those seeds, a healthy world can one day begin to grow. A healthy society where it really does make sense for artists to be talking about how great things are and what a fun time they’re having. Where songs about singing and poems about romance really do have their place — because they’re not being used to distract and divert from the horrors that are unfolding right in front of our faces in a situation that urgently needs everyone’s care and attention.
But until then, as long as we’re living under an empire that is fueled by human blood in a mind-controlled dystopia on a dying planet, it is our responsibility as artists to continually point to what’s happening and the urgent need to address it, in every way that we can.
________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.
"it is our responsibility as artists to continually point to what’s happening and the urgent need to address it, in every way that we can" and we are all artists in one way or another which behooves every one of us to keep telling those who still mumble about Israel's right to self defence about what has led up to this and how Zionists are behaving much as Nazis did in the past (and in the present too when they get the chance)
And while the attention is on Gaza the psychopaths are doing their best to make the West Bank into a Gazascape.