I haven’t ranted in a while, so here goes:
The Project 2025 Junta bears an uncanny resemblance to a fundamentalist Islamic tradition.
With the only difference being that most fundamentalist Islamic organisations are more liberal, in that they do not exclude by race.
We have come to differentiate between economic and physical violence, but why?
Slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people on purpose, like the Nazis or the Khmer rouge did, or like the Israelis are doing now in Gaza, is labour intensive and economically demanding. It requires an infrastructure.
What the Trump gang has managed to do is plan on mass repression through the complete dismantling of all the guardrails that keep a large society fed and in health.
Basically, destroy the infrastructure and people can reliably left to ‘sort’ themselves into survivors and cadavers. In a way, there is a very Maoist/Stalinist dimension to this.
The compassionate, the weak, the different, the disabled, don’t need to be actively exterminated. They can simply be starved of resources and then blamed for their own demise.
In a way, America’s form of Capitalism IS a kind of extermination camp. Not physical, but equally as effective, if a tad slower.
Meanwhile, the very method of this ‘capitalist’ sorting ensures that only the ideologically pure - the absolutely self-interested - survive.
Personally, I don’t think it will work. I think they are missing an important aspect of humanity - that compassion is a very strong identificatory building block. And it isn’t a surprise that they’re missing it. Because you don’t miss what you don’t have. They cannot see their own lack.
However, while we are all directed to look at the physical atrocities - the detention, the sending people to prison hell-holes in country or abroad, these are misleading extremes.
The real re-engineering is taking place on a quieter plane. Fear and self-interest are having a much greater impact. And I have been surprised at the number of people who won’t protest out of fear or a sense of ‘I’m alright, Jack’. And the success of the 2025 project depends on this.
I am reminded of the biblical quip of Cain. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The world is being sorted into the way people answer that question.
Yes, I am my brother’s keeper. A huge part of the value of me, as a human being, is in my willingness to demand/provide things - not for myself, but for my brother. And demonising my brother as a parasite is never going to work. Because my sense of compassion isn’t altruistic. It’s entirely selfish. I AM … my brother’s keeper.
The statement says nothing about who my brother is, or what he needs, or deserves. The statement identifies ME as someone who cares for their brother.
Who am I if I would let my neighbour starve? Who am I if I would let my neighbour be persecuted for their race, or their gender, or their religion?
I think it is very important for us to keep our heads out of our own asses and understand that our identities are constituted by what we do for others.
All of those are lovely and laudable, but if I only care about my brother when it’s easy, small, or ‘affordable’ we really aren’t keeping each other. Right now, the person on the corner could use a meal, but really what they need is a place to live, and we (collectively) can ‘afford’ that, it’s just a matter of rearranging our priorities, and that might mean stepping out of Cain’s self-centred petulance.
I’m sorry I wasn’t clear enough… I mean to say that the small individual actions *are* good, and that so many people do what they are able and can afford, and that *is* good - something to be celebrated as an example to us all collectively.
My criticism is for the widely held idea that we can *collectively* only afford so much, when the root issues are not actual scarcity rather than manufactured and imposed scarcity.
I think doing small things is super important precisely because (as you say) it is the antidote to assumed helplessness and immobility. I want to train myself, and my kids, and the while world to actually move when my heart is moved.
I am so glad you have found a better place to stand. (and sorry again for not being clear enough… I’m glad you took the time to reply)
Honestly, I think the answer to the immediate problem of homelessness is quite simply homes for people who need them.
The question that’s harder to answer is: How we get people to see that it’s that simple and that we absolutely can make things better for everyone, but only by all working together?
@DavidM_yeg @PattyHanson
“How we get people to see that it’s that simple and that we absolutely can make things better for everyone, but only by all working together?”
I think the selfish part of us is uneraseable. But how do we get people to find homelessness an affront to our own sense of dignity. What I notice about people who work providing for others is their pride in themselves as people who do the right thing.
Selfishness is uneraseable… but so is compassion.
The movement that has ossified empathy in our society spent tons of words, money, and power to do so, but people are still kind in small and carefully prescribed ways.
Practicing radical acts of kindness, being allowed - encouraged even - to see the humanity in others first is a practice that can eventually gather just as much momentum as its opposite, both individually and collectively
@hp I think the ‘not being able to identify the source of their rage’ is incredibly salient.
Because, of course, to identify it fully is to admit they have been entirely responsible for the source themselves. And that wouldn’t allow their identity to remain intact. So they avoid it, studiously, at all cost.
@jwcph @Remittancegirl gods how I miss old Cracked.
Sorry, off topic.
@Remittancegirl me thinks sociopathy applies to a minority of instigators but not the large number that responded to their siren call. These do care somewhat, but its only 'their' others: their own clan
The main trick of the sociopaths was to deflect the anger of this sizable group towards others, grab more power and further weaken social cohesion for the benefit of the few
The coup will eventually fail. Its inhumanity is only matched by its absurdity.But will get worse before it gets better
Cloud Atlas
"To be is to be perceived, and so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other. The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words & deeds, that go on & are pushing themselves throughout all time.
Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past & present, & by each crime & every kindness, we birth our future."
Billionaires deny the existence of humanity's strongest survival instinct: society
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Billionaires want a future where 1 billion people die in climate change famines.
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-climate-changing-human-billion-deaths-century.html
1.2 billion climate refugees fleeing wars & famine.
https://www.zurich.com/media/magazine/2022/there-could-be-1-2-billion-climate-refugees-by-2050-here-s-what-you-need-to-know
Do Bradley, Koch, Coors, Scaife/Mellon, Seid & Uihlein delude themselves that their wealth shields them from consequences?
https://www.desmog.com/2016/01/21/beyond-koch-brothers-scaife-olin-bradley-jane-mayer-dark-money/
Are petrostate despots of the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia so deluded that AI & drones will preserve their thrones?
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2025/05/ai-chips-drones-jets-look-trumps-32-trillion-megadeals-during-gulf-trip
If global warming reaches or exceeds two degrees Celsius by 2100, University of Western Ontario's Joshua Pearce says it is likely that mainly richer humans will be responsible for the death of roughly one billion mainly poorer humans over the next century.
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