Insights implement vastly insufficient environmental measures which accomplish nothing other than allow liberals feel like they’re doing something for a few years. These two parties are not meaningfully different from each other on environmental issues. ——————— The plutocrat-owned western political/media class has built up a collective doctrine that you cannot simply end overseas wars and bring the troops home, and that anyone who says you can is a lunatic. That’s all it is though: fact-free religious doctrine, espoused on blind faith. When it
comes to large-scale governing and international matters, the mainstream perspective is only mainstream because extremely wealthy people poured vast fortunes into making it mainstream. There’s no collective wisdom or truth in it, it’s just what power wants us to believe about what’s going on. ——————— As long as the powerful are propagandising the people, the people aren’t truly operating with free will. Anyone who’s escaped a relationship with a manipulative abuser understands that you’re not really operating with much
free agency while you’re being psychologically dominated. ——————— Leftists: I want socialism, an end to imperialism, and revolutionary change. Liberals: I want capitalism, endless war, and the status quo. Also I have pink hair. Rightists: These are the same to me. ——————— There are no war heroes, only war victims. CT Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian blogger. Her website is www.caitlinjohnstone.com
Thomas S. Harrington
If rationality ever returns …
H
istorians will marvel at the suicide of EuroAmerican culture set in motion by a virus that killed 3 of 1000 people, the vast majority of whom were over 75 and with already compromised health. They will wonder and marvel at how the culture of consumerism suddenly sapped most in this cultural space of the basic desire to live as freely as possible in the face of the nemesis that has always stalked each and every inhabitant of the earth: death. They will wonder and marvel at how the inhabitants of this world, who as recently as seven decades before had responded to infinitely greater threats to
their existence with hope and optimism, and subsequently, with the construction of perhaps the freest and most comfortable culture that humanity had ever seen, suddenly decided to close up shop and terminate that project before this puny scare. They will examine the superstitions that made them do it, superstitions as absurd as the wearing of garlic garlands in medieval times – but presented dishonestly and hubristically in the name of science, and wonder at the astonishing inversion of basic social aspirations and thought processes. They will, I suspect, ultimately conclude that by garrisoning ourselves in cubicles of material
opulence, or the often unsuccessful pursuit thereof, we fatally unhinged ourselves from the contemplation of, and engagement with, the only things that life has ever been about: love, friendship, survival and the pursuit of joy within the often difficult trials of this existence, and that we simply gave up, exhausted and devoid of imagination and vital ambition. CT Thomas S. Harrington is professor of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. His most recent book is A Citizen’s Democracy in Authoritarian Times: An American View on the Catalan Drive for Independence (University of Valencia Press).
ColdType | Mid-November 2020 | www.coldtype.net
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