Caitlin Johnstone

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Everything’s Getting Way More Dangerous And Way More Stupid

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): ❖ Moon of Alabama has an article out on how an uncomfortable number of relatively restraint-oriented foreign policy officials have been exiting the Biden administration, while a China hawk has just been appointed the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Antiwar has…

Caitlin Johnstone

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

❖

Moon of Alabama has an article out on how an uncomfortable number of relatively restraint-oriented foreign policy officials have been exiting the Biden administration, while a China hawk has just been appointed the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Antiwar has an article out about how New York congressman Jerry Nadler told an Epoch Times reporter that he “wouldn’t care” if Ukraine used US-made F-16s to strike Russian territory, and doesn’t find the possibility that they might do so concerning.

This comes days after we learned that the Biden administration has signed off on Ukraine getting F-16s while also greenlighting an offensive on Crimea using US-made weapons, a nightmare scenario which greatly escalates the risks of nuclear war.

There are no adults behind the wheel of the vehicle that’s driving us toward World War Three. We’re on a bus that’s being driven straight toward a cliff, and it’s being driven by infants. If we survive this it will not be because of the experienced leadership of western governments, but completely in spite of it.

It’s getting more and more dangerous, and it’s getting more and more stupid. The other day the Ukrainian government tweeted a video in which the faces of characters from the Harry Potter film series are superimposed over Ukrainian soldiers, a perfect compliment to an earlier tweet by NATO about the Ukrainian military saying “We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.” This truly is the phoniest, most PR-intensive proxy war of all time.

And that’s nothing compared to how stupid the 2024 US presidential race is getting, already in May of 2023. In a recent interview on Fox News, Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis was asked by Trey Gowdy how he would respond to the war in Ukraine on day one of his presidency and he started babbling about wokeness and gender ideology.

“Well first, I think what we need to do as a veteran is recognize that our military has become politicized,” said DeSantis. “You talk about gender ideology, you talk about things like global warming, that they’re somehow concerned and that’s not the military that I served in. We need to return our military to focusing on commitment, focusing on the core values and the core mission.”

Are you ready for a year and a half of this? Because you’re getting a year and a half of this. A year and a half of all substantive questions about real policy of real consequence getting diverted into the most vapid culture war quagmires you can possibly imagine, because it isn’t the US president’s job to change the way the US empire operates, it’s the US president’s job to keep everyone dazzled with fake bullshit while the US empire marches along unimpeded by the wishes of the voting public.

Supporters of Israeli apartheid and America’s proxy war in Ukraine have been pretending to believe that rock icon Roger Waters donned a Nazi costume in support of Nazism at a concert in Berlin earlier this month, their feigned outrage leading to an investigation by German police despite the fact that literally everyone knows he was just portraying the fascist character from Pink Floyd’s The Wall that he’s been performing for over four decades.

Oh yeah, and they’re continuing to aggressively normalize the use of police robots despite massive public opposition.

This is a dark, strange timeline, and the more dangerous it gets, the dumber it gets.

Still there’s no reason to give up hope, and there’s no reason to give up joy. No matter how dark things get, there’s always the possibility that there are forces moving beneath the surface of our collective psyche which can change it all on a dime once conditions are ripe. No matter how dark things get, we’re still living in a profoundly beautiful and fascinating world which is a privilege and delight to participate in for even an instant. No matter how dark things get, we can still keep doing our best to try to make them a little bit better while making sure we don’t waste any of our precious time in this universe failing to appreciate its awesomeness.

There is darkness, but there’s also light. Far more of it than most people realize.

So do your worst, Stupid Dystopia. We’ll fight with all we’ve got and enjoy the ride for as long as we’re here.

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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon, Paypal, or Substack, buying an issue of my monthly zine, and following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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