Presence that won’t complicate
I had some interesting conversations yesterday. Two were decent, one was rather poor.
The poor one was about the nonsense that only Americans can be critical of America. America can police the world, define policy and governmental, scientific, monetary, social and legal forms, but no one is allowed to criticize it. Of course if you praise America, that is fine. But if you speak critically of it, you’re some sort of jihadist or anti-American fanatic.
Put simply, Americans are like everyone else. They are not exceptional, although they have at times displayed exceptionalism. The American government on the other hand, is a corruption of the founding principles of that republic, and has grown to be the largest empire in the history of the world. It taxes, it forces, it occupies, it invades and murders. Yes Americans, your government is one of the biggest causes of death by murder in the world. Don’t like that statement? Do something about it, because it is true, and attacking me personally, or based on my citizenship or nationality or religious preference isn’t enough to wash away the blood of thousands of innocent casualties of imperialist policy.
There are some principled humans, who also happen to be American. Mike @ NoState.com is one of them.
There are a lot of people who will talk about the evil of statism, the inefficiency and immortality, without specifically pointing out what is wrong today. In other words, these may be anti-war libertarians (not that pro-war libertarians exist anyway), who never actually speak out against war. And I’m not implying they have a positive obligation to do so, but at the same time, they seem to constantly avoid acknowledging the evil their government does with their coerced co-operation. Although I doubt how much it is coercion and how much of it is the threat of violence or laziness or indifference.
It really ticks me off.
I am embarrassed and disappointed that Canada is participating in the NATO occupation and oppression in Afghanistan. I am tired of my country following the American Imperial War Horse around and sweeping up the dung piles it leaves in the dusty streets of foreign wasteland outposts. We shouldn’t be there, we have no moral authority to be there. By participating in this military adventurism, we make ourselves less safe, and we act as a proxy for evil. Disgusting.
~~~
So to the first good conversation. It was with my sister. She told me, I am “so unconventional”. It was great.
Of course I’m not conventional I told her, most conventions are based upon irrational premises. I am striving to live rationally. I want to have a moral code that I can live up to and defend honestly. No more 50% efforts or casual attention to the substantive matters of the day. I want to be honest about every flaw I have and instead of pretending they don’t exist, work to correct or understand those flaws. A great example is getting angry with others. This is a flaw in my temperament, instead of seeking to irrationally rationalize my temper, I want to understand it, break it down and control it.
But you will find a lot of people everyday telling you how angry they became because of X, due to Y, or antagonized by Z.
It’s irrational to blame other people for my anger, because it implies that only those people can remove my anger and replace it with satisfaction. Of course, there is always Henry Rollins’ theory of the lowest common denominator, which most people cannot grasp. Basically, when everything around you is all fucked up, you are the lowest common denominator in all of your chaos. You are the one thing that ties a mess of conflicts and failures together. You.
~~~
And the second conversation was with a friend named Mike (different from the Mike mentioned above). Mike’s a convenience store clerk, a Gen Xer who likes to smoke pot, work 4 days a week, and just be. He’s a pretty cool guy, and recently I have challenged him on his philosophy and tolerance of the state. Now when we talk, he’s anxious to ask me questions about anarchism, or to defend his own beliefs, as though he has been thinking about them introspectively since our last meeting.
Mike revealed something very interesting yesterday. He recognizes the state is evil, that it is wrong to coerce or steal. He yields these points to me. But he gets more out of the government than it takes from him, and that is a disincentive for him to complain about or campaign against the system. He’s not taxed very heavily, and he’s subsidized enough that he can work to survive, but not have to work a lot, or to necessarily gain more skill, offer more value to the economy. In other words, if he’s careful, he can continue what he has been doing for 8 years already, and do it for another 20 without any significant lifestyle changes. So as long as the state is not antagonizing him, he doesn’t feel any passion or compulsion to speak truth to power or to “rage against the machine”.
I think I am getting somewhere with Mike. I don’t know where, I’m certainly not trying to reprogram him. At the same time, as a friend, I feel I have an obligation to point out the obvious injustices dony by and to us each day.
PS, I’ve started naming some of my posts with lyrics or song titles from Helmet. Today’s title is from FBLA. Another recent post was from the Aftertaste album. There is a method to this madness. Would anyone reading this blog like to know more about marketing a web site?
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Tags: america, anarchism, henry rollins
Posted in Activism, Economics, Fascism, Liberty, Stuff, War |
