“Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night: it’s spritely waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mull’d, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.” – Shakespeare, Coriolanus
Long ago, but what seems like only yesterday, I didn’t go to the U.S. war against Vietnam but the war came to me. It was when my exile began.
I am telling you this to try to shed some light on today’s wars and alarums since my tale is common for a small subset of Americans of my generation. We learned long ago that the USA was run by ruthless killers who reveled in war. Vietnam, the Phoenix Program, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc. Nothing was beyond them. We sensed that they would never stop and they haven’t. The genocide of Palestinians, the proxy war via Ukraine against Russia, the current US/Israel/Turkey bloodbath in Syria and Lebanon led by our ruthless terrorists – it is all nightmarish, malevolent, utterly evil, and conjures up hell on earth. And it will get worse in the future.
The mainstream media is claiming that the new savior of Syria is the terrorist “rebel” leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the founding leader of Al Qaeda in Syria, al-Nusra, and a former deputy to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.,
While there is truth in the view that the world has always been a butcher’s bench with wars, hatred, and strife being a common theme, “always” is meaningless to me. For I have never lived in “always.”
I have lived since birth in the United States during a period of time when it has been the world’s number one butcher, starting with the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then continuing waging non-stop wars, assassinating foreign and domestic leaders, including President Kennedy, executing coup d’états, supporting and arming ruthless dictators and terrorists, and creating an economy dependent on war.
All this has been sustained by lies and propaganda that most Americans have swallowed. It is a deeply ingrained Yankee doodle dandy ethos joined with American exceptionalism and a self-induced false innocence.
Just this morning, December 8, 2024, as it did during the Vietnam war, The New York Times spewed out lies about the events in Syria, calling the U.S.-backed jihadist terrorists (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham/Al Qaeda, et al.) “rebels” and the overthrow of the Assad government a “civil war.” In doing so, the paper is just doing what it has always done as an organ for U.S. foreign policy, seemingly forgetting that it was the Obama administration that in 2012 launched Operation Timber Sycamore, a CIA program to, under the guise of a civil war, overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as part of a larger effort to undercut Iran and Russia for U.S./Israel/Turkey/NATO control of the region.
It is propaganda about a much larger war well underway, as the presence of Ukrainian forces in Syria and the usual Israeli bombing attest. Like a mountain ridge wildfire, the winds whip wildly now, and whether the fire spreads next to Iran or somewhere else, it is sure to spread.
To paraphrase Thoreau, there is no need to care for a myriad of instances and applications, the only thing you need is to be acquainted with the principle, which in this case is the long-standing demonic nature of U.S. foreign policy which is synchronous with waging perpetual war.
Yet most people don’t want to go past such lying headlines that are repeated by all the mainstream media. They never did, except when the issues concerned them personally, as when there was a military draft.
Yes, government and media propaganda have contributed mightily to it, but so many of the country’s war crimes have been committed out in the open and accompanied by the public’s cheering and flag waving that propaganda is only part of the explanation.
The will to believe and self-delusion are a large part of it. And people seem to like war, if it is far away and the cheerleaders are on this side of the water. It lends excitement to life like a real murder mystery, a sex scandal, or an approaching hurricane.
Furthermore, it provides roots for the national myth, the mythic home, the mythic womb, wherein one can root for the home team as one stands with tens of thousands of team people and sing along with the words “bombs bursting in air” while feeling a stirring of patriotic pride. This desire to be patriotically conventional, to support the national team in war and peace, is very powerful. Why else the creation of the mammoth bureaucracy called Homeland Security, the un-American word homeland taken straight from Hitler’s 1934 Nuremberg rally. Root, root, root for the home team.
I know the patriotic feeling. It left me back in 1967 when my exile began. For the most part, it has not been apparent to outside observers, for there are places difficult to reach, and the one within is the most distant. My youthful “normalcy” received its first body blow with JFK’s assassination in 1963. By 1967 I had joined the Marines and then declared myself a conscientious objector as I realized the evil my country was committing in Vietnam. I was on my way away.
In the years that followed, as Malcom X, MLK, Jr. and RFK, were assassinated and Johnson and Nixon lied and brutalized Vietnam, my understanding of history and politics deepened. Families and friends called me a communist for being a C.O. and opposing the war and a lying government. It was laughable but relentless.
Many years have elapsed, and the charges have risen and fallen as the years have gone by. For years now, the name of abuse is a “conspiracy” theorist or Russian sympathizer for daring to say that Russia Gate was a Democratic conspiracy and the war against Russia in Ukraine has been a U.S. project from the start. There is much more.
But my point about internal exile is that I had to adopt the motions of normalcy in everyday life – to create a pleasant persona – to get through the days. My teaching and writing continued as hard-hitting as before, but family, friends, academic colleagues, and acquaintances didn’t take my courses or read my writing, which they made sure to avoid.
These days, many more people have been forced to discover the twofold life where they can’t talk to the people in their lives about many issues – politics, wars, Covid, etc. Something has broken. Almost everything.
To accept the conclusion that the country is run by a bunch of ruthless warmongering imperialists is a step too far for most people. They must mean well or just make mistakes, for their hearts are in the right place, runs through so many minds. At least they assume that about the leaders they support.
A key way the endless wars roll on is the deadly political game of the lesser of two evils. If it is one’s political party waging the foreign wars, there are always many reasons to still find it better than the other party’s wars. “My leader may be a warmonger but he’s better than your warmonger” is the unspoken implication. This neat trick is supported by a host of mitigating excuses to justify the delusion that one is for peace even as these wars occur non-stop throughout the decades as the Democratic and Republican leaders switch highchairs.
Rather than dismiss the lot of them, the desire to feel that patriot heart-pump, however dim, and to reject the “extremist” conclusion that war is the life blood of the country, remains.
Throughout the sixty years of my adult life, the U.S. has been continuously waging wars, hot and cold, small and large, openly and secretly, all across the world, and its economy has increasingly become a military-industrial-national-security complex so vast and intricately linked to daily life that the country would collapse without it. Simply put: Beneath daily life lies a death cult, a river of blood. If that sounds too strong for you, give me another name for it.
It seems to me very clear that most Americans are today suffering from some sort of traumatic mental sickness, trying desperately to deny it in a multitude of ways. Scratch the surface of an everyday conversation or a greeting on the street and there’s the rolling of the eyes and the looks that say, “Let’s not go there, it’s all too crazy!” Something has broken, and people seem like walking desperadoes with the flag planted like a dagger in their hearts.
Even the alternative media, those writers with whom I share wishes for a peaceful world, have for a good while let their hopes trump reailty by claiming the American empire is doomed, as is Israel and the neo-liberal, neo-con agenda. For many months now, I have noticed something amiss with these claims. Too much wishful thinking. Too little appreciation for the machinations of the CIA, M-16, Mossad, Turkish conspiracies. To think these devils would accept defeat without bringing the world down is naïve.
I don’t relish saying all this. It is depressing. But I think it is true.
Some people who know me call me an extremist and claim I make no room for the middle ground. When it comes to U.S. war-waging, I say there is none. It is endless and integral to U.S. foreign policy no matter which party is in office. And the foreign policy is integral to the domestic policy. Without it, the country would be so different. Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden – to buy their lies is to be a fool.
To realize the difference between power and innocence is to come to understand the demonic nature of America’s Forever Wars. When in 2014 President Obama stood at West Point and said, “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” he was revealing, consciously or not, a hard truth, just as when he received the Nobel Peace Prize and told the world he believed in war. But he smiled.
For war is the lifeblood of this “exceptional” country. But if you keep repeating that, don’t expect smiles to come your way.
there’s the rolling of the eyes and the looks that say, “Let’s not go there, it’s all too crazy!”
WOW! Your words blew me away! I was born and raised in Canada. I can tell you WE are as indoctrinated and captured by the USRAEL imperialist, colonialist, racist propaganda machine as any Americans.
My Irish mother talked about the American war machine, the assassination of the Kennedys, the suffering of the Palestinians, the Zionist puppet masters, etc. & I failed to take her seriously. I underestimated her until just a few years ago. Your words resonated deeply and profoundly. The genocide in Gaza has finally shaken me enough to wake up and get actively involved and trying to help. I hadn’t realized or fully allowed myself to FEEL the generational pain as well as the clear and present agony of tyranny, occupation, terror, apartheid, genocide & depravity both past and present.
Your words mean a lot to me. Unless I’m at a pro palestine protest I feel isolated and shunned. Even in my own family, if I try to speak of these things I encounter denial, minimizing, avoidance and gooey, deep layers of avoidance, confusion and prejudice. We are gaslit so much I often feel I could be the crazy one for CARING about the suffering of the war torn!
You as an American. A veteran, by sharing your thoughts here gives me hope.
The long arc of history, as far as we know it, seems to indicate an inborn predilection for war in our species, following along with Thoreau’s observation about being acquainted with the principle. Like our very near relatives, the Chimps, we can be endearing as individuals, but prone to violence and lethal aggression in groups. The nature of the beast, so to speak. Taken a step further philosophically and even metaphysically, perhaps the world really is a stage for an eternal performance, where we can wear the rough edges off our souls, or act them out. War shows no signs of being removed from the script. I admit these are the ruminations born of a long life, but there they are.
Thank you Ed for this honest and wise essay. I greatly appreciate your writing.
RE: “a small subset of Americans of my generation. We learned long ago that the USA was run by ruthless killers who reveled in war. Vietnam, the Phoenix Program, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc. Nothing was beyond them.”
Let’s not forget the US’ genocide of the American Indians and countless other atrocities along the way. Anyone lucid and truly honest can and could see (no matter what generation they are from) that the US has been run by ruthless killers FROM DAY ONE. Continuously to THIS DAY. I know you write that “I have never lived in “always”” but there is the ALWAYS reality.
But most people anywhere prefer their comforting programing lies (eg we are a good nation that brings freedom and democracy to other places) over reality and will never genuinely discard those fake fantasies as long as they live. As a consequence, they have been, and continue, worshiping and voting for the same ruthless killers every “election” circus show, demonstrating the masses are a bunch of imbeciles and lunatics.
In other words…
The fact that ruthless killers run the show is only ONE part of the equation. The pack of leading ruthless killers do not operate in a vacuum, and never have.
The ruthless killers in power are in those positions and do what they do ONLY because of the mostly willful activities, or inactivities, of the majority of self-entitled “decent” or “good” or “awake” or “religious” people — the 90-95% of the herd — and because they do NOT really want the truth but comforting fantasies (https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html).
“Our current ‘state’ is the dictatorship of evil. We know that already, I hear you object, and we don’t need you to reproach us for it yet again. But, I ask you, if you know that, then why don’t you act? Why do you tolerate these rulers gradually robbing you, in public and in private, of one right after another, until one day nothing, absolutely nothing, remains but the machinery of the state, under the command of criminals and drunkards?” — from a White Rose Pamphlet, the ‘White Rose’ was a German resistance group fighting Hitler’s Nazi regime
Yet….
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduces them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” — Gustave Le Bon, in 1895
Such a well-written, heart-felt essay – thank you. My soul resonated all through the article. I have never liked America’s never-ending wars, and cringe all the time when they bomb a country or assassinate someone. I was born in 1963. My disgust ripened in the 2010’s with the rise of the internet and I could “fact-check” the MSM/gov’t lies. Key line (to effect): We can’t converse with others. My lifeline to sanity is on internet, where I have a small group of friends who see through the lies. But to talk face-to-face with someone – unthinkable! People can’t handle it!
“These days, many more people have been forced to discover the twofold life where they can’t talk to the people in their lives about many issues – politics, wars, Covid, etc. Something has broken. Almost everything.” – So well said Ed.
This has become the quote – “new normal” – and of course it does not bode well for a human and humane future for any of us. Sadly many people today seem more comfortable embracing – “their inner Stasi agent” – rather than daring to contemplate that we live daily with – “the unspeakable.”
Thanks, Ed, friend and Bronx neighbor, basketball player extraordinaire, and thinker. Ray McGovern
Hello Ed and Ray…..This is from Thomas Mark Szelog and is for everyone….all of us
The great teachers all had the same message…, Know Thy Self
I follow the rhythms of nature. As the rivers flow, I flow. As the clouds form, I form. As the leaves obtain nour- ishment from the sun, I am nourished from the sun. I am nature.
When and only when a mortal is one with nature can they become nature in the secretive forest. Hidden in the summer woods near the West Outlet of the Kennebec River a black bear feeds insatiably on wild raspber- ries. From within 75 feet and for over an hour I watch the bear meticulously grasp each ripened berry with its nimble lips. When it approaches within 30 feet, it stops briefly to stare at me as if to say “hello.” I am nature.
I continue to experience a profound and frightening sadness with each visit to the forest. It gives me no rest. These days in the woods are the happiest and saddest days of my life. The bear will likely be killed by man within a few days.
If a bear weeps in the forest, do you hear it? How does one know if a bear is weeping? Do you see tears flow- ing from the bear? Do you hear the bear wailing? How do you know when a bear is weeping? What sense do you use to discern a weeping bear? You know when a bear weeps because your heart tells you so. The black bears of the great north woods of Maine are sobbing.
When the bears, and the forest and its denizens, raise their voices in tears, have you the ears to listen? I am nature.
I love this. It’s so pure and honest and painfully accurate. I only hope it helps to know that many do love and appreciate your insights on our very troubled world. If I could put a positive spin on it I’d say that the fact of everything being so nutty that nobody wants to talk about it, is a blessing in disguise. By all means talk about something else with people. Like the 99.99% identical human traits and customs and interests and experiences you share even with your ‘political enemies’. The things that you all do and share personally. Once you start to remember what real human interaction is, all the other shit just seems petty. Many of my best friends, and also my brother are of polar opposite political affiliations that me. But it really never even comes up in conversation these days…
What would it mean to allow the “always” nature of war and other horrendous evil to permeate our thinking, to admit to ourselves and hold the thought that even prehistoric hunter-gatherers–hell, even chimpanzees–have enjoyed the hunting and exterminating of the “other”, that what we see and experience in our brief lifetime are not highly unusual manifestations of evil but rather only the latest examples of what has always been, albeit dressed up in the paraphernalia (cultures, technologies, ideologies, etc.) of the time? Might this acknowledgment, this realization, made a permanent part of our worldview, positioned as a lens through which we see and think, be the only antidote to the “woke” self-righteousness tearing us apart, isolating us to the point where we can’t talk about what matters most with those we love the most? Not that all of this should make us despise the warmongering bastards any less than Ed does, but that it should temper our despising, grind off its violent edge, with a background tone of profound, indeed religious, sadness over the “fallen” human condition we experience in the outside world and, alas, in the inside one as well.
Good Morning Newton….Self-deception – growing up in disbelief of one’s experience while within a violent, dysfunctional family, within a violent dysfunctional neighborhood that is part of a violent nation. The bible didn’t help since I rejected all things coming form this violent, dysfunctional group of people in my life….family, school, church, (the indoctrination centers) the grocery store…everywhere is dysfunction, self-deception, nothing communicated to connect, to bond people at the most basic human level. We all breathe, eat, feel sadness, happiness, No, instead we immediately escape ourselves and talk about the Yankees, the Boston Redsox, the new car….always staying safely away from our humanity….afraid to feel ourselves and allow others to witness how we really feel. Self-deception….the other person upon observation can tell something is not healthy, something is wrong. It is intuited, felt! We are liars !
How can a parent tell a 9 year old to erase the entire blackboard and start over with honesty, integrity, humanity? A parent must be the example from birth of the child. And yes, while living amongst insanity, maintaining yourself is very difficult. Don’t forget to tell the nun to stop staring at your daughters butt ! Tell the stories of 500 years of ruthless murder, attempts at exterminating indigenous people…, right here where we presently stand. That process has never ended. It simply went on the road to elsewhere and anywhere. Boy…are we a bunch of lying degenerates !
Excellent article. I am a generation after you and every day of my life there has been killing in the name of my nation state. The butcher’s bill is long and there will be- is- a fearsome price for all the innocents we have murdered and the destruction we have wrought. God have mercy on our souls for our silence and compliance. Have no mercy for the killers. May they die slow, horrible deaths: alone, afraid, and unloved.
EC – when you wrote: “But my point about internal exile is that I had to adopt the motions of normalcy in everyday life – to create a pleasant persona – to get through the days. My teaching and writing continued as hard-hitting as before, but family, friends, academic colleagues, and acquaintances didn’t take my courses or read my writing, which they made sure to avoid.
These days, many more people have been forced to discover the twofold life where they can’t talk to the people in their lives about many issues – politics, wars, Covid, etc. Something has broken. Almost everything.” – it sure hit home. It’s taken me 20+ years to get it…..and still learning and trying to accept reality. It’s a process – not an end state.
A few days ago, I read something which is very insightful in explaining that reality – “Learning is uptaking new knowledge or understanding and responding accordingly going forward. Assimilating data into a coherent evolving world view……..
……Making the inability to learn not being able to to uptake new knowledge and change or respond accordingly going forward. No evolving understanding of the world based on a growing knowledge base. Only a base level grasp from directions or early formation that doesn’t change. Even when contradictory information is clearly understood intellectually.
So learning from information is a process while FTS-2 and NPC are categories
To equalize them, we’d have to refer to [people who can’t learn from information]. Break down the differences. Categorically, FTS-2s are narrative huffers. That covers a range from some autonomy within the House of Lies parameters to full-blown NPCs. The NPC is the low-agency subset of FTS-2.
There are levels to this that are too detailed for more than a mention. Some can make adjustments within a frame of reference but ricochet off when the frame comes into question. If you’ve experienced it, it seems like a weird mental glitch / reset that’s actually noticeable.” – https://theunclejohnsband.blogspot.com/2024/10/information-processing-and-functional.html?m=1 – read it all!
Learning is a PROCESS – most folks cannot do PROCESS – that is why we’re exiled!
Thank you for expressing my thoughts and feelings .
It feel fulfilled to read this article. I 70% relate with your title: “My Internal Exile”.
The 30% I don’t resonate with, is my own exile, which was external. I started fleeing America in the late 1960s, tip-toeing away from my roots; soft footed away in the late 1970s, and big-footed away in 1987. I have lived on the other side of the globe ever since.
But every day my heart cries with sadness, for at least 60 minutes, as I study the US foreign policy and the disgusting hypocrisy which most people can’t see. I too have very few people to talk to, although feel extremely grateful for people like yourself, who see the truth and are able to write with your soul.
Sending Healthy Blessings to You, Edward Curtis. . . Thank You!
My personal exile began in 1971, during my senior year in high school, when I was drafted. I served 4 months and eight days, then took my leave (under threat of imprisonment) and began a journey that has found me embracing a different life; the life which you so lovingly and patiently seem to reveal. For me, it has been a fire in which most all I was taught to believe as a child has been proven to be based mostly in deceit and the covering of our societal love of violencing. I will soon be 71 and I continue, against all odds and pressures, to keep my personal dignity, as I seek to stand only for actual good, as opposed to the lies…
Thank you so very much, Mr Curtin, for quite a long time helping me to grow and stretch and continue to seek actual peace, as opposed to the so many lies that are also freely available for the taking…
Blessings and Love… Norm
Outstanding column as always Ed. You help keep me sane in an insane world of nonstop war, lies, and hate. It’s at least therapeutic to know I’m not the only one who sees the evils of our leadership and what our nation has become. I too must censor myself in discussions with family and friends, who refuse to see the truth and insist on believing in fairy tales.
Thanks Ed.
The future looks fragile.
Chris Hedges, despite his deafening silence on the Plandemic, said it well in his book; ‘War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning’
The Prince of Peace vs. The God of War
(Exodus 20:13) “Thou shalt not kill”
(James 4:1-5) “1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? 2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. 3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. 4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?”
Exalting the god of war over the Prince of Peace. The two have some major differences. The Prince of Peace bids men to come to him (Matthew 11:28); the god of war bids men to go fight foreign wars.
The Prince of Peace says it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35); the god of war says it is more blessed to kill than to be killed.
The Prince of Peace says to love your enemies (Matthew 5:44); the god of war says to kill your enemies.
The Prince of Peace is righteous (1 John 2:1); the god of war wants men to commit unrighteousness.
The Prince of Peace says to bless them that curse you (Matthew 5:44); the god of war says to curse them that curse you.
The Prince of Peace witnessed a good confession (1 Timothy 6:13); the god of war spouts lies.
The Prince of Peace says to do good to them that hate you (Matthew 5:44); the god of war says to do evil to them that hate you.
The Prince of Peace is the Son of God (Acts 9:20); the god of war is the enemy of God.
The Prince of Peace is the creator (Colossians 1:16); the god of war is the destroyer.
The Prince of Peace died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3); the god of war wants men to die for no reason.
The Prince of Peace rose from the dead (Acts 26:23); the god of war sends men to their deaths.
The Prince of Peace was sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7); the god of war wants men to sacrifice other men to him.
The Prince of Peace died for the ungodly (Romans 5:6); the god of war wants men to commit ungodliness.
The Prince of Peace was born of a virgin (Matthew 1:23); the god of war encourages men to violate virgins.
The Prince of Peace came in the flesh (1 John 4:20); the god of war is a destroyer of flesh.
The Prince of Peace glorified not himself (Hebrews 5:5); the god of war glorifies war.
The Prince of Peace is the bread of life (John 6:35); the god of war is the slayer of life.
The Prince of Peace redeems (Galatians 3:13); the god of war condemns.
The Prince of Peace is the light of the world (John 8:12); the god of war plunges the world into darkness.
The Prince of Peace is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25); the god of war is the wounder and taker of life.
The Prince of Peace was made to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21); the god of war wants men to commit sin.
The Prince of Peace is the mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5); the god of war is the separator of God from men.
The Prince of Peace is the Saviour of men (Titus 1:4); the god of war is the enemy of men.
The Prince of Peace forgives (Colossians 3:13); the god of war punishes.
The Prince of Peace suffered for us (1 Peter 2:21); the god of war wants men to suffer on the battlefield.
The ghost of Durkeim, Marx, Simmel, Toennies and the Doestoevsky, Amin, etc.
“These days, many more people have been forced to discover the twofold life where they can’t talk to the people in their lives about (m)any issues – politics, wars, Covid, (history, psychology, . . . .economy. . .etc.) Something has broken. Almost everything.”
In other words, Disaster Capitalism and its concrete consequences.
The Poverty of our — what passes for — our Political Economy — our sacred, privatized, National Religion, whose ‘high priests’, all multi-billionaires. . .this milieu all spelled out in detail nearly two centuries ago: when Marx, in page after page of critique and negation, demonstrated, then, the real Liberal Capitalism [of which Western Liberalism lives and breaths and is institutionally dependent on]. Karl Marx’s book is The Poverty of Philosophy: A Reply to The Philosophy of Poverty by M. Proudhon.
As night follows day, our high priests and media apostle and main-stream academia variously refused, denied, and/or obfuscated and made up alternative realities about the rational and scientific answers to Proudhon and his ilk, to the present.
Perceiving this unstoppable train wreck, Toennies, his Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft stated that all manner of consumer and essentially common folk protections are essential: in the Gesellschaft epoch upon us — otherwise . . it is catastrophe, chaos, misery, maiming, exploitation, terror, death. In other words, absent such systems and institutional safeguards, human rights are impossible, chimera, and cannot exist at all. The logical inference being: social relations themselves, in any genuine, enduring form, concomitantly, warped, fragmented, out-of-focus and so on and so forth.
For a brief time, these types of skills and heuristics were considered important enough to be taught [in however fragmented a fashion and manner] in this country. If for no other reason than for the sake of some sense of individual sanity among the tiny number of people, who, post WW II, signed up for such training and education.
At that point in history, our high priests [still] understood that their sanity also depended on an adequate knowledge of the nature of Gemeinshaft in which we lived. That is to say, they had at least a vague conception that their Disaster, Liberal Capitalism, would thrive better because of honest, genuine critique. Otherwise, it would run amok, out of control, as is obvious now — “These days, many more people have been forced to discover the twofold life where they can’t talk to the people in their lives about (m)any issues – politics, wars, Covid, (history, psychology, . . . .economy. . .etc.) Something has broken. Almost everything.”
It is very very hard to walk in the land of the blind with both eyes open.
While true enough, Durkheim systematized the knowledge that communication and economic transactions are dependent on some sort of shared value system — otherwise there can be neither. That is to say, it is exploitation instead of transactions and communication.
PS
A brief primer on the Syria File; elements of some possible themes to consider, at least provisionally
With the recent Russian Federation deployment last month of the “Hazel” hypersonic missile in Ukraine, RF declared itself the world’s military superpower.
When she militarily entered Syria nine years ago, to “stabilize” that governing system [and not the regime itself, per se, according to the RF president] — it was to put markers down, viz. the USA government in particular, who, the previous year [Feb. 2014], successfully overthrew the democratically elected Ukraine government — even as our media apostles proclaimed that: a democratic movement for human rights, and/or the like.
Now, as the undisputed superpower, those markers viz. the USA are no longer needed, as other strategies evolve — partly a direct function of this new power equation.
Even the most cursory review of Ukraine’s Aug. 6 invasion of Kursk should prompt the asking of a most obvious question: why did RF, well aware of that impending invasion, allow its women to be raped and murdered and kidnapped and tortured [not just women] by the marauding invaders? All’s fair in love and war is a clue. Come and See.
The fire sack military experts knew could be created, thus essentially inviting the Ukraine forces in, may have been a “deal” the RF couldn’t refuse?
“Ukraine’s losses – Over the day, Ukraine lost more than 200 troops, two tanks, eight armored combat vehicles, two motor vehicles and three mortars. – Since the beginning of hostilities in the Kursk Region, Kiev has lost over 39,460 troops, 234 tanks, 171 infantry fighting vehicles, 123 armored personnel carriers, 1,241 armored combat vehicles, 1,100 motor vehicles, 308 artillery pieces, 40 multiple rocket launchers, including 11 HIMARS and six MLRS of US manufacture, 13 anti-aircraft missile launchers, seven transport and loading vehicles, 72 electronic warfare stations, 13 counter-battery radars, four air defense radars, 27 pieces of engineering and other equipment, including 13 counter-obstacle vehicles, one UR-77 mine-clearing vehicle, six armored repair and recovery vehicles, as well as a command and staff vehicle.”
https://tass.com/politics/1884617
Giving ones enemies “enough rope to hang themselves” apparently is in no way a lost art. . . .when all’s fair in love and war.
-30-
Amen.