I have often been asked by my friends and comrades here in Donbass what kind of people live in the USA, asked whether they know or care about what goes on in the world around them. I say there are good people in the US, who care about others and who are smart enough to understand the interconnectedness we all share, that we are all in this together, and that what goes around, comes around. And that is true. For about 2% of the US population. The rest are something else.
The vast majority of US citizens are cowards and fools. The worst kind of cowards, those who are afraid to know the truth, much less actually do anything about it, and the worst kind of fools, those who have deceived themselves, to the point of refusing to consider even the possibility that they may be wrong, even when they are as absolutely as wrong as they can be. That is the truth about most US citizens today, about 98%, by my estimate, based on the fact that only 2% voted for Nader in the year 2000. Nader was the only candidate willing to speak the truth. Only someone who is as described above could have voted for any major party candidate in that election, or in any US election since. I voted for Nader in 2000, I worked on his campaign in Alaska. I’ve never voted since.
Voting in the USA — what a joke. I used to believe in the system. I voted for Ron Paul back in ’88. I ran for US Senator in Minnesota in 1990. That year, I saw an Anarchist newspaper with a photo of Bush Sr. and Clinton. Above the photo, the headline read , ‘SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT PILE”. I thought that was kind of harsh. It took me ten more years to realize they were right. But I did. How about you? US elections can be compared to a fancy and quite expensive restaurant that has a single item on the menu, but with variations. It’s a shit sandwich, nice and fresh and steaming hot, but you have your choice between white Wonder Bread or organic whole wheat. Of course, they offer every kind of sauce – you can customize your sandwich like a Starbucks Double Mocha Frappe Latte Decaf Cappuccino, but it’s still a shit sandwich. And you may not have any choice whether you have to pay for it or not, but you do have one choice, and that is whether you’re gonna eat it or not. By voting, you take that first big bite. Obama is a bigger war criminal and greater shame to the history of the US than even either Bush was. And whoever comes after Obama, Republican or Democrat, will be worse still. If you vote for either of them, my friends in Cuba have a name for you…
When I went to Cuba, in 1995, I learned that the slang name there for citizens of the US was “Come’ Mierdas”, Spanish for “Shit-Eaters”. Not a very kind sobriquet, but certainly honest and appropriate. People in the US consume a steady and unvaried diet of shit – mainstream news, politics, entertainment, and the food, from McDonald’s, to GMOs, to the filth that contaminates the food produced in factory farms, it’s literally shit. If a person eats shit for long enough, they eventually get used to it. If they eat it for too long, they start to like it. That is what has happened to most US and EU citizens today. They eat shit, and they like it, and they are angrily offended by anyone who points this out, and they have exactly zero interest in considering any alternative to the shit they consume on a daily basis.
The social contract in any civilized society, between each member of that society, can only be based on the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And by “good”, I mean the greatest opportunity for each citizen of that society to fulfill their potential as human beings. This is impossible when people don’t have access to food security, adequate housing, meaningful work and decent medical care and education, when 400 people own more wealth than 150 million, as is exactly the case in the USA today. In the USA, the social contract is based on the proposition that “I will pretend to believe your bullshit if you will pretend to believe mine”, a “positive” feedback loop based on mutual and self deception that is reinforced and increasingly distorted with every bogus interaction, whether voting, watching the news, or simply being asked “How ya doing?” and answering “Fine.”
The entire history of the USA is based on comforting, but provable and obvious, lies. The USA was founded on genocide and built by slavery. Howard Zinn’s classic People’s History of the United States is an excellent example of how false the prevailing notions, the shared lies, really are. Which is not to say that anyone who has read Zinn’s History is still not fully capable of creating their own false world view. In fact, in the West, there are as many “shit-eaters” on the Left as there are on the Right (ed: for example, the “imperialist left”). Those on the (fake) Left are just as destructive and deluded as their counterparts, their mirror images on the Right, but personally, I find them even more revolting, and I don’t mean in the revolutionary sense…
For example, I know a full grown woman with a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy. She drives a Prius, jogs, is “passionate” about recycling her garbage, is very politically correct, votes a straight Democratic Party ticket and considers herself to be intellectual and Progressive. She grew up pampered in a wealthy conservative family, went to a private boarding school, studied abroad and then married a rich husband. She reads The New York Times, and thinks she is well-informed. But I have personally heard her say “I don’t want to know.” “I don’t care about virtues or principles.” “I don’t care about other people.” “There’s no such thing as objective truth”. And she certainly meant it. Quite the philosopher, eh? She owns a couple of bars and makes her money selling alcohol to college students, and spends her time writing maudlin poems. She voted for Obama twice, and gets offended if I asks her if she has any regrets about it. She will certainly vote for Hillary Clinton or whatever crypto-fascist the Democratic Party runs, and will consider herself a superior person for doing so.The cognitive dissonance of her phony self and world view, her attempts to convince herself and others that she is a “good” person, while she does actually nothing of any genuine merit in her life, has made her bitter and resentful of anyone who makes a real effort to improve the state of the world. And the more confused and unhappy she becomes, the tighter she clings to her self-deception, the true source of her misery. How do you reach people like that? I don’t know… But I am trying.
I know a man, an arch-conservative, who flunked out of college in his early 20’s during the draft for the Vietnam War. Rather than take a chance on getting drafted and actually serving in a war that he ardently supported, with his words and with his votes, at least until he himself became eligible for the draft, he used his family’s money and political connections to get an enlistment in the Marine Reserves, the surefire way to guarantee he would not have to go anywhere near the actual fighting. Instead, he played soldier one weekend a month and two weeks every summer, safe in the USA. (George Bush, Junior did the same thing. And then there’s Ted Nugent…) This Marine Reservist was highly offended when I pointed out that real soldiers, like myself, from the regular full time Armed Services did not really consider reservists to be soldiers. His self deception, to this day, extends to his wearing USMC logo clothing much of the time, having “Semper Fi” stickers on all his cars and going to and financially supporting USMC events. What was truly an act of cowardice and hypocrisy, he now points to as an act of courage and patriotism. He has fetishized his self deception to the point where he is proud of his “service” and the objects that are truly the symbols of his shame. But he will pretend to believe your bullshit, if you will pretend to believe his…
No one — and we mean no one — has dissected American bullshit better and more fiercely than George Carlin. The most serious comic of his generation, Carlin was perhaps the most incisive underground social critic the US has ever produced. This routine is one of his signature riffs, sparing no one, and leaving no room for cowardly ambiguity. Video on source.
This total inversion of truth and of reality is pervasive among the vast majority of US citizens. It is exactly what Orwell described as “Double Think” – “To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary…. To use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypocrisy you had just performed.” This is the precise mental state of most of the people in The West today, and especially in the USA. It is as dangerous as it is disgusting. People who are capable of such depths of self-deception, such hypocrisy, are not to be trusted. They are not even qualified to have an opinion, much less vote or in any other way attempt to influence the reality they fear and cannot (and will not even try to) comprehend. As Einstein said, “They are hardly worthy of the brain and spine they were born with.”
And the more erroneous, the more false their perception of reality, the tighter they cling to it, the more threatened and offended they are by anyone who even asks them to consider an alternative view. Because as the old saying goes, “It takes a big man to admit he’s wrong”. So, what must it take to admit that your entire world view is not just wrong, but totally 180 degrees divergent from objective reality, to admit that you have a half eaten shit sandwich in your hand? More than most people can muster, apparently. A mistake is not a “mistake” if it is an intentional lie, even if that lie is told to yourself. And if someone does have the courage and integrity to abandon the comforting lie for the hard truth, they are also forced to understand, to admit, that they have a responsibility to themselves and to the future of Humanity to do something about it. But it is so much easier, safer, and more socially acceptable to turn on the TV, pop open a beer and pretend everything is OK and will remain so. Because if you pretend to believe their bullshit, they will pretend to believe yours…
This is the same grotesque depth of self-deception and reversal of reality that allows the Nazis of Western Ukraine to idolize a war criminal like Stepan Bandera, and to try to “rehabilitate” Hitler by saying he was “just misunderstood, and really not that bad”. People who are capable of saying this, and believing it, are capable of crimes beyond the imagination of normal human beings. US citizens who ignore the crimes of their government, at home and abroad (as long as it doesn’t affect them personally) are no better than the “Good Germans” who supported Hitler, and will eventually share their same fate. And deserve to.
Cowards hate the brave, idiots hate the wise, and liars hate the truth. It is a hatred born of fear and envy and gross self-centeredness. Those who are brave and wise and speak the truth are not welcome in the circles of the self-deceived. They are hated there, they are attacked, they are killed. But who can teach someone to overcome their cowardice except the brave? Who can teach a fool how to become wise except the wise? The definition of wisdom is “Having the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting”. Only the truth can expose a lie. Anything else is just another lie.
The vast majority of US citizens are fools and cowards, and their rulers know this, and act accordingly. The impudence of the rulers of the USA is a measure of the impotence and futility of their subjects. And the rulers are very impudent. Every day, the rulers feel less and less compelled to even try to hide their crimes. Why bother? Obvious false flags like 9/11 or MH17 were executed in a way that shows the perpetrators did not even care if they left incontrovertible evidence behind. The majority of the people will believe what they are told to believe, what it is convenient and comfortable to believe, regardless of the evidence, and they will resent and violently resist anyone who holds the evidence up to the light and asks them to look at it. So they cower in their darkened corners, hugging their chains and licking the boots of their masters, eating their shit, while congratulating each other on their bravery and freedom, snarling at anyone with genuine courage and compassion who tries to help them to see the truth, to do what is right, and to truly be free.
Courage and compassion are the greatest human virtues, but they are not only to be found in the human realm. There are many examples of these qualities being exhibited by animals, so what does that make those creatures, those simulacra of human beings, who are devoid of these very traits? I say it makes them evil. The old saying about “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing” is not true. People who do nothing when confronted with evil are not “good people”, They are complicit in that evil, and they are evil too. What is “evil”? I have been face to face with cannibals and mass murderers, so I will tell you, because I know. Scott Peck wrote a book called People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil. He described evil as “militant ignorance”, as “a willingness to impose suffering on others in order to avoid one’s own spiritual growth”. Both definitions are spot on, and describe perfectly the US government, the majority of the US citizenry, the Kiev regime and their psychopathic henchmen.
Is there hope? Is there an answer? I don’t know. But I will speak the truth, and I will stand up for what is right. I’ve got a brain and a spine, and I’m going to use them, come what may. Even if defeat were to be inevitable, (which I do NOT believe) even if this was the Alamo or Thermopylae, that would never stop me from doing everything I can to defeat this genuine evil that is attacking Donbass and in fact, attacking the whole world.. We are defined by what we do, and what we don’t do. That is what truly tells ourselves and others who and what we really are. Words mean nothing if they are not corroborated and combined with actions. I do not consider myself a “hero”. I am just a regular guy who is doing the right thing. Yes, it is sometimes hard and dangerous, but it’s not that big of a deal. It is also sometimes very cool and very fun, so virtue really is its own reward. But if I’m just a regular guy, what does that make those who have less courage and compassion ( and less grasp of reality) than a water buffalo? It makes them part of the problem. I will help them if I can, with my words and by my example. But I will fight them if I must. There is objective truth, and it is clear to any honest person, who is right and who is wrong here, and elsewhere.
Those who deceive themselves are their own worst enemies, and ours. Our work, our work, speaks for itself, mine and yours, and for us, you and me. We are what we do. If there is hope, it lies with those who are willing to face the truth, and to speak it, and to defend it. And to do something about it. Everybody else is just a shit-eater… So, what’s for lunch?