"Remember, kids: Israel has the right to defend itself against doctors, nurses, farmers, teachers, firefighters, reporters, the mutilated, the blinded, the crippled, the starved, and of course, children.
"Especially children. Ever and always, children."
Genocide is not only a crime against humanity, it is a crime against meaning, against human purpose. Genocide negates not only our best values, but kills any hope for the discovery and preservation of new values. Like nuclear war, genocide is the ultimate nihilism, and here we are now, dying within our own minds, dying within our Western culture.
"Never think. Never feel. Interact only through financial transactions. Value only the commands of the market." These are the implicit messages of neoliberal consumer capitalism.
Yet human beings think and feel. Human beings require values and relationships that go far beyond the transactions of selling and buying. Human beings need human values. Take these away, and societies fall apart.
When people understand this, governments panic. Implicit messages become explicit, and so does punishment. Speak out against environmental destruction, and you will be ridiculed. Speak out against proxy wars, and you will be cancelled. Speak out against genocide, and you are finished.
Yet still, we think, we feel, we live by empathy. We continue to be human, because the alternative is an openly authoritarian hell on Earth.
Life is hard right now, life will get worse, but somehow, we must hang on to being human. We must persevere, because if we lose, we die.
I would never wish cancer on anyone. Yet I would also never wish genocide on anyone. Genocide Joe, true to his name, is a thug who could have stopped a genocide, but instead, allowed it to happen, allowed it to persist.
Now that Genocide Joe has been diagnosed with cancer, many people have mentioned cosmic "justice." But no, there is no justice in cancer. Justice remains a human concept, a human goal. For Genocide Joe to pay for his crimes against the human species, he would need to face trial and conviction, but our current society rewards genocide while punishing those who speak out against atrocities. For this reason, Genocide Joe will meet the worms in his grave without facing justice.
No one deserves cancer. But Genocide Joe should have paid a social cost for his cruelty. That failure is ours.
During my lifetime, two global powers have collapsed: the USSR, and now, the USA. The first died peacefully; the second seems determined to drag the rest of us down with it. (If we survive these convulsions, we can watch a third collapse: the European Union.)
I never wanted to see any of this, but here we are.
