What We Have Become, I Despise

The Israeli genocide is vile enough, but the hypocrisy and cowardice of our Western governments, their mindless justifications for genocide, their penalization and brutalization of people who speak out against genocide, infuriate me.

On certain days I do my best to remain observant and objective, as if I were nothing more than some detached witness to historical forces. Yet deep down, I seethe and mourn. That supposed Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times," has never carried such a sting for me.

I've never felt at home with our smiley-faced corporate culture that treats us like idiots, with its assumptions and rationalizations that prioritize the death of mind and heart over life, but the past ten years have been worse than ever.

What we have become, I despise. What we do, I hate.

In A Time Of Genocide, The Masks Fall Off

The current genocide has exposed many priorities of our Western governments, but has also revealed a truth about our intellectual and social conflicts: people seem less interested in principles than in group loyalties -- in short, instead of arguments, we have knee-jerk tribalism.

A key revelation, here, has been the brutal attack on students who protest not only against genocide, but for freedom of speech and conscience. The right-wing groups who railed against woke censorship and cancellation in universities are now celebrating corporate censorship and governmental cancellation. Instead of applauding students for going beyond mere virtue-signalling against abstract enemies like "racism" or "the patriarchy," these pundits and politicians attack the students who have chosen, instead, to confront real enemies with real power to hit back: corporations, corporate-funded institutions, and authoritarian governments.

We need to look at what is actually happening. I reject hollow and safe displays of woke purity, but what students are engaged in, right now, is rebellion with genuine stakes. When cops invade universities to crack skulls, protest is no longer theatre, it is politics; when protest involves fundamental issues like genocide and the freedom to shout, "No," it goes far beyond mere divisions between "us" or "them."

This fight matters not only to students, but to anyone who rejects mass murder and the mass cancellation of dissent. Right or left, rich or poor, we all stand to lose this fight if we draw back into worn-out but comfortable cocoons of political tribalism.

To hell with "us" or "them." We need the solidarity of principles.

I Will Not

I WILL NOT,
by Mark Fuller Dillon.
Thursday, May 02, 2024.

You want me to march for fascism, but I will not.

You want me to kill for zionism, but I will not.

You want me to worship neoliberalism and the dictates of the market, but I will not.

You want me to spy on my neighbours, to denounce them for crimes of thought and speech, but I will not.

You want me to abandon solidarity with people I have never met, never known, but I will not.

You want me to lock human beings into smaller and smaller cages of identity, but I will not.

You want me to deny the biological reality of two sexes, but I will not.

You want me to erase the biological existence of women, but I will not.

You want me to deprive women of women-only spaces, but I will not.

You want me to denounce men for normal, non-violent, non-abusive sexual desires, but I will not.

You want me to believe that men must behave like this, that women must behave like that, and that human sex roles are not social constructs, but I will not.

You want me to reify sexual stereotypes through chemical castration, through female genital mutilation, but I will not.

You want me to declare that the colour of my skin reveals more about me than my character, my ethics, my hopes and aspirations, but I will not.

You want me to set the mechanical mindlessness of algorithms above human skill, above human imagination, but I will not.

You want me to hate your economic rivals in other countries as if they were existential threats, but I will not.

You want me to pretend that I am not an animal, immersed in, and dependent on, the natural world, and you want me to poison, to deplete that world for your profits and your power, but I will not.

You want me to forget the past, but I will not.

You want me to cancel the future, but I will not.

You want me to abandon nuanced thinking, calm debate, the open discussion of ideas, but I will not.

You want me to denounce, to shun, to cancel people of good will who disagree with me, who live by different values than mine, who see the world in different ways than I do, but I will not.

You want me to curse my cultural heritage, which I perceive clearly in its limitations and strengths, its cruelties and goodness, its negative and positive implications, as a past of unmitigated evil, but I will not.

You want me to remain silent while you lie, cheat, rob, and kill, but I will not.

You want me to obey you.

I will not.