We Really Are The Bad Guys And This Really Is The Evil Empire by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
(2024-10-21 at 22:05:42 )

We Really Are The Bad Guys And This Really Is The Evil Empire by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

It can be nice to live in the western world, but the western world is not nice. Ours is the most savage and thuggish civilization on this planet, and it is not even close.

It takes some learning and insight to understand that western civilization really is the absolute worst. There can be a kind of hipster outsider tendency to judge your own society more harshly than you do others, and at first glance it can look like that is what is going on when you see western critics of the western empire denouncing the criminality of their own government and its allies much more harshly than governments like Russia, China or Iran.

It is not until you have done a fair bit of research that you go, wait, okay no, we are actually quantifiably far more destructive than any other power structure on earth, by an extremely massive margin. We really are the bad guys. We really are the evil empire, and everyone slamming our side as murderous monsters are absolutely correct.

Whenever I say this I get westerners going "Oh yeah well I would much rather live here then over there" or "Oh well if it is so bad here then why do you not go live over there?", but the fact that they immediately start babbling about where they would prefer to live is just a symptom of how sick and twisted this civilization is.

They are so cognitively and emotionally divorced from the violence and tyranny their government is inflicting upon the global south that they think the question of which countries are worse than others is a question of how pleasant it would be for them personally to live in.

It is like yes asshole, it is very nice to be living in the imperial core that is receiving the benefits of mass murder and imperialist extraction, and it is less nice to live in the countries where the murder and extraction is happening. That is the entire f-cking point here!

It can be nice to live in the western world, but the western world is not nice. Ours is the most savage and thuggish civilization on this planet, and it is not even close.

The Democratic Party really does look ready to lose yet another easily winnable election by running yet another awful, murderous candidate with awful, murderous policies, and then once again blame their loss on everyone in the United States of America who is a better person than they are.

"please see here:"

Always having to search for photos of Israels destruction of Gaza for my articles really drives home the fact that this did not start last year. I am always like "Here is one! Wait, this one is from 2008. Here is one! No this is from 2014. Oh hey! Bah, nope, different bombing, 2021."

My first encounter with Israelis was when I was backpacking through South America in my twenties, and I remember being shocked by how consistently awful they all were. I guess after their mandatory military service they tend to go traveling for a bit, and whenever I would run into them they were reliably some of the nastiest people I had ever encountered.

They were not ever nasty to me, though. I am a white westerner, and I never had a problem with them. They were nasty to the impoverished brown-skinned people who were hosting us.

They were obnoxious and bullying toward local guides, they would leave the place in a mess, and they were always trying to screw over the locals for a better deal or extra meals or favors. One time they tricked a hostel into putting up a sign in Hebrew for other Israeli backpackers which said ugly things about our hosts (they told the hostel owner it was a great review), which I only know because they were laughing hysterically about it and told me. They consistently treated the people who were looking after us like they were much lesser than us. Their pushiness and entitlement were just unbelievable.

It was a very educational experience for me. I knew the Palestinians were being treated unfairly because my father had told me so, but I also had a great love of Jews and Jewish culture. I had visited Auschwitz and Dachau and Anne Franks house in my travels, and I remember having some romantic ideas about kibbutzim. This was my first time directly encountering the reality that there is something unhealthy about Israeli society. Not Jews or Jewish culture, but Jewish Israelis.

Now I see evidence of this on my news feed every day, in the IDF soldiers prancing around in the undergarments of dead and displaced Palestinian women, in the AI translations of Hebrew tweets, in the polls which show widespread Israeli approval for the atrocities in Gaza, in Israeli TikTok videos mocking the suffering of the Palestinians, in the Israelis showing up in my comments justifying the worst things in the world in the most depraved ways imaginable.

My encounters with Israelis in South America were an early taste of ugly things to come. Everything I glimpsed then I have been seeing online over the past year. I keep thinking about those obnoxious pricks I met all those years ago, and about how they did not know at the time that they were giving me very useful information for me to make use of in the future.

When Israel supporters tell you to shut up about Gaza until you have been to Israel and met Israelis, just ignore them. Do not go to Israel; you are a westerner, they will be nice to you. You can just go to one of the tourist spots in the global south that Israelis like to visit - one with lots of brown-skinned people who have been colonized by the west - and watch how they treat people there!

That will show you what Israelis are really like!!

"This Ms Caitlin Johnstone article, its pictures, and its links are here:"

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Ah, the Buddha Ms Caitlin speaks the truth!!! - Cousin Lucky