Americans’ muted reaction to the quarter-century anniversary of 9/11 reveals a waning zeal for the American imperial project. We tolerate it only because we believe it can’t end. But it can.
wtf are you talking about? i will urge you once again to carefully study what your country does abroad. it’s the most military spending in the planet for a reason, this isn’t about “brands”. this is about real genocide and poverty happening NOW and for the last CENTURY being perpetrated by a few western countries through a complex global political/ideological, economic, and military system.
the reason i’m saying this instead of just disengaging from this conversation like i usually do with libs is because you genuinely seem to me like you want to get to the bottom of this, and going by your own individualized vibes and whatever US media tells you is very insufficient to understanding how this shit works.
please study some political theory and stop deflecting from the evil your capitalist imperialist country is doing, as it’s the one thing disproportionately holding the world down. take a serious look into your own external policy before blaming whoever else who may have smaller things to criticize.
your username implies you are queer, so i can also ask you to listen to the perspective of the ones you oppress, just like your allies listened to yours before they were able to properly understand what happens.
I’m talking about the mechanisms by which the words we use to describe ourselves and our conditions get subverted by those who seek to control other people, and how that subversion confuses the concept. Americans are confused about what “Freedom” means, because freedom has been rebranded to mean things like the open road, and feelings of patriotism, and being able to smoke wherever I damn well please. It makes us miss the things like the long working hours, and the mountains of debt, and how badly my boss could ruin my life if they so chose, and how much power that gives bosses. We think what we have is freedom, and are confused because the concept itself has been subverted. Via Branding, in this case. I hope that answers the question, I… thought we were both talking about that.
I have individualized vibes? What are they like?
I love reading political theory. I read it critically, the way I would read a peer’s code. I internally check it against my own understanding of the world, and if there’s a dissonance I check to see which of us, if either, is correct. It’s slow work. There’s so much political theory I haven’t read. The vast majority of it, I expect. And I balance political theory with some lighter topics because if I read all the political theory I want, I despair of the future of humanity and wish for death to take me. So I take my time.
I do listen to the voices of those I oppress, both myself personally, and in my capacity as an American citizen, and in my capacity as a white person, and in my capacity as a landowner, as an older adult, etc. etc. There are millions of demographic dimensions on which I relate to my fellow people, and none of them are independent of the others. People are complicated, that’s just the system we got. I listen as closely as I can, because the voices can be faint or distorted in transmission. They are easily misunderstood, especially if misunderstanding redounds to my benefit. I think I have gotten better at hearing, but that sort of thing is difficult to quantify. I think I can identify more easily things that bear close attention, anyway. I’m interested in all suffering in the world, which can roughly be divided into the two categories, “caused by me” and “not caused by me”. the categories are similar in a lot of ways, different in some ways, and many things are a mix of both. It does necessarily introduce bias because things I cause and things I observe have fundamental differences that are difficult to account for. My heuristic is to see if I can act to help them, and coming up with a solution often casts some light on whether I am a cause. Then I do the solution and see if it worked. Some of the time, it does not and I have to go back to the drawing board. But, sometimes it helps.
i know. and power has been spreading and dilluting that us-centric view about what their freedoms and of others are. this is not how others think, it’s how you do.
i’m not saying all of the many ways in which we choose to defend our interests are moral and correct.
i’m saying that in general, most of us aren’t like america and never have, and that we all already have the seeds for a better world.
i don’t mean to be rude, i’m just trying to put it.
The disembodiment of freedom is an American idiomatic example of the general pattern I’m talking about. Leaders cloaking their cronyism and corruption in the Branding that best hides their true purpose from the people they seek to control. They can do it with “Freedom”, or “Republic” or “Independent”, or “Populist”, or “Blue-collar”, or “People’s” or literally any word that ever existed.
This kind of branding hijacking depends on the word having a strong emotional resonance with the people because the leaders seek to co-opt the value of the word for their own selfish ends. The more valuable the idea, the better to steal.
This is a universal dynamic of human political behavior, and whoever told you it’s an American peculiarity is taking advantage of you.
wtf are you talking about? i will urge you once again to carefully study what your country does abroad. it’s the most military spending in the planet for a reason, this isn’t about “brands”. this is about real genocide and poverty happening NOW and for the last CENTURY being perpetrated by a few western countries through a complex global political/ideological, economic, and military system.
the reason i’m saying this instead of just disengaging from this conversation like i usually do with libs is because you genuinely seem to me like you want to get to the bottom of this, and going by your own individualized vibes and whatever US media tells you is very insufficient to understanding how this shit works.
please study some political theory and stop deflecting from the evil your capitalist imperialist country is doing, as it’s the one thing disproportionately holding the world down. take a serious look into your own external policy before blaming whoever else who may have smaller things to criticize.
your username implies you are queer, so i can also ask you to listen to the perspective of the ones you oppress, just like your allies listened to yours before they were able to properly understand what happens.
I’m talking about the mechanisms by which the words we use to describe ourselves and our conditions get subverted by those who seek to control other people, and how that subversion confuses the concept. Americans are confused about what “Freedom” means, because freedom has been rebranded to mean things like the open road, and feelings of patriotism, and being able to smoke wherever I damn well please. It makes us miss the things like the long working hours, and the mountains of debt, and how badly my boss could ruin my life if they so chose, and how much power that gives bosses. We think what we have is freedom, and are confused because the concept itself has been subverted. Via Branding, in this case. I hope that answers the question, I… thought we were both talking about that.
I have individualized vibes? What are they like?
I love reading political theory. I read it critically, the way I would read a peer’s code. I internally check it against my own understanding of the world, and if there’s a dissonance I check to see which of us, if either, is correct. It’s slow work. There’s so much political theory I haven’t read. The vast majority of it, I expect. And I balance political theory with some lighter topics because if I read all the political theory I want, I despair of the future of humanity and wish for death to take me. So I take my time.
I do listen to the voices of those I oppress, both myself personally, and in my capacity as an American citizen, and in my capacity as a white person, and in my capacity as a landowner, as an older adult, etc. etc. There are millions of demographic dimensions on which I relate to my fellow people, and none of them are independent of the others. People are complicated, that’s just the system we got. I listen as closely as I can, because the voices can be faint or distorted in transmission. They are easily misunderstood, especially if misunderstanding redounds to my benefit. I think I have gotten better at hearing, but that sort of thing is difficult to quantify. I think I can identify more easily things that bear close attention, anyway. I’m interested in all suffering in the world, which can roughly be divided into the two categories, “caused by me” and “not caused by me”. the categories are similar in a lot of ways, different in some ways, and many things are a mix of both. It does necessarily introduce bias because things I cause and things I observe have fundamental differences that are difficult to account for. My heuristic is to see if I can act to help them, and coming up with a solution often casts some light on whether I am a cause. Then I do the solution and see if it worked. Some of the time, it does not and I have to go back to the drawing board. But, sometimes it helps.
i know. and power has been spreading and dilluting that us-centric view about what their freedoms and of others are. this is not how others think, it’s how you do.
i’m not saying all of the many ways in which we choose to defend our interests are moral and correct.
i’m saying that in general, most of us aren’t like america and never have, and that we all already have the seeds for a better world.
i don’t mean to be rude, i’m just trying to put it.
The disembodiment of freedom is an American idiomatic example of the general pattern I’m talking about. Leaders cloaking their cronyism and corruption in the Branding that best hides their true purpose from the people they seek to control. They can do it with “Freedom”, or “Republic” or “Independent”, or “Populist”, or “Blue-collar”, or “People’s” or literally any word that ever existed.
This kind of branding hijacking depends on the word having a strong emotional resonance with the people because the leaders seek to co-opt the value of the word for their own selfish ends. The more valuable the idea, the better to steal.
This is a universal dynamic of human political behavior, and whoever told you it’s an American peculiarity is taking advantage of you.