The United States has captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and flown him out of the country in a stunning military operation that plucked a sitting leader from office following months of escalating Trump administration pressure on the oil-rich South American nation.
No faction in the US represents my interests, on account of my not being American.
But man, if I have to choose which faction is more likely to, say, roll up with tanks into Greenland, annex Canada or, and I can’t repeat this enough, bomb Caracas and kidnap Nicolás Maduro and his goddamn wife, I am pretty sure there is a single correct answer.
Dude, it really is embarrassing. If they’re not foreign trolls, then so many people on this site have literally zero fucking idea how the US government works. They read the Communist Manifesto, and maybe some Lenin, and now they’re talking like they’re ready to lead a revolution in a 1910s agrarian society, and anyone even mildly critical is their enemy. Fucking useful idiots.
But the moral prohibition on siding with any administration that endorses genocide will force a different flavor of the exact same logic that centrist liberalism has depended on for so long: hold your nose and align with the least worst thing. Only the least worst thing will no longer be the mild, ethics-agnostic emptiness of modern Western liberalism, nor will it be the multitude of barbaric authoritarians and their secret prisons. It will be communal solidarity, or else nothing, a walking away from all of this. Countless otherwise pragmatic people who would in any other circumstance choose liberalism by default will instead decide none of this is worth the damage to one’s soul. They will instead support no one, vote for no one, wash their hands of any ordering of the world that results in choices no better than this. And the obvious centrist refrain—But do you want the deranged right wing to win?—should, after even a moment of self-reflection, yield to a far more important question: How empty does your message have to be for a deranged right wing to even have a chance of winning? Of all the epitaphs that may one day be written on the gravestone of Western liberalism, the most damning is this: Faced off against a nihilistic, endlessly cruel manifestation of conservatism, and somehow managed to make it close.
Omar El-Akkad, noted embarrassing child
It’s not yet a genocide in Venezuela, but the logic of “soul damage” absolutely applies.
The argument from authority doesn’t make the point more or less valid.
If anything, bringing the quote over out of context shows how chillingly unserious it is:
Faced off against a nihilistic, endlessly cruel manifestation of conservatism, and somehow managed to make it close.
Well, where was the left? Where in the ballot was El-Akkad? Where were the righteousy outraged when something could have been done other than comfortable in their outrage and abdicating responsibility?
Being on the right side of the argument and having no power to enact the right decision is equivalent to not being right at all. And yes, once all other possibilities are boiled down to two, you have to pick one. If you do not, then you picked the one that won.
And that may not be the best way to do it, but until such time as Omar and you have successfully revolted and implemented a superior alternative, that’s how it works. And work it did. So not Palestine is seriously considered as a potential location for a strip mall and Nicolás Maduro is presumably sitting on some CIA dark site somewhere because holy crap, dumbest dystopia.
Anyway, whatever. Not worth going back and forth on this. The blame adjudication is useless and, more to the point, entirely up to me. You can tell Omar I blame him, too, if he ever signs your moral justification pamphlet for fascism.
You… think the differentiating element there is domestic vs foreign policy? That’s the objection you…
… you know what? I rest my case.
No, I think you’ve been duped by one faction of the capitalist class into thinking they represent your interests.
No faction in the US represents my interests, on account of my not being American.
But man, if I have to choose which faction is more likely to, say, roll up with tanks into Greenland, annex Canada or, and I can’t repeat this enough, bomb Caracas and kidnap Nicolás Maduro and his goddamn wife, I am pretty sure there is a single correct answer.
Yeah, the correct answer is both of them, since both parties are subservient to the will of the capitalist class.
Man, save me from cosplayers playing at revolution online.
It’s embarrassing, you know? Like watching your little child try to act like you and accidentally exposing all your garbage.
Dude, it really is embarrassing. If they’re not foreign trolls, then so many people on this site have literally zero fucking idea how the US government works. They read the Communist Manifesto, and maybe some Lenin, and now they’re talking like they’re ready to lead a revolution in a 1910s agrarian society, and anyone even mildly critical is their enemy. Fucking useful idiots.
It’s not yet a genocide in Venezuela, but the logic of “soul damage” absolutely applies.
You said it, not me.
Well if Omar El-Akkad is an embarrassing child that shits his pants then I guess I’m one of those things too
The argument from authority doesn’t make the point more or less valid.
If anything, bringing the quote over out of context shows how chillingly unserious it is:
Well, where was the left? Where in the ballot was El-Akkad? Where were the righteousy outraged when something could have been done other than comfortable in their outrage and abdicating responsibility?
Being on the right side of the argument and having no power to enact the right decision is equivalent to not being right at all. And yes, once all other possibilities are boiled down to two, you have to pick one. If you do not, then you picked the one that won.
And that may not be the best way to do it, but until such time as Omar and you have successfully revolted and implemented a superior alternative, that’s how it works. And work it did. So not Palestine is seriously considered as a potential location for a strip mall and Nicolás Maduro is presumably sitting on some CIA dark site somewhere because holy crap, dumbest dystopia.
Anyway, whatever. Not worth going back and forth on this. The blame adjudication is useless and, more to the point, entirely up to me. You can tell Omar I blame him, too, if he ever signs your moral justification pamphlet for fascism.