Of Laws, Not Men (Civis Americanus Sum III.)

We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level—to the level of human rights. Whenever you are in a civil-rights struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one from the outside world can speak out in your behalf as long as your struggle is a civil-rights struggle. Civil rights comes within the domestic affairs of this country. All of our African brothers and our Asian brothers and our Latin-American brothers cannot open their mouths and interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States. And as long as it's civil rights, this comes under the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. But the United Nations has what's known as the charter of human rights; it has a committee that deals in human rights. You may wonder why all of the atrocities that have been committed in Africa and in Hungary and in Asia, and in Latin America are brought before the UN, and the Negro problem is never brought before the UN. This is part of the conspiracy. This old, tricky blue eyed liberal who is supposed to be your and my friend, supposed to be in our corner, supposed to be subsidizing our struggle, and supposed to be acting in the capacity of an adviser, never tells you anything about human rights. They keep you wrapped up in civil rights. And you spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human-rights tree on the same floor. ~Malcolm X.

I saw this last night. Massive protests in Israel over the last few months about Netanyahu's attempt to undermine the Israeli judiciary and over the actions of the Israeli hard-right in general just got bigger. I saw this morning that the protests, and solidarity among the Israeli people and with members of the Israeli diplomatic corps, the IDF and the government has forced Bibi to back down.

And I got to thinking...

Is it just me? Since at least 2015 or so it seems like there's been a very concerted effort by certain people...mostly a very reactionary set of extremely-online billionaire bros not only to push extreme far-right politics, but to make a deliberate effort to undermine anywhere that either is extremely diverse or that has a history of being a thorn in the side of massed power...regardless of the ideology of that power. It wasn't just Bibi's excesses in Israel that came to mind, either. 

If you think about it, right-wing billionaires like Rupert Murdoch and Sheldon Adelson dominating the media space over the last 20 years or so dovetails a little too neatly with Israel's rightward lurch since then, doesn't it?

But it's not just there; It was Bolsonaro in Brazil, Putin in Russia and Ukraine, Trump in the United States.

All of these things are of a piece. Brazil, Israel, Ukraine and the United States are all diverse countries with significant power on the world stage, and with histories of resistance to tyranny in one form or another by major parts of their populations that are literally part of their cultural zeitgeist. 

America in particular claims it doesn't start fights, but it by god sure finishes them. That's our mythology, anyway. 

"Speak softly and carry a big stick" as Teddy Roosevelt said.

Russia, likewise, is a major player in global politics. The key difference however, is that Russia doesn't have so much that history of resistance to tyranny, but rather one of tyranny itself. 

Russia and Russians see themselves as the imperializers. Russians simply see themselves, collectively, as the big stick in the hand of a single man.

I saw this, too.

That Putin and the Russian FSB (KGB, really) planned a literal genocide in Ukraine if they would have succeeded in conquering that country. Ukraine was to be only the first of many sacrificial goats on the altar of Vladimir Putin's ambition to be known as Vladimir the World-Conqueror.

Much has been made of the differences between Russian and Ukrainian culture and of why the Ukrainians were always going to fight. I've written on this myself.

I've directly compared and contrasted it, too, with what's going on right here in America, and in particular on the Right's poorly-concealed desire for mass killings and pogroms in our own country.

And over the years, I've observed like I said a concerted effort by far-right edge-lords to try to change this country. What they want seems to be somewhere between the Confederacy and the Crusades, bespoke 1950's Anticommunism and a dash of the Sabbat from Vampire The Masquerade, with a little Warhammer 40K on the side.

These fucking people's core values pretty much are "I hate [Racial Expletive Deleted]'s" plus a desire to marry 12 year old girls and pay as absolutely little in taxes as possible.

I'm really not quite sure, especially considering the actual current leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, where the medieval Catholicism fits in. This isn't a thing the RCC itself seems to be making any effort to do much more than sort of tolerate and not really talk about very much.

Fundamentally I think it comes down to basic perversity, a fetish for high school Latin and the fact that these idiots all think they're going to be the local Lord in his castle rather than the serfs in the fields. I'm likewise not sure how they square their utter hatred for modernity with the fact that they spend most of their time discussing it on Social Media, but I digress.

And if you don't think the Billionaire Class is all in on promoting this horseshit, well, I give you this;

Twitter popped this up on a reply to one of my Tweets in a discussion about the shortcomings of Russian military leadership; specifically, on their lack of an effective NCO corps. In the Russian Army, junior officers, Captains and Lieutenants, largely fill the same sort of role occupied by Sergeants of various grades in Western armed forces. 

That's a problem in real terms. The LT is pretty much supposed to do the paperwork, give the orders, occasionally fill the coffee machine and in general jerk off in their air conditioned office while the sergeants and the grunts are out in the field getting dirty and training up on how to break things and hurt people.

Heywood here pointed out that's not how the Russian officer corps works. I.e. a Russian Lieutenant just had to suck up to the right moron at some point to get their commission.

Armed forces and nations alike are supposed to be institutions. Just as you can have a shitty LT and still be fine if you have good sergeants, or have a good LT and not be too bad off if you've got a couple of dumb ass rocks for NCO's...but if all of them are bad, you're dead. 

Likewise, your judiciary and legislative branches and elected leaders are supposed to all serve as checks and balances upon one another, each countering the excesses and weaknesses of the other.

A modern nation is one of laws, not of men.

So then Twitter hung a warning on that shit. I wouldn't have reported this guy in a million years. He's not even close to wrong, let alone out of line.

This is Elon Musk's obvious pro-Russian bias talking.

Muskrat is Pro-Russian because Russia best embodies his repugnant social views and is closest to what he thinks will immanentize his shitty right-wing eschaton, that's all.

And here's the thing; One of the key elements both of that and of fascism more broadly was gutting the hell out of the American center-right and replacing it with...this goddamn dumpster fire.

Turning American conservatism into nothing but a fucking clown show of people dressing like a goddamn joke while bragging about their own criminality (This woman, Micki Larson Olson, was a J6 insurrectionist) and screaming about other people being "Traitors." This bitch is allegedly an Air Force veteran, you'd think she'd have enough memory of US flag code, and enough self respect to not dress like that, but what the fuck do I know? 

And all this was at the ecstatic orgy of Trump worship in Waco, Texas this weekend. Not so coincidentally timed with the 30th anniversary of the start of the Branch Davidian standoff.

Because after all, what does better to undermine civilization and civility or the concept of a nation of laws rather than of men than clownish, crazy antics and excesses done in ecstatic worship of one man?

These people didn't decide to be this way, this consistently, on their own. This kind of bullshit was encouraged, marketed, promoted to them over time.

Because these motherfuckers want nations of men, not of laws.

Like that shit doesn't end badly every single time you run the experiment?

And all you get in return for your freedom and giving up any rational system of laws is license to act out, be stupid and dress like an idiot with hating your own neighbors as a base justification. 

I mean, seriously, do I have this wrong? Like, at all??

Then, once they get done with that bullshit they're going to want to turn the whole damn world that way.

Like that doesn't come off as the incestuous love-child of Idiocracy and Revelation.

I say "No."

I'm an American.

Civis Americanus Sum.

More to the point I know what those words mean. 

I served my country, among other things.

And if you don't like it, kiss my ass.

I don't need or want a Caesar, American or otherwise. In point of fact, I long ago came to understand that America with any kind of a Caesar would cease to be America.

We are what we are, for better and worse because of our differences and the framework we have to express that shit. You can like it or lump it, but most of the rest of the world has changed entire its entire forms of governments multiple times in the 234 years that the US Constitution has been in force.

And people want to trade that out for an Idiocratic dictatorship by Donald Trump at the behest of people like Rupert Murdoch and Vladimir Putin, so the rich can get richer and they, for the most part get to have nothing but their ears tickled by false prophets and their petty hatreds given representation?? 

And maybe get their kids molested by some preacher and their neighbors murdered by god-knows-who and their retirement money given to some rich person who already has way too much, too.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Is having somebody else to talk bad about the people you don't like really that much more important to you than your own freedoms or futures, conservatives??

Is having some pissant Caesar, who is in reality bound to another Caesar who is owned by the Tsar who is owned by business interests you've never even heard of in another country you wouldn't even be able to go to really the kind of government and society that you think you want to have?

"Just so it hurts Black people" ain't the kind of own you think it is, either.

Slavery, just as one example, devalued everyone's labor in areas that practiced it while enriching only a tiny few.

That's not "Woke." That's not "Liberalism." That's basic economics and history.

It wasn't just the fundamental cruelty, evil and unfairness of it that was the fucking problem. It was that the average wage laborer with a family to feed and a life to sustain simply could not compete in a system that was literally based on the forced, no-wage labor of those held in bondage. 

On a global level, Serfdom in Imperial Russia was no damned different.

For fuck's sake the South was (and in many respects, still is) an economic backwater of concentrated wealth, religiosity and willful ignorance where the wealth of a very few is protected by far too many people embracing bigotry and hatred. Russia is not only the same...but it's getting even worse because the elites have stolen so much of the country's wealth.

And people who would've never benefitted from this bullshit in America are mad that we won't let them make it even more that way, but on a global scale this time?

And make no mistake about it. The "Anti-globalism" people just want to rewire the world economic system to dump all the money into their pockets, and if they can wipe out the Jewish people in the process while blaming them for the theft, they're fine with that, too.

The rich fucks behind all this shit are great at getting institutions, nations and people to utterly debase themselves and wreck everything they ever stood for before inducing them to destroy themselves.

And around the world, people are catching on and deciding that enough is enough, that we need nations of laws, not men.

That what happens to one of us, in the end, happens to us all. 

Together we rise, or none of us do.

On such things, and how well they endure, is civilization made or unmade.

Two

Слава Україна!

When I am dead, bury me

In my beloved Ukraine,

My tomb upon a grave mound high

Amid the spreading plain,

So that the fields, the boundless steppes,

The Dnieper's plunging shore

My eyes could see, my ears could hear

The mighty river roar.

When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears

Into the deep blue sea

The blood of foes ... then will I leave

These hills and fertile fields --I'll leave them all and fly away

To the abode of God,

And then I'll pray .... 

But until that day I know nothing of God

Oh bury me, then rise ye up

And break your heavy chains

And water with the tyrants' blood

The freedom you have gained.

And in the great new family,

The family of the free,

With softly spoken, kindly word

Remember also me.

~Taras Shevchenko