It HAS happened here

Thu Nov 1 08:19:11 CDT 2018

I am not  some kind of angry person.I just don’t see the distictions you or others make between US criminality and motives and other violence based empires. Perhaps you might look at my art and see if you find an angry person in evidence.  http://www.brooksideglassworks.com <http://www.brooksideglassworks.com/>. There is nothing angry or hateful in what i say; controversial and provocative to some. I certainly do not admire the US government or its history as some great beacon for humanity but I continually pray for peace and seek to promote open respectful dialog between all people. I do not insult people and I  make no presumptions about your mental or emotional disposition. I do not believe you can list anything I said that expresses anger.  Everything I list as historic facts  have been cited by people like Chomsky, Zinn and many others( https://chomsky.info/20080424/ <https://chomsky.info/20080424/>, Actually Americn imperialism was introduced as a concept to almost all who went through the public school system.As I remember the texts talked about it as America growing up and putting on the big boy boots. Anyway, hardly a controversial term. And you offer nothing to refute US support for numerous violence prone military dictators. In other words you have not refuted my statement in its essence. Your argument seems to be that we are better than Hitler. This seems like a weak argument not because we are not better than Hitler but because it is such a low standard and does not really address anything fundamental about what I am saying.  Fascism as practiced in Egypt or North Korea may be less deadly than the 3rd reich but is still fascism. 

I make a large distinction between what the government does and what the citizens do. The US government is what I am talking about. Nobody could ever organize a bunch of citizens to voluntarly fund and participate in  bombing Vietnamese people. Collusion and lies and false flag operations and media support are needed. I have no particular interest in or relation to the mythos of America as a culture. No one is in  agreement about such amorphous nonsense as what America is, any more than agreement about who and what it is to be a an or woman or native american or Christian, Muslim or Jew..  You make what is to me a bizarre distinction between the mass killing by Stalin or Hitler and mass killings by the US. The effect on the victims was identical and the numbers of victims are enormous as is the open disregard for law or constitutional restraint. If one adds up the total of native people of the Americas, the Spanish American wars, the Civil war, deaths from the slave trade and racism, the mass killing in  Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, Iraq, Libya, and throw in  a percentage  of the mass killings under our sponsored rulers like the Shah or Somoza… well it is a large number and  is entirely endorsed and sponsored by the US government.  

A laundry list? What an odd phrase. I have never known anyone who made lists of their laundry. Do you?  What goes on the list? I sort my laundry and wash and dry it. No lists are needed. Perhaps lists are helpful but I can’t think how. Is there anything on my  laundry -free list that should not be refuted denounced and avoided? Is there anything on my list that has been refuted, denounced , avoided or  prosecuted for war crimes etc.? 

I did not mean my comment on no reversal of rightward tropism to imply you were saying there is a reversal. My thinking is more like this. I am 67, since my initial decision to apply for conscientous objector and when denied to go to jail rather than serve in the military * until now, I have been hearing that things are getting better and that if we vote for the right war-party the tide will shift. That idea is what I question and not in a personal way. I would love to see a change in direction and mentioned some signs of hope.  I believe that a deeper reckoning is needed. The problem is deeper than partisan politics and there is no obvious guarantee that things will get better at all. The structure of corporate capitalism, and militarized international politics has a firm grip. The pleasant life and freedoms that many americans have is still far too structurally tied to violence and theft and there is, so far, no sign of even giving a  voice  in popular media to those for peace and against empire let alone moving in that direction.

Solutions. I am one of the few peope I know who regularly discuss and propose solutions. They are mostly pissed on as naive. That is ok. I am for the naivete of peacemaking, I am for miscegenation, for meditation, for bean dragons, for endorsing the full equality and value of all women and men in all places, I am for friendliness, making art, voting for peace and a green economy; I am for more fruit and vegetables and less meat, I am for telling the truth and listening to others, I hear your pain at my laundry list but I did not make that list, I am for gardening, walking, talking with the birds and trees, I am for non- violence, for sharing, for going to town meeting, telling your truth; I am for research, for questioning authority and texts and nationalism and xenophobic religion, I am for wilderness corridors, I am for combining science with clear moral and ecological values. I am for arguing with lies but doing so respectfully without insults. I’m against all forms of conscription, recruitment and the bullshit language of defending the homeland that allows people to kill people in other countries that did not attack the US; I am for reading the actual text of laws and agreements like the UN charter, the Geneva Accords, the US convention against torture, the constitutiion etc.I am also fully human and highly imperfect, but I stand by my analysis of the US government both now and through history.

Nothing I have said was meant to be disrespectful of any person. I am not intersted at all in put downs or cultivatiing anger. When a person finds out that the government and newspapers lie about very important life and death issues it is bound for most people to produce some anger, but anger passes and the facts remain. I don’t really care whether the nature of the behavior is best called fascism, imperialism, greed-based-violence, or colonialism; I simply do not see how people or nations can turn from bad structures and bad behavior without admitting the selfish and cruel nature of those behaviors and expliciitly renouncing them, enforcing laws against crimes of state violence, and adopting humane policies and practices.

*(  despite my non-cooperation with the draft board I ended up getting a high number the year there was a lottery and never did time as did David Harris, the person whose example I was following)
> On Oct 30, 2018, at 10:37 PM, jody2.718 <jody2.718 at protonmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 12:40 PM Joseph Tracy brook7 at sover.net wrote:
>> 
>>> Would you accept that the US government is a violent, aggressive hegemonic empire which supports and empowers many fascist states? If not, we may live on different planets and baseball, gay rights( still tenuous), and Rock and Roll or whatever is on your list will not be highly persuasive for me.
> 
> (No I do not accept that, and we both live in the same country.)
> 
>> Still I would honestly like to see it and even promise to simply read it without comment.
>> I do not hate Americans. I hate lies and drones and secret torture chambers. My core philosophy is >hopefully based in the idea that humans can renounce and turn from lies and embrace friendly and >cooperative ways that can include eveyone. I am a Quaker interested in the intersection of the great >teachers of peace with the realities of our time. This has nothing to do with hate.
> 
> (But it reads like the screed of petulant, angry person, who seems to prefer to rant and rave rather than offer real solutions to the problems currently besetting our culture in which we are both partners.)
> 
>> I am looking at the role of the US, particularly since WW2 and I see what I find in Gravity’s Rainbow >that the core pragmatisms of markets, militarism, spying, paranoia and deceit expressed in the reich >and in the allies are like Werfner and Renfrew, mirrors in horrible and obvious ways. The >victimization of millions by US militarism, racism, and economic avarice reinforces this view of the >meaning of WW2 and it is horribly similar to the victimizations of the Reich or the violence of >Stalin.
> 
> (You are not going to further your cause by such sweeping generalizations. Whatever the role of the US- which includes me and you- in fostering the evils of the world,  America did, and does not still, rise to level of the Third Reich or Stalin's crimes against humanity. If you do not like relativism then please refrain from false equivalencies.)
> 
>> My list is not a list of trivial “mistakes”;
> 
> (Did someone suggest it was list of trivial "mistakes"?)
> 
>> it is the core international policy of the US empire
> 
> (No it isn't. It is a laundry list of disconnected topics which you would like to somehow blame on your imaginary US empire. To paraphrase Nick Windust- No one- person or country- is that good, or bad, as you would have it.)
> 
>> and its victims are as human and valuable as the European Jews murdered in the holocaust.
> 
> ("Its" victims? "It" is some sort of single minded entity intent on victimizing innocents? And, again, did someone imply that suffering people anywhere are NOT as valuable as "the European Jews"?)
> 
>> They are victims because they are not safely coddled in the arms of the empire, safely absorbed in >the latest cultural distraction.
> 
> (You mean like the Pynchon-L?)
> 
>> The rightward tropism is not gradually reversing . There is no evidence for that.
> 
> (Did someone suggest it is, or will, all by itself, like the tide, without committed citizens working together to expose gross generalizations, overly simplistic explanations and just plain wrongheadedness?)
> 
>> What we see are murders in syanagogues, threats of war with Iran, bipartisan >military spending, >bi >partisan resistance to the Kypto protocols, bi partisan fracking, Brazil >elects military dictator, >women and gay peope can now be hired killers for the empire, Bi partisan >“clean coal” lies as >recently as Obama.
> 
> (What "we" see... Watch that we, ace. What I see is over-heated rhetoric in favor of smugness and sloppy thinking.)
> 
>> When you say people will come together, what does that actually mean? Where is the effective >political expression that marks an end to war and fossil fuel ecocide?
> 
> (Maybe you should try answering your own questions? I dunno, maybe, it's blowin' in the wind? But I am sure that your indiscriminate blaming is not going to do it.)
> 
>> Hillary was as violent as Trump and perhaps equally narcissistic. She expressed derision for those >who opposed fracking to her >secret wall street friends. She wanted to have an air war in Syria with
>> Russia. The US support for >the killing in Yemen escalated under Obama.
> 
> (Again with those false equivalences...Hillary is not President. Obama did not fawn over Duterte, Kim Jong-un, Mohammad bin Salman, Putin, et. al. Nor did he encourage, excuse or otherwise lend legitimacy to xenophobic white nationalists, the NRA, sexual abusers, foreign meddling in the US democratic electoral process, or violence against journalists, to mention a few of the differences between him and Mr. Trump.)
> 
>>> One of the key characteristics of fascism explored in Graviy’s Rainbow is that it is >fundammentally and irreversibly destructive, it is the ego raging against death by inhabiting >death.This is so deep that it is willing to burn itself and its followers to cinders in its madness. >This is the kind of philosophy evident in fossil fuel based corporate capitalism and imperial global >military dominance. It is not actually protecting people, waiting for a rise of conscience and >sanity. It engulfs itself and entertains itself with apocalyptic visions of violence, builds pleasure >palaces while the planet burns and shoots Hotttentots from the balcony. There is no viable political >party in the US yet that does not support this madness. Bernie showed it is possible but party >leaders want only his endorsement, not the ideas that stirred so many.
>>> Labels don’t really matter; drawing imaginary lines that ok this or that degree of war crimes and >violent xenophobia is an exercise in self delusion.
> 
> (It, it, it, it... "it" is not real, but some Virtual Target for your anger and frustration with the way the world is.)
> 
> 
> When your at the meeting house, friend, what's your solution?
> 
> 
> jody
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>> 
>>>> On Oct 29, 2018, at 10:36 PM, jody2.718 jody2.718 at protonmail.com wrote:
>>>> What's this, your imitation of Billy Joel :) But seriously, America is and has been many things, some of them godawful, but I do not agree that America is a fascist state- at least not yet. Oh, it's still later than usual, and Uncle Zoyd is still over-sleeping (He doesn't sleep as well as he used to- he has to get up and urinate more now) and his silicon-based window is still wide open- the creeping fig has almost reached his nose. But as late as it is, there is still time to reverse what has been a decidely rightward tropism.
>>>> 
>>>> While the Pynchon-L has lost many a fine contributor these past years- some to disinterest, and some to fates more permanent, for what it's worth, we're still here. I could, if pressed, come up with a counter-list to yours, indexing as many reasons why America is still a great place to be, but that's not necessary. Machiavelli may have preached that fear is a more expedient means of maintaining power than love, but hatred is boring. Call me naive if you wish, but eventually, I believe, the people will find ways to come together.
>>>> 
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> 
>>>> Joseph:
>>>> "Continual growth of military budget
>>>> Loss of privacy
>>>> Vietnam
>>>> Congo and much of Africa
>>>> Chile
>>>> Argentina
>>>> Columbia
>>>> Cointelpro
>>>> Iran
>>>> Palestine
>>>> Greece
>>>> El Salvador
>>>> Nicaragua
>>>> Honduras
>>>> Iraq
>>>> HUAC
>>>> Murder of Black leaders in US and well documented racism of law enforcement and courts
>>>> Purging black voters
>>>> Afghanistan
>>>> Egypt
>>>> Use of Drones
>>>> Pervasive pay inequity and sexual abuse of women ongoing in Universities, Military, Media, Entertainment and workplace, War on Drugs( while CIA engages in heroin traffic, and US companies sell “opioids")......"
>>>> 
>>>> Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.
>>>> 
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