Responsibility revisited
Cassandra, Nemesis and Lethe
If you are reading this blog for a while, especially since I moved it to Substack, you may have noticed a few themes. One of the most prominent is responsibility. Taking responsibility is what I was asking for from my little sister and
. It is also the thing I could expect from the friends and relatives I mentioned in my last post. I want them to recognize their mistakes and learn from them.Not because I want to gloat, scorn, or humiliate. What I would expect is a touch of humbleness. A sign of understanding. Not an apology, but an acknowledgement that they were wrong, that the policy and the course of action they advocated did contribute to harm. Only an honest analysis of their role, a re-evaluation of their position can prevent them from making the same harmful mistakes again.
I did not talk about every subject with every one of my six acquaintances I mentioned in my last post, but I am confident that they are in a general agreement on Covid, Ukraine and Israel.
Each is an unmitigated disaster.
Covid-19
What happened?
Bioweapon research went wrong, releasing a pathogen causing a pandemic.
Gross overreaction, manipulated statistics, boneheaded lockdown policies made everything much worse.
Preventive measures, natural remedies, available medications were not only ignored, but actively suppressed. New, genetic manipulation based, unproven and insufficiently tested drugs were presented as vaccines and forced on the global populations. They were presented as safe and effective. The makers of these so-called vaccines were given blanket immunity from any liability while its critics were maligned, ridiculed, censored and their careers and reputations destroyed.
The “vaccines” proved to be not only ineffective, but causing an unprecedented level of ‘adverse events’ and side effects, many deadly. The hastily released therapeutic medicines, like Remdesivir, were even worse. The non-medical interventions harmed societies, destroyed economies, especially small businesses, while at the same time, made some large businesses enormous profits, greatly increasing wealth and income inequality.
For some, like myself, the whole operation stunk of criminal corruption long before the evidence that it indeed was became clear and undeniable. For some, the bullshit was clear from the beginning, but their opposition to nonsense was used to create social division to amplify the effect of the operation as a whole.
Where we are now.
We will never know precisely the extent of the damage. There is far too much distortion in the original Covid harm data and far too much suppression of the vaccine harm information.
True science is still suppressed, destroyed careers and reputations are still not rehabilitated and clearly guilty criminals are still not investigated and prosecuted.
Big pharma is still immune from liability, governments are still holding on to the new powers they gained during the fake pandemic and the media’s mendacious propaganda is still going on.
Millions have died or irreparably harmed unnecessarily.
In the end, the enemy is always us. Lies only have power if we believe them. Lazy thinking and cowardly compliance are not acceptable excuses.
Ukraine
What happened?
Probably since the moment it became independent, but definitely since 2005, the USA was secretly working on undermining Ukrainian democracy to turn it into a vassal state to be used as a proxy against the Russian Federation. The US is responsible for the electoral fraud/interference in 2005 and the Maidan coup in 2014. NATO was arming and training Ukraine for an armed conflict with Russia for well over a decade. They shamelessly resurrected, enlisted and supported Nazi organizations in Ukraine. They lied to the Russians in the Minsk accord and never stopped provoking them. Eventually, when the Ukrainian Nazis started a campaign of genocide against the Donbas Russians, Putin intervened.
The goal of the West has always been to provoke a conflict that they can use as an excuse to weaken the Russian military, wreck its economy and trigger a regime change to install a puppet government to turn Russia into another vassal state of the US. All of that to gain access to its natural resources and its territory to prepare for a conflict with China.
All Russia wanted was a binding peace agreement, self determination for the Russian minorities in Ukraine and an assurance that Ukraine will never join a military alliance hostile to Russia. They did not want the Ukrainians to become their enemies until the Ukrainians made it absolutely clear that they already are.
Where we are now.
The speed with which the sanctions were imposed is a clear indication on how prepared the US was.
The sanctions backfired spectacularly. The Russian economy and the ruble are stronger than ever.
Putin’s popularity is greater than ever. Putin’s and Russia’s reputation on the international stage is unprecedented. The Russians and the Chinese are offering a very attractive alternative to the US hegemony, the US dollar, the US controlled international institutions and the Western “rules based international order”
As I am writing this, NATO soldiers operating NATO weapons with NATO intel are fighting in the territory of the Russian Federation. You can see this as international terrorism or as an undeclared war of NATO.
Yet, Russia is winning the war.
The question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ will Ukraine collapse.
The question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ will the EU fall apart.
The question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ will the US dollar lose its reserve currency status.
The question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ will the US debt bubble burst and its economy collapse.
The question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ will the new multipolar world order fully emerge.
The war in Ukraine is just the catalyst that is making them happen.
There is no question in this conflict (in my mind) about who the ‘baddies’ are.
Every single one of my clueless, liberal, leftist friends and relatives (including the six mentioned in my previous post) opposes a diplomatic solution. They all (including my little sister) want to see blood for reasons I cannot comprehend and they cannot explain.
…and that is a moral question. Even if you hate the Russians and wish them all dead, you should understand realities. You should understand that Russia cannot afford to lose this war because it would mean the end of Russia. You should understand that millions can die needlessly for no good reason.
…and if someone is too goddamn stupid to understand this, it is not the fault of the Russians.
Israel/Gaza
What happened?
Israel is in a state of permanent war ever since it was established in 1948. Even its birth was marred by British colonial arrogance, setting them up for failure and a permanent conflict with its neighbours. The war, sometime warm, sometimes hot, is going on for 76 years. There is no end in sight, no prospect of resolution. I will not go into the details, you can read my previous posts on it, linked in the bottom.
For 76 years, the/Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the face of the clash of civilizations.
Both sides are financed heavily from the outside. Neither has full and real agency over their fate.
They are pawns in the geopolitical chess-game that nobody wants to let go of.
That is the problem that should be addressed. As I pointed out in my post “The Jewish solution” The so-called Palestinians should be bought out to create separate nation states with clearly defined, defendable borders. It would be expensive, it could be unpleasant, but it would not have to be bloody and it would solve the problem. The “two-state solution” within the same borders is not a solution.
Where we are now
Almost a year after it started, the conflict is going nowhere. The enormous levels of senseless killing and destruction did not achieve anything. Hamas is still alive and Iran is more committed to supporting it than ever. The war is a PR disaster for Israel. Antisemitism is surging all around the Western world. Yet, nobody wants to talk about the only solution: separate them.
This is also a moral question, but people are too hung up on their tribal allegiances to even consider the rational options.
When my friend, the artist was telling me that listening to people like me causes her emotional distress, I tried to comfort her, when I should have tried to explain that talking to shameless advocates of mass killing, destruction and mayhem is distressing to me.
My sister did not talk to me for half a year after I wrote my post with the point that advocating and supporting avoidable mass murder means a degree of complicity in it.
The three pictures on the top are representation of Cassandra, Nemesis and Lethe, the goddesses of unheeded warnings, retribution and forgetfulness. On all three issues, I felt like Cassandra, I hope for the retribution of Nemesis and fear the forgetfulness of Lethe.
The first I already experienced and still do every day, the second I find unlikely to happen, while the third is the most likely outcome. All three of the conflicts I talked about will be forgotten without the collective ‘us’ learning anything from it.
A few years ago, I recommended to my sister to watch Yellowstone, the series. She did, then she told me on several occasions that what she found most interesting about it is that there is not a single character in it that she could sympathize with. I found that odd, because I found many, if not most, eminently relatable. What makes Yellowstone so good is that real (and therefore flawed) people in it make difficult decisions, dealing with hard choices. That is the foundation of classical Greek tragedies. The burden of difficult choices.
Then, as I was writing this post, the answer dawned on me: this is the common element; the fear and dislike of hard choices. My sister dislikes the characters in Yellowstone because they are not nice. Because they are making hard choices.
Every one of the people I mentioned in my last post is a nice person desperately hanging on to the hope that nice can win, not understanding that the real battle is always between good and evil and that hard choices are unavoidable. Refusing to choose usually defaults to the worst outcome.
Nice people are not good people.
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