Potential Final Statement

 Potential Final Statement

As I write this, Iran has launched drones toward Israel, a giant escalation.  It is possible the whole region will enflame.  We can see where this will potentially go.  The next step is the US stepping in to help Israel, and that could bring in Russia, and then you have nuclear weapons on both sides of the conflict.  Iran, too, is rushing to develop nuclear weapons. 

If a single nuclear weapon launches, it will shake history and civilization.  By this I mean it will threaten their existence.

How did we get here?  The simplest answer is stupidity.  If you look at World War I and how it led to World War II, you see not only needless misery on a vast scale but also collapse of the ruling empires.  We seem to have learned nothing from this. 

Stupidity.

This leads to the second answer to ‘How did we get here?’  The answer is hate, fear and ignorance.  This triad is used by fascist dictators.  Such dictators marshal a cult-like following, which allows them to rise up and control entire nations.  To form a cult of hate they need scapegoats.  Inevitably, this includes vulnerable ethnicities and immigrants.  These are seen as subhuman:  wicked, filthy, dirty, infectious.  The dictators use demagoguery.  Skill at rhetoric misused to circumvent the cult-like followers’ reason.  It turns their irrational fury into a weapon of might-makes-right.

Stupidity.  Ignorance.  Fear and hate. 

A third answer is machismo.  This is currently the global standard of masculinity.  Boys are raised to bury tender emotions, resulting in poor psychological awareness and skills.  They are trained to see their worth as based on their ability to rise up a competitive hierarchy of other males, one that focuses on beating others down, fighting and violence.  A related and important factor is patriarchy:  macho males have ruled civilization since its beginning, for over 12000 years.  Women are seen as inferior.  LGBTQ is often seen as outrightly evil.

There is a now a fancy name for the crippled emotional expression related to masculine acculturation:  

Normative Male Alexithymia

  

Stupidity.  Ignorance.  Fear and hate.  Machismo.  Patriarchy.

Relate the above factors to the middle east.  You have Benjamin Netanyahu, a fascist dictator in Israel, who responded to a hate-fueled attack by Hamas, the terrorist government in Gaza (fascist patriarchy), by launching a hate-fueled genocide of the Gazan people. 

The Hamas attack occurred over a single day, a surprise attack, breaking through the security fences that wall off Gaza (Gaza has long suffered an apartheid, physically walled off and in many other ways controlled by Israel).  In a rage of hate by Hamas, about 1500 Israelis were tortured, killed, raped and, as well, 200 hostages were taken. 

Israel’s response so far:  80% of the people of Gaza displaced, over two million souls, their lands burned and razed.  They are currently in famine, suffer epidemics, chronic lack of electricity, water and internet, 33,000 dead and climbing, mostly women and children.  Hospitals reduced to rubble.  On and on.  This is ongoing.  More wickedness daily, more Gazan deaths.

The world looks at the ongoing Israeli genocide in vast horror and disgust.  It is Netanyahu’s vision, this infliction of hate.  He even quoted a genocidal passage from the Bible:  1 Samuel 5:13. 

And what of the United States?  Joe Biden, President, in his vast wisdom (stupidity) continues to supply Israel weapons for the ongoing genocide. 

Hamas acted in hate, killing, raping, and torturing.  Israel upped the magnitude of infliction to carry out an ongoing genocide of the whole region. 

The United States added a global superpower’s backing to the genocide.  This has infuriated people across the globe.

Hate upon hate upon hate ... 

In a way, it centers on Netanyahu.  For many years he has clung to power at all costs, wanting to avoid the felony criminal charges potentially waiting for him if he leaves office.  He was giving money to Hamas through Qatar to buy weapons.  Think about that.

Why?  A stronger, scarier Hamas means peace never comes and so there is more fear for the fascist dictator to stoke in Israel.  It may by now be obvious, but let me add this:  such dictators have no conscience.  They will do anything to maintain and increase their power.  They have no guilt, no shame.

This type of narcissistic psychopathic leader rises up all the time.  People bow down like sheep, offering their souls to them.  The acculturation of machismo makes it easier.  Insecure males seek security in a leader who tells them they are superior to women, to LGBTQ, to foreigners, to anyone else.  They are taught to revel in the thrill of being the bullies and expecting privilege.

Not so long ago, democracy arrived on the stage.  It has been something new in history.  An outlier, yes, but also a chance.  A hope.  A prayer.  A way to maybe escape the ancient cycle:

Stupidity.  Ignorance.  Fear and hate.  Machismo.  Patriarchy.

And yet, tonight may be my last blog post.  Nuclear war could erupt at any time.  The possibility is real.  The war in the middle east is expanding.  

I will leave this as my potential final statement.  My epitaph.  Maybe it will mean something somewhere, somehow, someday to somebody. Do not go down our path.  It is doom:

Stupidity.  Ignorance.  Fear and hate.  Machismo.  Patriarchy.

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5/4 ... added link for normative male alexithymia