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I sorta agree with a lot of what you're saying; not completely but I think you might have misconstrued some of what I was getting at here.
Agreed
Agreed
Agreed
I didn't say they were evil. I said they're not your friend; I think it's weird for them to be showing up with a guitar like we're gonna hang out.
Put it this way: If one of my neighbors regularly made phone calls ordering people to be killed, I wouldn't hang out with them. Like if they showed up to a party with a guitar, I wouldn't be able to get it out of my head that they might wake up the next morning and decide that a bunch of Houthis need to die, and then make it happen in the course of their working day. That's weird.
I mean it is fine. You're not wrong. And I have the luxury of sitting here in my safe little bubble protected by these wide luxury oceans with dudes staying up all night watching the satellites, making sure nothing geopolitically bad happens to anything American anywhere in the world. I definitely think that the US empire is by far the most benevolent of the big empires available in the world today. That's a pretty fuckin low bar, but sure, I accept it. I mean I'm sitting safe and happy inside it and not trying to put a stop to it or anything so I might as well.
But at the same time, there's people waking up in hell on earth right now. Like coming awake not eating for two days, hungry with their kids crying, some of their kids just gone killed by the shelling, no food, no toilets, just a big dusty hellscape with more death and misery and emptiness all around them. I get it that at this point we gotta just let that happen, I guess? It just doesn't seem like too much of a fuckin priority to make it stop. We're sort of trying, but not on the same level as if it was happening in Philly or Austin or something (or in Tel Aviv.)
I definitely won't disagree with you about what Trump will do or the electoral calculus of supporting Israel. I'm just saying, you can't be helping make that happen (or whatever other "lesser evil" atrocity, including the intermittency of our support for Ukraine and our weird little pussyfooting rules about how they're allowed to fight back) and then be friends and show up with a guitar like it's all cool. Yeah, I'm glad we have professionals keeping things under control. It is fine. But it would take a lot more humanity from the State Dept before I would really like something like this.
Look, I love this country. Part of why I love it is that streak of anti-authoritarianism that keeps the empire stuff in check, which leads to a lot of the good behavior you're talking about, and also a lot of the rock and roll we make. I'm just saying... play some other fuckin' song. "Rockin' in the Free World" is a song of desperation inside the inhuman system that is America. It's the homeless guy who knows it's getting colder with winter coming on and still doesn't have a place to go. It's trying to keep hope alive even when you've given up on anything you can see or interact with to ever be deserving of hopefulness. You can't be part of the system and play it unless you are actively fuckin fixing things (I'm not saying Blinken is not, you have a point about that part, but... Gaza.)
If you're in Ukraine, and you want to play a kind of dark Neil Young song you can still rock out to, play "Powderfinger" about the kid who's too young to be using a rifle but has to pick one up, all scared, because someone's coming for his family. Or just play RHCP and blow off some steam. You can bring some America stuff and everyone can have a good time. I just feel like maybe he's playing it thinking like "fuck yeah rock and roll" and I don't know whether it's occurred to him that a lot of the dark horrors that the song talks about are still going on, and for some people in the world he's the central symbol of the system that's exporting them to other countries so they can experience them too.
Yeah. This part, I like. We need more of this.
Edit: I got curious and I watched this. JESUS CHRIST MAKE IT STOP. As with many things, George Carlin said it far more succinctly than I could.
Thanks for the good discussion.
Well I think it's pretty lighthearted. See, you put them in a damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't situation. After all, how many times do you hear about how distant from the people politicians are? How unrelatable. Too little and they're not "one of us," and too much and it's, "This is inappropriate, get back to work!" To me this shows a more human aspect of a personality, and certainly this was less-than-official business — and Blinken is still human after all.
Well to be fair, it is happening in Philly and Austin. From drug addiction to childhood homelessness — maybe not to the extent of what is depicted in Gaza, naturally, but there is certainly a massive amount of dissonance at play when you juxtapose the Olympics and some rich man's 5th yacht and what our bottom 1st percentile is going through. Still, I get what you're saying. In that respect, it is indeed a duty of the people to hold their leadership to account.
From the position of Blinken, with their experience and with what intelligence reports and conversations they've had behind closed doors, I again can't say I envy their position — especially when public-facing positions cannot always give the full story on what is classified behind the scenes.
Keep in mind the intermittency of our support to Ukraine falls almost eentirely on Republican opposition; after all, it was Trump who directed Mike Johnson to block aid — and ultimately, aid to Ukraine was blocked for an entire year. So we can nitpick the low-hanging fruit of whether X system or capability should've been granted sooner, but again, I'm not the one responsible for American lives both here and abroad first and foremost. (and with that, I seriously doubt Mike Pompeo and a Trump administration would've negotiated such an impressive prisoner swap for innocent Americans). Arguably if Republicans wouldn't backstab us for eScalAtiOn and stop spreading Russian propaganda among their media outlets (having a conversation with my FIL last week, he parroted this exact shit), then we'd have complete solidarity. Not unlike Obama's Syrian red line on chemical weapons, which then Republican Congressmen refused to support a response.
Ultimately let's not let perfect be the enemy of good; especially when the alternative is evil. Nobody is perfect, and if you put yourself or me in that position I guarantee the bluster would change on a dime.
To your point on the song choice, you can look at it like that; but you can also look at it that Blinken is the type of guy who grew up listening to Neil Young; to Crosby Stills; to Buffalo Springfield; to Bruce Springsteen, etc. And that may signal exactly where he's coming from. That if you sat down with him, I suspect you'd get some poignant answers as to why he chose that song. I'm just saying, don't be so quick to judge without hearing his perspective — for just like, "Why are we still giving aid to Israel?" is far more complicated as I tried to show. I like the guy. I think he's down to earth and I'm just so thankful we have thoughtful minds in office as opposed to that shit-stain Pompeo who preceded him.
LOL. No comment.