Do Something Every Day To Help De-Normalize The Abuses Of The Empire
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
One very important task we can undertake as citizens of the western empire is to help de-normalize the tyranny, murderousness and savagery that the imperial propagandists work to normalize. To help other westerners see the freakishness and depravity of the empire with fresh eyes.
If we lived in a healthy, harmonious society, and then all of a sudden the status quo changed to the one we have right now, people would scream their fucking lungs out. They would scream and scream and scream in abject horror and gut-wrenching grief at what they were seeing. It would feel like the end of the world to everyone.
Our task is to try to give our fellow westerners a taste of that experience. To help people viscerally experience the vast contrast between what we have now and what an acceptable status quo would actually look like. To show them the immense suffering, brutality and psychopathy of the empire in all the ways it shows up from day to day, in ways that the normality manufacturers in Washington, New York and Hollywood have been trying to keep them from seeing.
The job of the empire propagandist is to normalize the empire. Our job as healthy human beings who care about the world is to do the exact opposite — to denormalize it. To find new and creative ways to help people see that these things we’ve been conditioned to accept as normal are actually shocking and unacceptable.
Denormalize poverty.
Denormalize injustice and inequality.
Denormalize the ruined buildings and ruined bodies in Gaza.
Denormalize the nuclear brinkmanship with Russia.
Denormalize the destruction of our biosphere in the ravages of ecocidal capitalism.
Denormalize the surging authoritarianism we’re experiencing as the empire works frantically to stomp out dissent.
Denormalize the war machinery rolling out around the world, and the increasingly militarized police forces in our streets.
Denormalize the psychopathy of the politicians and government officials who cheerfully serve the empire in facilitation of these horrors.
Denormalize the way media and government institutions controlled by the powerful work to manipulate the way we think and perceive every day of our fucking lives for the benefit of the powerful.
One of the advantages the empire propagandists have over normal people is that these things are all we’ve ever known. We’ve never experienced a healthy world, so we don’t experience the shock and outrage we’d otherwise experience at what these pricks are stealing from us by keeping that healthy world from us.
But one thing we have that the empire propagandists do not is creativity, and the ability to capture the human imagination. We can use these things to find ways of making the evils of the empire stand out against the background of normalization, and to help people envision a world without those completely unnecessary evils.
There’s always something we can do on this front. Our votes might not matter. Our peaceful protests might get ignored by those in power. Our rights might be getting steadily eroded as the empire managers work to reinforce the bars of our cage. But we can always work to open the eyes of our fellow citizens to the reality of our situation, and to how completely unacceptable it is. And to the urgent need to change it. And to the truth that, if enough eyes can be opened, the power of our numbers will place such change within our grasp.
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