Republicans Kill Civilians For Bad Guy Reasons, Democrats Kill Civilians For Nice Guy Reasons

Caitlin Johnstone
4 min readAug 22, 2024

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Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

NATO weapons are being used in the largest invasion of Russia since World War II, which according to the Ukrainian president proves Russia is bluffing about its “red lines” and it’s safe for NATO to be as aggressive as it likes inside Russia’s borders.

On a related note, the US is preparing to fight a nuclear war with Russia, China and North Korea simultaneously. The New York Times reports that the Biden administration has authorized a new nuclear strategic plan which “seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea,” in order to “examine in detail whether the United States is prepared to respond to nuclear crises that break out simultaneously or sequentially, with a combination of nuclear and nonnuclear weapons.”

The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans will kill a million Palestinians and say they’re doing it so Jesus will come back, whereas Democrats will kill a million Palestinians while making noises with their mouths like “ceasefire” and “two-state solution”.

That’s basically it; one does an evil thing in an evil way, while the other does the same evil thing in a much more photogenic way. Republicans want to kill Muslims for evil reasons like claiming they’re all terrorists and irredeemable heathens, while Democrats want to kill Muslims for nice guy reasons like helping Israel defend itself and bringing peace and stability to the region. They both want to kill middle eastern civilians, but one of them will kill middle eastern civilians in ways that let liberals feel good about themselves.

It’s just a classic good-cop, bad-cop routine. One plays your friend and the other plays your enemy, depending on what end of America’s fake ideological divide you happen to land on. But really they both want the same thing — in this case to murder people around the world with total impunity without sparking domestic unrest.

Progressive Americans often say “At least the Democrats can be pressured to end the killing in Gaza!”

Bitch, it’s been more than ten months. How has your “pressure” worked so far?

The same people who tell you Democrats are the better option to help Palestinians because they can be pressured to save Gaza will scream at you that you’re trying to get Donald Trump elected when you try to pressure Democrats to save Gaza.

There’s not a single Palestinian American speaking at the main stage of the Democratic National Convention. Every possible demographic is being represented at this cringey bubblegum pop imperialism festival except Palestinian Americans, for some strange and mysterious reason.

Whenever people say the Biden-Harris administration has been getting firm with Netanyahu, they mean issuing him a stern warning that if he doesn’t stop being so openly genocidal, they’ll be forced to get tough and issue him another stern warning.

Claims made by Israel’s defenders over the years that have been thoroughly discredited by the evidence of the last ten months:

- That is wrong and unfair to scrutinize Israel more than other nations.

- That criticism of Israel arises from a hatred of Jews.

- That the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very complicated and difficult to understand.

- That the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has bad guys on both sides who are both equally bad.

- That Israel’s violence is defensive in nature, arising from unprovoked aggressions by the Muslims in that part of the world.

- That IDF airstrikes on Gaza kill so many civilians because Hamas uses “human shields”.

- That Israel has ever been or will ever be ready to consent to a two-state solution.

- That the problems of the Palestinians are the fault of Palestinian leadership, or at least equally the fault of Palestinian leadership as Israeli leadership.

- That if not for Hamas and other Palestinian factions, the Palestinians would be living in peace with justice and happiness for all.

- That Israel deserves western support because it champions freedom, democracy and justice in a region that is otherwise bereft of those things.

- That Israel’s abuses have ever been about anything other than racism and colonialism.

- That the west’s support for Israel has ever been about anything other than geostrategic dominance of a resource-rich region.

- That Israel’s criminality is attributable to a small far right element within its government, rather than to the abusive nature that has been built into Israel from its very inception.

- That you can support the existence of Israel without supporting the violence, apartheid, theft and abuse that the state of Israel literally cannot exist without.

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