US Troops Get Hurt In The Middle East Because Of The Assholes Who Put Them There

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

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

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Looking forward to the countless western media headlines and denunciations from western officials framing the coming Iranian retaliatory strikes on Israel as a completely unprovoked attack, like history began in that exact moment and Israel did nothing to warrant such aggression.

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Western officials like Antony Blinken and David Lammy have been urgently going on about the need for “de-escalation” in the middle east. You’ll never see western officials as opposed to escalation as they are when Israel has committed an insanely escalatory act of war against Iran but Iran has not yet retaliated. They’re fine to let Israel rampage completely unchecked, but as soon as it crosses the red line of someone strong enough to exact a heavy price, they’re all about “de-escalation”.

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Friendly reminder that all injuries and deaths of US military personnel in the middle east are always the fault of the Washington officials who put them there, not the middle easterners who are defending their own home.

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“Racist violence has no place in our country,” say British leaders from the capital of history’s most racist and violent country, while feeding weapons to violent racists in Israel and Ukraine.

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Israel is what happens when a whole nation makes an entire national identity out of being unyielding and uncompromising in response to past traumas. Every possible off-ramp away from war and genocide gets passed by because it would be weak to cede or compromise even a tiny bit.

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American progressives celebrating getting Tim Walz as Kamala’s running mate instead of Josh Shapiro are like a kid celebrating the fact that the school bully only spit in his sandwich once instead of twice before making him eat it.

US progressives are so downtrodden and disrespected by the Democratic Party that a genocide monster choosing a less-shitty running mate than she could have chosen is seen as a generous and uplifting momentous event worthy of celebration and hope.

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If Kamala Harris live-streamed herself torturing a puppy to death she’d lose the support of everyone, but openly backing the torture and murder of an entire enclave full of Palestinians is being overlooked by self-declared progressives as a forgivable little foible.

Near as I can tell, the actual position of US progressives is as follows:

• When Benjamin Netanyahu does a genocide, it’s genocide.
• If Trump were to continue the genocide, it would be genocide.
• When Democrats do a genocide, it’s good people making hard choices within the framework of the political realities of our time.

It’s either genocide or it’s not, and the answer to whether it is or isn’t shouldn’t depend on your political loyalties. If you don’t think the Biden administration is guilty of facilitating a genocide, then it makes sense for you to support Harris even if you have differences with her. If you do think it’s genocide, then anything you say in support of her is nonsensical. Everything after “Okay yes genocide is bad, but” can only be born of psychological compartmentalization to avoid mentally engaging the reality of what you’re seeing.

There are some things you just can’t excuse. Of these, genocide is at the very top of the list. Literally the very top. Vote however you want to vote, but stop lying about it. Stop twisting yourself into psychological knots to stave off the cognitive dissonance you’d experience if you directly grappled with the contradictions in your worldview. Don’t let anything in you shy away from the horrors of what’s happening in Gaza between now and November just because you have a partisan political outcome you don’t want to put a wobble on.

Be truthful.

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