What are my principles? Not just what do I think is worth fighting for, but what do I think life should look like? Do I have proactive change I\u2019d like to see in the world, or do I simply react to things I don\u2019t like? <\/p>
Personally, I do have answers\u2014varying in lengths on the brevity-to-longwindedness continuum\u2014to all of these questions. But reading so much history and trying to take in so many different perspectives (the historical subjects\u2019, the authors\u2019, the authors\u2019 imagined audiences\u2019, my own, anyone else I might talk to about these events) forces you to ask these questions. When Zinn begins his book openly wondering if Indigenous society was actually superior to Western society and ends it with a call for a quiet-yet-sweeping revolution of the 99%, when you read what has been done\/what is still being done to Black and Indigenous people in this country and wonder how there can possibly be a way forward, you are forced to ask these questions of your principles. <\/p>
These readings do have me believing in quiet revolution, but also increase my feelings of urgency for revolution. And quiet revolutions can have far-reaching, radical goals. <\/p>
Part One<\/a> | Part Two<\/a> | Part Three<\/a> | Part Four<\/a> | Part Five<\/a> | Part Six<\/a><\/p> Read This Week<\/strong><\/p> A People\u2019s History of the United States <\/em>by Howard Zinn: \u201cCarter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus,\u201d \u201cThe Unreported Resistance,\u201d and \u201cThe Coming Revolt of the Guards,\u201d \u201cAfterwod: On the Clinton Presidency\u201d<\/p> Four Hundred Souls<\/em> edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain: Conclusion: \u201cOur Ancestors\u2019 Wildest Dreams\u201d by Keisha N. Blain<\/p> An Indigenous People\u2019s History of the United States<\/em> by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: \u201cConclusion: The Future of the United States\u201d<\/p> Thoughts<\/strong><\/p> Are we having a historical moment right now? Climate change. Black Lives Matter culminating in the 2020 Summer of ACAB. COVID-19. Genocide in Palestine. The threat of AI, or otherwise out-of-control technology. Income inequality. The global ascension of white nationalism, with Trump-Biden II looming. Or is history a long unfurling of moments, any \u201cpeace\u201d simply a different part of the same wave? <\/p> You want to avoid your perception of history lining up with your own autobiography. But I do think things have intensified since all of these books were finished. \u201cYou could call this book an Obama-era artifact,\u201d Dunbar-Ortiz says in her intro in the tenth anniversary edition. Zinn last updated People\u2019s History<\/em> in 2005 (my copy is 1995). Even Four Hundred Souls<\/em> doesn\u2019t know what Covid will do. As I\u2019m writing in 2024, we don\u2019t really know if AI\u2019s bullshit will be propped up into lasting success (like cars) or completely collapse (like NFTs). We don\u2019t know what an international court ruling on a genocide looks like. We don\u2019t know if the US will elect Donald Trump a second time. One thing I do know: the systems that created climate change, the War on Terror, the recession, the failed response to Covid, and the threat of AI are going to be in place for the foreseeable future. <\/p> When I say the United States of America cannot and should not continue as currently constructed, I\u2019m not arguing for immediate, violent revolution, or breakup of the states, or everyone to go back to whatever continent their people originated on, or whatever. When I say the United States of America cannot and should not continue as currently constructed, I mean we cannot continue this infinite growth model, we cannot continue imperialist bullying, we cannot continue leaving our people to flail, we cannot continue to be so wanton and destructive. When I say the United States of America cannot and should not continue as currently constructed, I believe I\u2019m speaking from uncontroversial, necessary fact. <\/p> What should a government do? Does a government exist to enrich a few monetarily, to flex its muscles militarily, and through a combination of football game Air Force flyovers and a razor-thin line between thriving and homelessness, subdue its populace into extracting for it? Does a government exist to pursue \u201chuman progress\u201d or \u201cspread civilization\u201d at all costs?<\/p><\/div> Both Dunbar-Ortiz and Zinn end with searing condemnations of US militarism. Four Hundred Souls<\/em> ends with the Black Lives Matter movement\u2014a movement in large part protesting the militarizing of police\u2014at its forefront. Imperialism, with its unquenchable accounting departments and vainglorious dorks cosplaying as statesmen and\/or action heroes, pulls the skin off of positive-coded things to reveal rot underneath. \u201cPioneer\u201d \u201cAmerican spirit\u201d \u201cexplorer\u201d \u201cwar hero\u201d\u2014how could these have ever possibly been considered badges of honor? Even my metaphors are war-coded. <\/p> Dunbar-Ortiz lays out the case that the US\u2019s foreign policy since Vietnam has been a sort of globalized version of the Indian wars of the 18th and 19th centuries. The US military or intelligence community is deployed anywhere deemed an impediment to order (either aggressively, like Iraq; passively, like Bikini Atoll; or imaginarily, like Latin America, Korea, and Vietnam). People get killed, communities destroyed, and back stateside, a complicit populace is sold an endless drip of cultural propaganda that we live in the greatest, most evolved, most exalted civilization the world has ever known. Meanwhile, the rest of the world shakes their head because they always knew the Empire in Star Wars<\/em> was based on the US. Dunbar-Ortiz quotes extensively from Robert D. Kaplan, and please have a puke bag ready as you read this: <\/p> \u201cBy the turn of the twenty-first century the United States military had already appropriated the entire earth, and was ready to flood the most obscure areas of it with troops at a moment\u2019s notice. <\/p> \u201cThe Pentagon divided the planet into five area commands\u2014similar to the way that the Indian Country of the American West had been divided\u2026according to the soldiers\u2026the comparison was apt. \u2018Welcome to Injun Country\u2019 was the refrain I heard from troops from Colombia to the Philippines, including Afghanistan and Iraq. To be sure, the problem for the American military was less [Islamic] fundamentalism than anarchy. The War on Terrorism was really about taming the frontier.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote> When you consider this quote in the context that bloodthirsty colonizers destroyed a continent previously tended to by the greatest land-keepers the planet has ever seen, when you consider this quote in the context of Mark Zuckerberg buying up Hawaiian land<\/a> because he maybe rightly fears an apocalypse is coming even though native Hawaiians are begging people to stop coming to the island because tourism is destroying wildlife<\/a>, when you consider the existential threat of climate change, it makes this extensive quote from Zinn on the military and climate harder to handle: <\/p> \u201cIn June 1992 more than a hundred countries participated in the Earth Summit environmental conference in Brazil. Statistics showed that the armed forces of the world were responsible for two-thirds of the gases that depleted the ozone layer. But when it was suggested that the Earth Summit consider the effects of the military on environmental degradation, the United States delegation objected and the suggestion was defeated.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote> That\u2019s bad enough on its own. The US is so bloodthirsty and so powerful that it views its own military as more important than the planet on which it operates. It\u2019s made all the more worse after reading the preceding 20 or so pages of the US fucking up Vietnam for no good reason, the expansion of US military interventionism in favor of right-wing dictatorships, and a general policy of \u201cswing our dicks around and hurt random people because even though we left millions in dead in Vietnam, we \u2018lost\u2019 so gotta look tough now\u201d bullyball. <\/p> No, the system that conquered \u201cthe Indians\u201d couldn\u2019t fail, and it had to be proven everywhere. Hence the School of the Americas. Hence our presence in the Middle East. Hell, John Woo used statues from court rulings on settler violence against Indigenous people in the 19th century to justify torturing Iraqis in 2003. That\u2019s right, our proud history of Indigenous-killing led to the justification of war crimes in our lifetimes<\/em>. There is absolutely zero redeeming quality to any US military operation in the last 75 years, and it is killing the planet. <\/em><\/p> Honestly, all those right wingers who don\u2019t want our kids to learn history because it will make them hate the United States? The conservatives are absolutely right. I hold no positive feelings in my heart for this country, my personal Overton Window has greatly shifted so that I am even more<\/em> out of step with the average citizen, and my outlook on the future and our abilities to meet the moment is as low as its ever been.<\/p> What should a government do? Does a government exist to enrich its citizens, to set the table for them so that they can lead fulfilling, healthy, safe, and dignified lives? Does a government exist to ensure the land stays available and usable for the seventh generation<\/a>? Can a government exist that steers its populace towards work that benefits the collective while being less taxing on the individual? <\/p><\/div> So what to do? Honestly, I think something like a century\u2019s worth of conventional wisdom has to be erased. We need radical re-imaginings of what it means to be alive, what we owe each other, and what constitutes happiness. Collectively, the people of the United States are controlled by this imperialist mindset, this urge to never let things be, to always believe another dollar can be made, the call to change \u201cfunctional\u201d to \u201cproductive.\u201d CAN WE LIVE? No, we cannot\u2014these scraps won\u2019t fight over themselves. <\/p>![\"A](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/01dab561-350e-4bd5-ba80-863e1e94a92d.heic\")
<\/figure>![\"File:20171115](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/9ff9cb80-97f1-4d98-bd3a-5178ea0ce7a9_800x530.jpeg\")
<\/figure>At least it was a moral war <\/s>but hey, Dubya wanted to impress Dad. <\/p>