Although depressing, this is great fucken writing. Really felt like your words captured exactly how you’re feeling. It’s hard to find positives in this world, but finding good writing like yours, and the amazing fiction author you got to see speak (whose new book rips), is definitely something to hold onto. It feels impossible to imagine a different world, but god knows I’m going to keep trying. Thank you for your words.
Thanks for putting these thoughts to words, Peter. I often feel things like this, but through coping mechanisms and just daily stress, I can't really find the way to clarify the feelings into words. You did so. Thanks.
I keep thinking about the banality of evil every time I drive around the Florida county I’m in, where the military-industrial complex and it’s big players (Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and many more like L3 Harris or Space X) are probably the biggest employers. I’ve felt the tsunami of a panic attack while considering that my family and my neighbors’ survival (not just prosperity) is now predicated on the mass murder of Palestinians and Lebanese people, not to mention every other victim of the US imperial greed. Is it too far to say the greatest threat to peace and justice around the world is the enmeshed and codependent relationship the warmonging US government, led by capitalists without scruples or expansive humanist morals, has with its citizenry it doesn’t even truly care for?
I would say for a long time now things are so enmeshed, parsing the whole thing as a US imperial project just isn't accurate anymore. They're still the biggest military funder without any doubt, and a major promoter and initiator of wars and ecocide around the world, but there are growing zones of the world where NATO is losing influence, is not the dominant player, and nothing gets better in those places: other governments step up. I guess I would say the State, in whatever form it takes, is the greatest threat to survival and healing around the world.
Trying just to breathe in these times feels like a full time job, something that’s not autonomous , not automatic, something one has to remind oneself to do.
Insights aplenty there, Peter. Some of the issues came forward quite plainly when Indigenous Australians came together to offer reconciliation in the form of A Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution. The referendum last year was defeated and all manifestations of settler-colonial power in this country, when not actively decrying the idea, completely failed to identify and call out the structural racism at the foundation of this nation. But only because their very reality and positions of power are based in that racism.
Although depressing, this is great fucken writing. Really felt like your words captured exactly how you’re feeling. It’s hard to find positives in this world, but finding good writing like yours, and the amazing fiction author you got to see speak (whose new book rips), is definitely something to hold onto. It feels impossible to imagine a different world, but god knows I’m going to keep trying. Thank you for your words.
Thanks for putting these thoughts to words, Peter. I often feel things like this, but through coping mechanisms and just daily stress, I can't really find the way to clarify the feelings into words. You did so. Thanks.
I keep thinking about the banality of evil every time I drive around the Florida county I’m in, where the military-industrial complex and it’s big players (Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and many more like L3 Harris or Space X) are probably the biggest employers. I’ve felt the tsunami of a panic attack while considering that my family and my neighbors’ survival (not just prosperity) is now predicated on the mass murder of Palestinians and Lebanese people, not to mention every other victim of the US imperial greed. Is it too far to say the greatest threat to peace and justice around the world is the enmeshed and codependent relationship the warmonging US government, led by capitalists without scruples or expansive humanist morals, has with its citizenry it doesn’t even truly care for?
I would say for a long time now things are so enmeshed, parsing the whole thing as a US imperial project just isn't accurate anymore. They're still the biggest military funder without any doubt, and a major promoter and initiator of wars and ecocide around the world, but there are growing zones of the world where NATO is losing influence, is not the dominant player, and nothing gets better in those places: other governments step up. I guess I would say the State, in whatever form it takes, is the greatest threat to survival and healing around the world.
Trying just to breathe in these times feels like a full time job, something that’s not autonomous , not automatic, something one has to remind oneself to do.
Yep. This is so good, thank you Peter.
Insights aplenty there, Peter. Some of the issues came forward quite plainly when Indigenous Australians came together to offer reconciliation in the form of A Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution. The referendum last year was defeated and all manifestations of settler-colonial power in this country, when not actively decrying the idea, completely failed to identify and call out the structural racism at the foundation of this nation. But only because their very reality and positions of power are based in that racism.