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I know of no one in politics today who would have sat stone-faced as the regime’s media demanded the customary platitudes about a fallen servant of the empire.
More on that in a moment.
Someone in my Supporting Listeners group pointed out that an article at IJR incorrectly pegs me as a supporter [!] of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The headline reads:
“Ocasio-Cortez Tweeted a Sincere Memorial to John McCain — Some of Her Supporters Were Outraged”
A three-second glance at my Twitter feed should suffice to show that I could not be less of a supporter of Ocasio-Cortez, but my Tweet was included in this article all the same.
As you’ll recall from Sunday’s email, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted this:
John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service.
As an intern, I learned a lot about the power of humanity in government through his deep friendship with Sen. Kennedy.
He meant so much, to so many. My prayers are with his family.
A number of her supporters, who do not understand how the regime works, were shocked, since this went well beyond the normal “I’m just showing my respect, because what else am I supposed to do” kind of remark.
Someone wrote an article collecting some of the outraged responses to Ocasio-Cortez, including my own, and used them as evidence of how “hateful” some “democratic socialists” can be. (Yes, this is the intellectual level of the article.)
We read:
“Many, however, were disgusted by hateful replies to Ocasio-Cortez’s simple memorial and the lack of sympathy or respect some democratic socialists appear to have for the sacrifice McCain and fellow soldiers made for American freedom.”
My replies to this:
(1) “Hateful” is the regime’s demonization word for people with dissident views, and intended to foreclose any actual engagement with their positions.
(2) You call that a “simple memorial”? John McCain provides us “an unparalleled example of human decency and American service”?
(3) The United States in fact lost the Vietnam War, and American freedom was in no way impaired. This “the troops are fighting for our freedom” stuff is cultish nonsense designed to engineer consent to an empire that lines the pockets of a few but makes no positive contribution to the lives of, and simply rips off, the ordinary people who fund it.
(4) Even if you thought McCain’s war service was something to honor, then just say that. Don’t say he is “an unparalleled example of human decency and American service,” and then carry on gushing about his friendship with Ted Kennedy. That doesn’t sound like a tribute to his wartime activity to me.
By the way, in case you missed my reply to the Ocasio-Cortez Tweet, here is what outraged the author of this article to the extent that my Tweet had to be included:
“She’s already got all the establishment’s rituals down to a science.”
That was my hateful Tweet.
It was designed more as an invitation to reflect on the regime and the media culture in which we live than it was a shot at McCain per se.
I was saying this: Ocasio-Cortez has already figured out that the regime showers with preposterous honors those people who served the interests of the empire. No matter what enormities a normal moral reckoning would condemn someone for, he is to be canonized — and anyone with ambitions within the regime had better join in the huzzahs.
If this is different from the way a cult operates, I would like to know precisely how.
Meanwhile, a Ron Paul will never be called a “maverick,” or a respected statesman, or an “unparalleled example of human decency.” He will never be praised for his love for his country, despite devoting his life to emancipating it from wars that make no sense, a central bank that causes the boom-bust cycle, and a political class that loots the public while posturing as crusaders for justice.
And he did this regardless of what it meant for his own popularity. Unlike McCain, who remained well within the 3×5 card of allowable opinion drawn up by the New York Times, Ron Paul was willing to say unfashionable things that ran entirely counter to what that card indicated he was supposed to think.
There will be no media demands that a president acknowledge the legacy of Ron Paul, as ABC’s Jonathan Carl tried in vain to get Donald Trump to do regarding the “legacy of John McCain” yesterday.
What answer is there other than chaos, destruction, and trillions of dollars squandered?
I am astonished that Trump refused to be steamrolled into the regime’s creepy canonization rituals. I didn’t think even he could resist.
Are we supposed to respond to such inquiries with platitudes? As in, “I deeply respect John McCain’s life of public service and his commitment to human rights around the world”? Because I don’t. I don’t respect any of these people for their b.s. “public service” or their laughable “commitment to human rights.”
I don’t like to see anyone suffer, and I don’t rejoice in that.
But I’m not going to say some b.s. thing that I’d have to have a lobotomy to believe.