~ where cinders lie ~

It’s the times, Jack

Good afternoon! Had my wisdom teeth removed all at once -plus three stragglers-, so my body is adapting to its new shape and form. Gracefully, to be honest. My body is as per usual very resilient and good at regenerating. My wife is amazed I’m not reduced to a very tall chipmunk. And to be honest, so do I.

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A few months ago, in the middle of open hostilities by Israel over Palestine, YouTube’s Shaun published a video titled “Palestine”. In it he deployed his usual poignancy, and helped me close some loops on the matter. Loved his closing argument of “What can you do? Join a union!”, explaining how the more direct impact on the war assistance by the US was unionized dock workers preventing the sailing of arms shipments, reinforcing my latest ideas on anarchy, civic cooperation and disobedience against the yoke and choices of the looming state. At the very least, it’s a nice palate cleanser. Turns out you can do something, against seemingly insurmountable odds. And it may seem inescapable, but so was the divine right of kings, as Le Guin wisely put.

But what stuck with me the most was the idea that Israel, and its history of a colonial state engaged in that typical, history books brand of violence, is anachronistic. The fact that you see the wanton destruction, the carnage, and above all the glee with which this massacre against the Palestinian is carried about, and (besides the obvious, important and prioritary truth that it’s wrong, inhumane and cruel) it just strikes you as... odd. Out of place. It lacks the finesse of the world power with its UN soap opera and news cycles engaging in an Us vs. Them, regurgitating beaten horses with different colored shirts and hats, sockpuppeting collectives of people deemed unworthy of representing themselves due to being too different, or too right. It lacks the theatrics.

As an adult from a third world country under the yankee sphere of influence that got woken up from a pleasant nap hugging my Gameboy Color by his dad to see the planes crash on the Twin Towers, I am very well versed in the particular song and dance that the US has been trying to make us engage with ever since, the old, green man in his rocking chair nervously hugging a rifle trying to convince us that he still got it, and this is all a misunderstanding. But at least he tried to dance with me, the sick old fart. The effort was there. He was full of shit since he was born from England’s rectum, yet he saw a value in having a hold and hand (a fetid, childless hand) in the narrative of history.

But not here. Israel is a clear, unadultered devil in the eyes of the world. Its war machine aided by foreign high-tech military might tramples the child, the mother, the elderly, and there is no denying it. Social media and independent journalism brings the beast of a thousand eyes over every possible part of the conflict, and the israeli military man responds by casually sharing a funny Ticktock of ten to twenty life sentences in a hellish cell in the form of brutality against the innocent, with a caption in his eyes like ‘triggering the libs’. We have lost the most health and public safety workers ever in this kind of conflict and, it has to be mentioned, not only local folk, also enough foreigners to justify at least a huff and puff in very many a parliament asking what the hell is happening over there (as if healthcare workers grew in trees, you know). There is no filter, no real engagement with the point besides very weak points of ‘they had it coming’ or ‘they shouldn’t have sided with Hamas’, etc., excuses we barely allow to skip turning in a due assigment at school, let alone justify a couple genocides.

Israel is administering hell on earth as taught by its patrons, and no one, not a single person in this deep blue Earth is really behind them. No one. Egypt and Iran have expressed a desire to present themselves as adversaries and mediators, and for the first time in my life, I’ve seen tacit positive sentiment about that in media outlets. A Middle Eastern power can be a force of good, and not just an illiterate brown rascal with a gun. After decades of propaganda following the Arab Spring and my own experience seeing long lines in immigration for Muslim families in Sweden (while the ‘locals’, the fairer kind, could go through the express lane no problem), this is a substantial shift in narrative. Not enough at all obviously, but shocking nonetheless.

Israel’s place in the world will be for some time entrenched as a putrid son of the West looming over foreign interests, at the very least as long as the US is relevant in our current history. Palestine WILL be free, and I pray for their expedient freedom and the best possible form of justice and prosperity. I pray the children roam the streets and make a ruckus, and play with the dogs and disturb the sleep as they should. Yet the Palestinian, the Rohingya, the Sudanese and many others are suffering the violence inflicted by a ghost of an ancient time. And I cannot but feel that there is everyday less space for these specters in the current era. Their grip is ever dwindling.

In the opening moments of Metal Gear Solid 3, the Boss engages with her pupil about what dictates the worth of a cause. Jack, an ex Green Beret on a top secret mission in Russian soil, expresses his undying loyalty to the USA, ready to lay down his life for the top brass. Then, with the love of a mother, she disagrees.

It‘s the times, Jack. Times and context make friend or foe, but the people in history and their prosperity and happiness dictate the worth of their cause.

History, that seemed forever tainted and held by the hand of empire, looks aloof, like a horse pretending to be steered by the officer on its back, but actually going towards its own horizon unbeknownst to the uniformed man.

As technology and standarts of living get better with time, and with direct communication with other humans from any culture and place so easily available, I cannot but feel like certain fears of future demise lose their potency. The pandemic could’ve been a very simple, sure-fire way to go out as a globe-spanning civilization. Yet, what carried the fight forward was not the neoliberal work ethic or the supremacy of the Western culture, but the love for our neighbour and family (something that we actually share with every other human in this planet) We did unthinkable things, and we carried through. And I think that this subtle strength is the key to sap our most prescient demons of the present and future of their power.

The obviousness of war, of violence and power as social and economic systems dwindles, as the mark of love and cooperation rises up to the challenge where the plated champions do not. Guns and missiles and tanks and planes become the tool of the brute, as we wake up everyday and work the spindle and the field. My students bring me convictions of tolerance and love and cooperation that should be impossible if I paid too much attention to the gloom and doom of the social media apparatus.

My mother-in-law, a teacher all her life and deeply tuned to the happenings in the town I now live in, wholly agrees with my wife and I: the times are changing. Things are moving forward.