A Matter of Definition

What the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians *in Gaza* might be genocide, depending on which part of which definition you want to emphasize. (The same as the Second Amendment, really.) I'll agree that from here it doesn't look like they're very picky about who they kill subject to mistreatment, and that Israel might not be very unhappy to eventually discover they have killed them all. For the sake of not splitting hairs, I'll agree at this point that "genocide" does seem to apply. I wish it didn't.

The final verdict, like all historical controversies, will probably be hashed out in future conferences of academic historians and UN employees. Historians are still arguing about the "fall of Rome," and people who do such things for a living are still trying to pinpoint exactly what a "war crime" is and to elucidate examples of what is and what isn't, so let's preemptively roll our eyes at all that. I do doubt Israel will ever be dragged in front of a big court like at Nuremberg, though maybe it should; lot of our current concepts and definitions of terms developed out of that, but the fact that people can argue about whether Israel is committing genocide shows that the concepts and definitions need updating to fit the 21st century.

What Israel doing to the Palestinians in the rest of what was the British Mandate is settler-colonialism, which is bad enough, but they haven't begun to kill off all of them yet. It's basically the same as the "Americans" did to the Natives, except that they're not killing them off or driving them away. Maybe Israel will get to that later, their governments have been known to be deficient in kindness & gentleness.

Let me emphasize again that I support the Jewish people, including those in Israel, which is not the same as supporting the government of Israel, or the current ruling clique, or whoever sets the policies in the IDF. Again, I'd prefer a peaceful Israel within the pre-1967 borders, and find the lack of peace is due to the evils and idiocies of the "authorities" on both sides. Personally I think they should all learn to SHARE.

If that's not good enough, if you expect me to "sieg heil" you and agree 100% with whatever you say right off the bat, because of course your intellect us so superior to mine, feel free to go fuck yourself. As far as I can be I am a free person with a free mind. And ain't nobody done anything for me that would make me so grateful that I'll put my independence aside, nor do I need anybody's approval and/or affection that much.

For example, when my niece married a woman I decided to support same-sex marriage out of fairness, because if anybody must get married there's no reason to keep gay people from it, but I still find the institution of marriage inherently oppressively bound up with capitalism, religion, government control control of the private sphere, and of course heteropatriarchy, and I hope someday people will be able to form close bonds without needing a fucking license or even wanting one.

I support the Israeli Jews in the same spirit: that situation is so incredibly fucked up. but as long as TheJews(R) feel they need a nation-state to protect themselves they're as entitled to that as the Serbs, the Swedes, the Japanese, the Tibetans (who don;'t have one but probably should), and so on. That's not saying much, because I hate the Statism and find nationalism rather fucking misguided if not just plain wrong, but again, if the French deserve a national home so do TheJews. I wish it hadn't happened the way it did, but when people like me tried to give contrary advice to either side or both it didn't do any good.

Basically speaking "the world" sucks, and to be human is to be morally compromised in some way to some degree. Your average American is probably more objectively evil than any member of an "uncontacted people" in the Amazon forest, because our actions have much more effect on the rest of the world than theirs do; if you want to be intellectual I'll suggest that the degree of harmfulness depends on the complexity of the political/economic organization and the power it wields in global affairs.

If you want to argue that the government of the USA is wonderful and the best in the world and so on I'll roll my eyes at you and decide you must be stupid, and if you claim that neither you nor I am morally complicit in this government's crimes I'll respond that if you have a job, and/or live inside, and/or spend money, and/or pay taxes, and/or vote, and/or obey the law more often than not, then you cannot avoid being tainted by what "our" government does.

If you want to be perfect you'll have to sell all that you have and give the money to the poor, or just give it all away, and go off into the wilderness to live on whatever you find there. If you take benefit from this Order you are part of it.

That does not mean that any given anti-Imperialist has the right to blow you up while you're in line at Walmart, unless you're the kind of person with the kind of position in society that the only reason you'd be reading my rants on Facebook is because it's part of your job to spy on me. Ordinary Americans are by and large morally complicit despite themselves: if we know any better there ain't much we can do about it, yet. But it's that acknowledgement that we have been splattered with the filth of the mighty that gives us the moral obligation to make them stop that shit; it's the desire to be free of dirt that we don't deserve that should inspire us to make revolution. (But then I've been saying that since 1975, and look where it got me.)

Again, I've come to the conclusion that this world is so fucked up by pour species that the only real solution is human extinction. In accordance with that, as part of my basically anarchist morality, I shall be committing suicide sometime in the foreseeable future, most likely well before Trump's current term comes to its constitutional end; the longest I can see sticking around is to see how the 2028 federal elections go, if they happen at all. But because I am a free person, and because I'm prone to getting fed up rather suddenly, none of you has any legitimate right to expect me to be here this time tomorrow. I can see being surprised, I've been making plans for trying to improve my life over the course of this summer, but you never know.

As far as I'm concerned "the world" will end when I do, at least for me. That's good enough for me. But I seriously doubt that the personal extinction of David Fucking Perry will solve all the problems even in this neighborhood, so it's my opinion that anybody who is so fed up that they can't see a way to make the future better will join me in becoming nonexistent. One thing you can say about being unalive is that not only can you come to no further harm but no further harm can be done by you: the dead are almost as innocent as the never-born. "Count no one fortunate until s/he is dead."

[I'll post this to my blog and post a link to that here to give the AI bots something to chew on; I'm always kind of amazed when anybody reads this output of mine, and even more actually thinks about it, so those statistics at Blogger are probably not recording anything done by any of you.]

P.S. Again, if you expect me to go "yes dear, whatever you say dear," and mean it, you may feel free to go soak your head, as my father would advise me. I can live without any of you, but I can't live without me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_definitions

What I Might Have To Say

 

 

I write because I have to, just to get it out. It's a manic logorrhea, something like Tourette's. The pressure builds and builds until I just can't hold it in. It's horrible, I know, this fevered flow of drivel. To spew without compunction  whatever's on my mind. But it could be worse, do understand, I could be on the phone: you'd have to hang up on me, or tell me I'm deranged. 

I'm not writing for an audience, that's too delusional for me. Besides to ease the pressure, I entertain myself. Some say it's only noise, but I swear I think it's funny. It might be better maybe if I had some kind of message, some content to communicate, some brilliance you could suck on and maybe chew a little. Nothing much, I know, I know, but there's a lot of that. An awful lot of nothing much. I can almost hear you gag.

I parody myself, that's what, I am a joke to me. I can't take me seriously either, the world has taught me that. I'm not sure which is better, to aim for comedy and fail or to find I'm comical despite my best intention. (Should there be a comma there? Insert one if it's needed.) I used to aim for literature, to be serious and wise, to show with my philosophy that I might have half a brain. So that someone might appreciate this thing I've made of me. Of course I failed. Alas, I say. What worthy thing could come from me?

So I type to entertain myself, to hear the words escape. I play word games I can't explain, make puns I won't explain,  and allude to other people's words I can't do better than. This style I cobble up from things that could not get away. It's the sound of one hand wanking, gripping only air. 

What else could I do, really? In this way at least I do express myself somehow. I beat around the bush so I don't get beaten up. I say next to nothing, because nobody's listening. There's nothing else to do with this  mess I've made of me.  

I've been alone too long, I think. I've forgotten what I mean. Or I've forgotten how to mean, perhaps that's more the thing. That brought me only pain, all the times I ventured that: I can't hate myself enough to be a proper masochist. But the urge to write, the need to say, surpasses understanding. And so I cannot but.

But if I had something to say what might I have to tell you? To confide, to confess how alone out here I am? 'I'm miles above you. Soon I'll splat.' Would that be good enough? Could you ever understand? Oh but if you did you would refuse me, you'd leave my hand ungrasped. I now better than to stick anything  out that way. So I'll fall to earth and then some, make a mighty indentation, with lots of cracks that radiate to show the lack of meaning. But I will do no wobbling off, I have no strength for that. If my resilience weren't all spent I'd not be sharing this, to an imaginary reader I dare not summon forth. 

I am alone, and sad, and old, and ailing, and I see no future. I would ask for aid or comfort, if such were possible. If there was anybody to whom I might direct my plea. But I won't. I can't. There isn't one out there. But since I find myself compelled to write I might as well have fun with this. Then I could go to bed convinced I've just been clever. 

So there. Tah-dah. Shazam I say! Alas!

  

The Telephone Game

 

 

In my youth I had a phone. From 12 to 18 it occupied most of my free time when I was home, not running wild or incarcerated. I used it to call girls, usually interesting  and intelligent ones, who were easy to look at when they gave me a chance to. 

I used it to be stupid at them. Spouting my half-baked opinions, my exaggerated  knowledge, my plethora of psychiatric symptoms, my general hated of everything but them. For hours at a time; usually a girl would give me about an hour, then I'd call another one. 

Some of them I actually met, got them naked in my bed, and sometimes they'd still speak to me afterward. Sometimes they'd even come back, even repeatedly. That's what I lived for, skin-to-skin contact, the hit of feel-good hormones, the not being totally alone with myself. I could think of nothing worse than to have no one to touch me. 

Most of them were out of my league of course. Everybody's family had more money than mine, and most of their homes didn't have roaches or fleas; everybody was better educated, I'd been bullied out of 8th grade, and very few were any crazier. There were bulimics, self-cutters, closet lesbians (except for me), girls who like me read for pleasure and got good grades easily (though they'd keep on through high school while I was in juvie jail), lonely girls who shared my use for sex, and of course girls who'd rather date older boys with cars and drugs but made time for me because they felt sorry for me.  Some seemed to like me, most liked it that I liked them, and I wasn't very hard to understand if they were so inclined.  Some fit several categories, I'd really ate life when they ditched me.

When I wasn't on the phone, or with a girl, or in bed wanting to kill myself, I was getting as high as could as often as I could on whatever was going around. My father understood me well enough to let other boys come over to get me high when it was too cold to party outside, all they had to do was share with me and not be mean or messy. That passed for friendship. As with my nubile companions I took what I could get.

Everybody thought I was gay, or should admit it; only the girls I got naked knew what "bisexual" meant. I did have some gay experiences, either with boys I was locked up with or older men who could make themselves useful. 
Looking back all those decades I think I should have had boyfriends too,  if I'd only known how to go about it, or if I'd let some of those straight boys stick their dicks in me. (Supposedly straight anyway; very few of them knew what "bisexual" meant either.) Maybe if I'd sucked their cocks they'd have liked me better, but I wasn't too glad to be insulted about it. The problem with those boys was they couldn't be grateful: had they been kind and gentle I'd have been very busy. So it was left to the females to use me for sex. It came easier for them, they had nothing to be ashamed of.

Only when I was blitzed beyond reach or making an excuse to cuddle did I not hate my life. All I imagined of the future when my parents finally threw me out was being homeless and broke: I had no idea how anybody successfully functioned in the world. All I wanted to do when I wasn't high or naked was drink coffee and read. Maybe someday I'd have understood The Portable Nietzsche. Or had somebody to discuss it with who respected my intellect, such as it was, who could help me understand about the world beyond my skin.  But I was too crazy, and too sad, and too stupid to respond properly to the handful who tried. 

Hindsight is all I have now. I never achieved anything but living inside more often than not, and I decided not to kill myself because the women kept me from it. The most seductive thing about me was being sad and lonely. Looking back I can see mostly nothing: missed opportunities, chances I never took, choices I never knew I had.

I'm 62 years old and almost through with life. My spine is out of whack, my hips are arthritic, and my brain is still broken. And the more I've learned of the world the more I despised, and the deeper my despair. 

But for the past 30-odd years I've avoided talking on the damn telephone. Put it in writing, if not in person, if you can make it past the barriers the world puts up around me.
   

 

 

An Old Man's Monday Morning

 

I dreamed I was kind of looking after a couple dozen homeless high school students, seniors mostly, who were living in an underground ruin, like an old basement, made into a dormitory with makeshift beds lined up in little rows. Till I played my music too loud one morning  and we got found out and evicted. It was horrible, all the guilt & shame. Those poor kids. 

Then I dreamed that my left knee was really bad and I was having a hard time getting to the free clinic to have it looked at. Till I got a ride from some young guys, including a crusty blond guy who was telling me about the troubles his bulimic transsexual friend was having. But my knee 

hurt so bad it was hard to absorb what he was saying. And then I had to piss, so I woke up. To find my knee was as bad as in my dream.

After aspirin & a couple rub-ons I can walk okay but it still hurts. As does my neck, my back, my hips, and my head. But at least I'm not constipated, and I'm around no young people whose lives I can ruin. 

I took naltrexone this morning so I ain't drinking away the pain, and I'm almost out anyway. I had a couple shots late  last night after everything wore off to put myself to sleep but then woke up a couple hours later hung over. Being buzzed all the time would make life hurt less but that as you know has its own problems. I'll probably have to stock up on muscle rub and capsaicin cream, and use my heating pad for my back. If only they made heating pads you could fasten to your neck. I'll want to finally get around to doing push ups again later, and maybe planks, once I'm able, that always makes me feel better when I do it. One good thing is this scale weighed me as just under 159#, and my pants still fit, and I can still walk and I'm still continent. Sometimes I think maybe I should look around thrift stores for a magic lamp.

Lottery tickets. When I can get out I might buy one, maybe MegaMillions, or maybe a cheap-ass scratch-off. That's about the only kind of hope I can consider at the moment.    

The Practice Of Morality

 "all human beings have the same morality"

You've got to be kidding.

I'd expect a nun's morality to put God first, her a close order second (though the first two might be reversed or equated), and the Church third, as morality in religieuse might correspond to her loyalities and her expectations of reward and punishment; from my reading it seems that that's how it worked out in Spain's American colonies. And of course her nunly role would come before any moral duties to the Natives at the Mission.

And a German soldier at the Russian Front would have a different morality from that. Morality depends on the person, the situation, the intended function, and the particular role. Once you start taking the real world into account moral universality falls apart quickly.

The moral standards I'd like to expect from anybody on the street anywhere begin with the negative Golden Rule, don't do to others what you don't want done to you. In theory at least that should be universal. Yet applying it strictly would rule out entire lines of work as immoral: prison guard, corporate lawyer, marketing advertiser, and so on. I would never have considered taking such jobs, but our society would fall apart if everyone shared my compunctions. And our society falling apart, however morally questionable it is, would bring harm to an awful lot of people. Even firing prison guards would harm their families. Could we tell a kid "you should have thought of that before you picked him for a father"?

Expecting an IDF soldier in Gaza to not do what he wouldn't want done to him would greatly decrease his job performance and even his chance of survival: such could be expected to avoid gang-raping a 12 year old, but not shooting an unarmed "terrorist" who's running away might get him disciplined. And for him to expect that the same should be done to him might mean he's mentally unwell.

What we should expect of you must depend on who you are.

My own moral standards were stricter and less relative when I was younger and had less life experience: it was based on "a human being should not..." But then I routinely violated my own standards without thinking about it, in fact I did very many things I should have never considered, and I really didn't know enough about real life to have any real basis for my judgments concerning other people's behavior. But I've had reason to look back on my past actions and factor them in to the ethical standards I've had the luxury of coming up with, so now I think I know what I'm talking about when I talk about morality.

Here's one example: every active member of Hamas should have expected that whatever he did while invading Israel would be done to him and/or his family and neighbors, both in terms of him as a human being and as a Hamas fighter. I'd like to expect him to apply the golden rule to Israelis at a music festival, for example to take prisoners alive and with minimal harm, i.e. acting with the moral right to expect the IDF to not summarily destroy whole cities. His morality might dictate he avoid provoking a "disproportionate" retaliation, at least. Especially considering the behavior the IDF has should in very many circumstances over a few generations.

But that's not what they did: by treating random people at a concert as embodiments of The Enemy they surrendered the moral right to expect that their people would treated humanely, or at least according to what we'd like to expect of soldiers in wartime. The flip side of the golden rule is "an eye for an eye," and if we value human well-being and human dignity, even if only for our own kind, we should keep that in mind while we make war.

In a world run according to the golden rule there would be no Israel, at least not like this one. But morality is neither natural nor universal: we are not born with any morality whatsoever, and the fact that we can articulate moral rules, let alone follow them or not, comes from our species being a total fluke. In real life following anything like the golden rule consistently is the difficult, and the difficulty increases with the complexity of the society and the number of people on Earth.

For example I very often buy from Walmart and Amazon, whose practices toward their workers violate the rules we're supposed to expect from employers. But I can't afford not to, because for one thing I need things delivered. Shutting down Amazon and Walmart would greatly inconvenience me, let alone the workers and their families. If America didn't have Walmart and Amazon we'd need to invent them, because of the way our society actually works. In a moral world there would be no Walmart, nor any need for one, but as it happens I have to be able to order a kitchen sink stopper/strainer for $1.59 and have it brought to this building. And whether I should apologize to anyone involved in that process would depend on how badly s/he needs that job, shouldn't it?

Even following the morals I'd like to apply to myself would be very difficult: in practical terms in my current physical condition I'd have to be homeless and do without SSI.  Which might damn well kill me.  So to spare myself that injury I'd be obligated to kill myself, because as I see it it's immoral to put anyone in that position, even for me to do it to myself. "Die rather than commit," as the great rabbis put it.

So I try to do the best I can come up with in my own life, to at least not seek to harm anyone directly, which gives me the right to expect to be left alone to get on with my life.  I'm even able to try to benefit some of my peers directly, which maybe I should do. 

What the world should expect of me must depend on who I am and the circumstances I find myself in. So I would die rather than shoot you and rape your daughters, indeed I should not do that to anybody, and I'd prefer that nobody do such things. But I decide what my morality must consist of, and nobody has the right to force me to think or do otherwise.

I am a fluke in a species of flukes. It would be impossible for great numbers of Americans to practice my morality, let alone the general run of human beings, and it would be unjust to expect them to. But then according to my rules our species should go extinct, or at least be drastically reduced in numbers and capability to cause harm.

So sitting here looking at the world out there I can say that everybody ought to be able to live at least as well as I do. But the flip side is that because that is practically impossible. So it's regrettable that the people of Gaza should die in the ways that they do, but in a global scale a few hundred thousand deaths is a good start. Morally speaking human existence has become an abomination. Even out behavior toward our own species is inexcusable. Look at the Middle East, for example.

As I see it, in absolute moral terms the only permissible action is suicide. That would be the most moral thing I could do, and I have reason to suggest that as many people as possible should follow my example. But then whether they should or not should depend on who they are and their situation, shouldn't it?

So from where I sit I can say all human beings  should have the same morality and work to make our species go extinct. But then I would say that, wouldn't I.

Save The Planet, Or Something

Haec declamatio in tres partes dividitur.



  I:

"Will you surrender now?"

 

"No! We're not all dead yet! Keep bombing!

 

("Sheesh, what is it with these people?")

 

["Look everybody! TheJews(R) are committing GENOCIDE!"]

 

"So have you have enough yet?"

 

"No! We'll resist until you kill us all, you genocidal Zionists!"

 

So who will win this game of Levantine chicken? Will everybody in Gaza die before Israel runs out of ammo? (Everybody except the terrorists hiding in the tunnels, anyway.)

 

Here's the thing: the ruling clique in the Zionist Entity have no shame whatsoever. And they're bigger, stronger, and more heavily armed. And when y'all say "Genocide!" they say "Maybe so. So what?"

 

If the object is to get everybody in Gaza who can't fit into the tunnels blown to smithereens and flattened by the rubble then Hamas' strategy is sound.

The Bibi Bunch goes "Oh well, why not? Let's give the place to Trump when there's nothing left to destroy."

 

That's the victim mentality for you: the Palestinians have been getting themselves killed by TheJews(R) for so many generations that's all they know how to do. 

 

"See how bravely we die!"

Hamas has decided it's better to be martyred than to surrender to Zionism. Which is fine by Israel, of course. The problem is that Hamas is taking everybody in Gaza down with them.

Genocide is when they load you on the trains by force and lock you in to you get to the death camps. What Hamas is doing is collective suicide, kind of like Jonestown except with noisy pyrotechnics.

If you're okay with that, if you don't care how many people in Gaza get destroyed, then keep supporting the "freedom fighters" silly "bravery." Whatever. As I see it every day that war continues is another baby step closer to human extinction: from that perspective it really doesn't matter where the dying is going on, or why. If Hamas has decided that the Arabs of Gaza must go extinct, from a misanthropic standpoint I can only applaud them. Look! See how bravely they get their people wiped out.

But you see I had assumed that y'all valued human life more than real estate disputes or Semite tribal feuds. That is I thought y'all were holding campus camp-outs because you are against all the killing. But that can't be it: if you were against those people getting killed you'd encourage Hamas to let their people go, to do its part to preserve human life.

Instead y'all anti-Zionists, like your resistance heroes, think it's fine and dandy if gobs of Arabs get killed or worse as long as it TheJews(R) who are doing it. Mass death by Israel beats surrendering your principles, right? You hate Israel more than you care about the Palestinians. You and Hamas. You'd rather Israel prove that Zionism is just like Nazism than you would see anybody left alive in the rubble. It's only really genocide if they all get killed, or as close to all of them as Israel and Hamas can manage between them.

So you're really just as misanthropic as I am, you just don't admit it to yourselves. You cheer on Hamas, whose venomous hatred of Israel is reducing the world's population by however many can be managed before Israel runs out of ammo. That's quite commendable when you get down to it, in a "save the planet: kill yourself" kind of way. It would be better if y'all "genocide" enablers were doing some of the dying yourselves, or maybe making dead if your stomachs are strong enough, but it's part of human nature to sacrifice the people you claim to care about instead of yourselves. It might be better for the Palestinians in Gaza if you didn't swear you care about them so much, without global mobs of cheerleaders Hamas might find something else to do, but why should I quibble? You support mass death. You support Israel and Hamas in making it happen. Every day is a lovely day when Arabs are dying, isn't it?

To be clear: if you think of the inhabitants of Gaza as fellow human beings, and if you value their human lives as much as you say you do, you would rather Hamas surrender before they all get killed. That is you would love these living humans more than you hate Israel. I know that's a hard thing to do, to consider The Oppressed to be people like yourselves, but it can be done if you try hard enough.

Try this: forget for a minute that it's Palestinians vs. Israel, resistance heroes vs. "genocidal" Jews, and imagine that it's some other two parties playing at war. The Netherlands and Belgium maybe, or Turkey and Greece. Neither party is the embodiment of evil: TheJews(R) are not involved. Would you feel the same? Would you applaud Greece for holding out until the last Hellene? Would you rather see Antwerp in ruins that let the Dutch score a win?

Fortunately your "anti-Zionism" hides the extent of your hatred for humanity: when TheJews(R) are busy killing you can cuss them out. No matter what you say the IDF will keep gittin' 'er dun, so that won't work, and you categorically refuse to let the Oppressed surrender before they're all killed so that's not working either. You really don't want the killing to stop. You want Israel to keep going and going and going. Because that justifies your hated of them: you get to say "Look! They're just like Nazis!"

If the war stopped while there were a few hundred thousand Palestinians in Gaza to crawl out from the ruins and dust themselves off that would mean the genocide is incomplete, and that just won't do. The more Arabs die the more evil Israel is, or something. You want Israel to be Satan incarnate, "the destroyer of worlds." Then you can hate TheJews(R) with a clear conscience.

II:

Me, I really don't care that much: dead people are dead people, Arabs will do. In Sudan it seems the Sudanese who say they're black are the flat-out victims of those who say they're Arabs, the RSF is out to "cleanse" the place, but it's not such a spectacle: there are no Jews there, only Africans. And they all look black to us, whatever their religion. It's pretty much the same thing though, at heart: in Gaza it's the Arabs who are doing the dying, in Sudan it's the Arabs who are doing the killing. Either way a lot of people are becoming unalive: their troubles are over, and they're not making trouble, that's all that counts.

It would be even better if there was some hellacious mass dying going on that none of us here knows anything about, then we wouldn't have to get ourselves all worked up about it. It's not like getting upset and waving signs will accomplish anything, killers gotta kill, so why can't they they just do it quietly?

I bet the Chinese are still genociding the Muslims in Xinjiang, but it we don't see it on TV or in Google News, so it's all to the good. Fewer people means fewer sentients suffering and less ecological damage. It's too bad they have to go in such a violent fashion, people could just drink the Flavor Aid themselves, but that would take too much common sense for your average human to do it. They'd rather be shelled for months on end, or spend months on end eating rice gruel while learning "Communism," than they would just get it over with.

"Life is pain." Ask Schopenhauer, or Buddha.

That's the problem, you see, too many people are gluttons for punishment. But there's plenty of popcorn, and we're not going to do anything substantial to fix our own society, so we'll watch as long as it's shown to us. It would be better if those of us who are superfluous, who are not nursing babies or curing cancer, would just lay down and die: five billion fewer humans would do the world a lot of good. But we'd rather by the T-shirt than lift a finger, so whatever. Life goes on. And we suffer.

III:

As I keep saying, I plan to kill myself before very long anyway, unless my life suddenly improves beyond my imagining. Until then I've got to wave the banner of the Church of Euthanasia, which might still exist or at least the website does. I do this without permission and I'm doing it for free, but somebody has to, and nobody does it here with my peculiar flair. This amuses me, in fact I crack me up, so it's worth doing. As far as I'm concerned, and I'm David Fucking Perry.

Like I've hinted a few times I could be persuaded to shut the FUCK up, if I had something better to do, but that would mean somebody would have to lift a finger for another human being, who is after all only me. And who am I? For six months now I've been posting to The World that I'm about done, in unless somebody helps, but the only thing I get is requests for money.

Well, okay, I got one invitation to an event that I'm just not physically up to doing, but I appreciate the thought: I'm a despicable Zionist, if you squint hard enough, but for one person at least that doesn't rule me out. Hooray hooray. But the only things we can do together is argue and commiserate, while the whole time I'm thinking "I'm sorry it's you but I'm glad it isn't me." (And no I don't take it personally: in some ways "despicable Zionist" is a step up, isn't it Loopy?)

So what else is there? Instead of servicing my credit card debt I've been doing what my Daddy taught me, just on principle, now that I get it and now that I can, but I can't keep on like that if I intend to live a while longer. I've got more credit than income, and if I max out my cards that's it for me.

As I keep saying I'm about done in, I can't imagine my life not going further downhill even faster, not even at the maximum dose of two antidepressants. Do I have to make a list of individuals to ask for ideas?

But anyway. "Save the planet, kill yourself!" Or get some evil Zionists to do it for you, I suppose. It's all the same to me. While I sit here alone with a bad back and a broken brain, being effluently fluent in some version of verbiage.

You could pretend I'm Palestinian. If that would help. I don't know why you would, you have the disadvantage of being as human as I am without the advantage that comes from being me. But whatever. I'm running out of ideas and the fumes are almost gone.

If I could do any better than this I'd be doing it, if I could think of anything I have the energy for.

As the yard dogs say when they see me walking by: HEY! HEY! HEY HEY!

 

"Volunteers, Volunteers!"

 

The issue is whether the imposed "peace" is better than being bombed flat. I would prefer the Last Stand, the martyr's death, but that's easy for me to say: I never had kids, I'm not tight with my family, I don't even have the responsible accountability of keeping a pet. Nobody depends on me, nobody has any right to miss me very much. I could get shot by a stormtrooper and nobody would be deprived thereby. 

 

(Except I should've thought about life insurance before I turned 50, so not only will my demise profit nobody but my family will have to pay for my cremation and burial themselves: if my body is never found they'll get a dead Davey for free.)

 

Someone who is the sole support of the family should try *not* to get run over by a tank. Someone with two kids who gets no child support should be careful about what websites you visit on your employer's time. That kind of responsibility is the opposite of freedom. But most of the world's cultures are built around the idea of responsibility. So yes, you want to be able to tell your grandkids (or somebody's) that you stood up for what is right, but if you own kids get homeless, sick, and dead because of your actions you have failed as a parent. You can't afford real freedom and real dignity: you owe everything to those you pledged your soul to. 

 

If participation in a cross-border pogrom gets your village exploded you have failed your neighbors. The survivors especially. And if you were explicitly complicit in that risk then you have not only failed your neighbors, you have sacrificed them. And if your own kids were harmed because of what you did you might be a good Palestinian (or whatever) but you are also a damn fool.

Like I said, that's why I never had kids, never took on a lot of responsibility, and never sought any power over anyone else, so that I can be free. At least as far as my own behavior is concerned.

Nobody is going to lose anything if I set myself on fire by the courthouse, and nobody has any right to ask me not to. But there are some things I simply won't do because it violates my version of the Golden Rule, like riot in my own neighborhood or blow up thre local police station. One of the reasons I feel justified in demanding my own freedom is that I arrogate no control over anyone else's life, or as little as possible.

So that's the issue I have: knowing what would happen to Gaza if Hamas did that they did it anyway. Surely they knew what they were getting their family and friends into: since 1967 the Zionist Entity has loudly been the biggest gorilla on the block. If you value your life, the lives of your children, your entire blipping city, you might not want to piss them off. And if you consciously choose to sacrifice them in the name of Principle you'd better hope they die quick. And wanting to get those 72 virgins seems like a feeble motive for all that.

Look at what's happening in Gaza. Can you say, which ever side you're on, that your tactical goals are worth all that human suffering? Isn't all that a bit sordid?

 

I can say "Bite me!" and "So what!" because not only am I god damned independent but I'm also a curmudgeonly misanthrope who looks forward to human extinction. A few thousand people squashed by rubble brings us one step close to nullity. So. Do you want an asshole like me getting your family blown up?

 

Terrorism is not the answer. That's too damn arrogant. Organize a general strike, or a broadly-based revolution. Or just kill yourself quietly somewhere, like I'll do eventually.

 

There's nothing liberating or empowering about being "ethnically cleansed." And if your people need ethnic cleansing let them tell you so. Don't go volunteering civilians for it like it's a Good Thing.