Ozymandias's Children

There will be no final defeat of evil and ignorance.

Every victory is temporary.

Eventually, we’re going to lose.

Disaster (or justice) comes to every empire.

At best, it can only be delayed.

The more we try to lock in this state of affairs,

the faster and more catastrophically it will fall apart.

We don’t age gracefully, nor has our empire.

We would rather cling to youth and power than yield to age and wisdom.

But this law applies to civilizations as surely as it does to people.

Resign yourselves to this.

Our skyscrapers will come down.

All of them.

The barbarians, excuse me, “terrorists” will break down the door, and our grand plans will be ruined.

Our visions of the future will not come to pass.

Our empire will fall.

Because History isn’t over.

We’ve been led to believe that our destiny lies among the stars or among the ruins of Apocalypse.

But the truth lies somewhere in between.

History will continue without us.

Sooner or later, it will steamroll our cities.

It will flatten our dreams and throw them on the scrap-heap.

Sorry, MLK, but the arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend toward justice.

It just bends toward the next arc.

Don’t worry though.

There are arcs within arcs.

The West’s half-millennium of dominance is coming to an end,

And the sins of our age are not universal.

Bigotry may be a permanent part of the human condition.

But that doesn’t mean the same groups will remain on top forever.

The South will rise again.

The Global South, that is.

The East will rise again.

The future may see Black slavers sending White slaves across the ocean.

No race has a monopoly on evil.

Egypt had black pharaohs.

Rome had black emperors.

The same forces that ended those civilizations will end ours.

We believe we've defeated those obstacles.

But we'd might as well claim that we've defeated Death and become God. 

For all our desire to slip the surly bonds of Earth,

we remain dependent on its gifts.

Like the Prodigal Son, we try to prove our independence.

But, eventually, we must return to Nature's pacifying embrace.

The Sands of Time will bury our monuments.

Our dust will form part of the foundation, and cautionary example, for the civilizations to come.

Let’s hope they aren’t as arrogant as us.

Let’s hope they recognize their place in the web of Nature.

Let’s hope they recognize their limitations without forgetting their power.

They’ll come up with all new wonders and sins,

As we take our place next to Ozymandias,

buried in the sands of a backwater.

Let’s hope they only laugh at our hubris

and don’t curse us for destroying their world.

Title Track

I don’t think I’ve ever explained the title of my blog. I don’t know if I need to, but I do like to show off how smart I am, so I figure I’d might as well.

I’m a sucker for classical references. (See the “I do like to show off how smart I am” comment above.) I’ll allow Wikipedia to explain:

During the Roman republic, the river Rubicon marked the boundary between the Roman province of Cisalpine Gaul to the northeast and Italy proper, controlled directly by Rome and its socii (allies), to the south.

In other words, Italy was the Roman “Homeland.”

Governors of Roman provinces were appointed promagistrates with imperium (roughly, "right to command") in their province(s). The governor would then serve as the general of the Roman army within the territory of his province(s). Roman law specified that only the elected magistrates (consuls and praetors) could hold imperium within Italy. Any promagistrate who entered Italy at the head of his troops forfeited his imperium and was therefore no longer legally allowed to command troops.

(There's a gap between these excerpts, but I forgot how to indicate that in MLA style. So much for that $100,000 English degree!)

Exercising imperium when forbidden by the law was a capital offense. Furthermore, obeying the commands of a general who did not legally possess imperium was also a capital offense. If a general entered Italy while exercising command of an army, both the general and his soldiers became outlaws and were automatically condemned to death. Generals were thus obliged to disband their armies before entering Italy.

Eventually, someone had to come along and break that rule. In this case, that someone was Julius Caesar.

In 49 BCE, perhaps on January 10, Julius Caesar led a single legion, Legio XIII Gemina, south over the Rubicon from Cisalpine Gaul to Italy to make his way to Rome. In doing so, he deliberately broke the law on imperium and made armed conflict inevitable.

From that daring defiance of “political norms,” you might say, we get the following expression.

The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" has survived to refer to any individual or group committing itself irrevocably to a risky or revolutionary course of action, similar to the modern phrase "passing the point of no return."

“Passing the point of no return” is often used in political rhetoric. We’re told that once X happens, there’ll be no going back. For instance, we were told that once ObamaCare took effect, “death panels” would be established to decide the fate of your Dear Old Granny. (You might even call this an “Obama-scare tactic.” If you were a total dork.)

Conversely, we Minnesotans were told that passage of the conceal-and-carry gun law would transform our state into a shooting gallery reminiscent of the Wild West. I’m still not crazy about that law, but I have to admit that the nightmare scenarios sketched out by my fellow Leftists and Liberals have not come to pass.

Terrible consequences are attached to a proposed change in public policy in order to discourage people from supporting that change. Opponents argue that the new policy represents a dramatic shift in the direction of society that will lead us down an evil path. These are usually exaggerations or outright falsehoods meant to distract us from more plausible outcomes of the change.

But the primary deception is inherent in the rhetorical device. It’s the insistence that the change is irreversible. In reality, very few government policies fall into this category. Even Prohibition was repealed, and that created a massive new division of law enforcement, the Bureau of Prohibition. Despite all the effort the federal government put into Prohibition, it abandoned that crusade as soon as the law was revoked, and, since then, the social stigma of drinking has significantly declined.

So, even if the new policy is a disaster, it can almost always be reversed. This should be the default assumption in our society. We live in a country where huge buildings are built and then torn down a few years later, only to be replaced by something bigger and more disposable.

I’m not sure why the “There’s no going back” argument carries any weight with us. It may be our progressive vision of history, the belief that society only moves in one direction: “forward.” That would seem to preclude the possibility of undoing anything that achieves official approval. But it ignores the many failures that fall by the wayside on the Road to Utopia.

However, we may have finally reached that point of no return with respect to some very important markers. As I’ve written many times before, resource depletion and climate change are two issues in which reversing course may not be an option. There’s no sign of any energy sources capable of fully replacing fossil fuels, and humanity may have already condemned itself to an inhospitable future on this planet.

But, on the bright side, there’ll still be plenty of time for me to blog about all this death and destruction!

Then what does it mean to “ride” the Rubicon? I think of it as riding the fence. In most cases, I reject the assertion that we’ve reached a point of no return, and I reserve the right to take my time to make up my mind. This usually means doing nothing, but, in our crazy, fast-paced, instant oatmeal, get-things-done-yesterday world, I think doing nothing is underrated.

It’s also a subtle jab at myself to get off my ass and start “walking my talk.” I hypnotize myself with arguments for and against, maintaining an illusion of indecision, when all I’m really trying to do is make excuses so I don’t have to do the hard things, the things that I already believe are the right and best things for me to do.

The main inspiration for the title, though, was a book written by Mike Ruppert. I started the blog in the fall of 2005, after I’d mostly gotten over a mild-ish nervous breakdown that started in February of that year. (Yeah, I’m not sure what a “mild-ish nervous breakdown” is either. For me, it meant sleeping 4 hours a night instead of my usual 7-8 and being exhausted and freaked-out all the time because I thought civilization was about to collapse into a Mad Max-type situation.)

This breakdown was triggered by learning about Peak Oil in an extremely alarmist way. Mr. Ruppert had a website at the time, From the Wilderness, that fed my paranoid fantasies. It was the ultimate in “doomer porn,” full of articles that reinforced my belief that nefarious forces were operating behind the scenes to guarantee a bloody apocalypse for the World As We Knew It.

I donated a few hundred dollars to the website and bought his book, Crossing the Rubicon, a hefty tome that details his criminal case against the George W. Bush Administration for causing 9/11. I read it and found it (Shocker!) very convincing.

By the time I started the blog that fall, I’d stepped back from the brink of apocalypse. I still didn’t like humanity’s chances of dodging the Peak Oil bullet, but I could at least entertain the possibility of hope long enough to get a good night’s sleep. I remained on the 9/11 Truther bandwagon though, so I was totally down with referencing Mr. Ruppert’s book in my blog title. It took at least a year for me to let go of my faith in the “inside job” narrative.

Not that surprisingly, Mr. Ruppert committed suicide a few years ago. He seemed to be a highly intelligent person given to paranoia. I was sad to hear of his death, but I knew that, in the end, he made the only “rational” decision left for a Doomer. From my time in that headspace, I know how suicide can seem like the only humane and honorable way out.

I think going down the Doomer rabbit-hole is a big reason why I started blogging. It was such an extreme emotional rollercoaster ride that bouncing back from it must’ve given me the confidence to post my writing online. (At the time, it felt like a big risk.) But I was eager to get off the rollercoaster. Apparently, Mr. Ruppert wasn’t able to do that.

“Riding the Rubicon” could also mean riding that rollercoaster of emotion and indecision, being suspended between safety and danger, sick of the status quo but not yet willing to upset the balance of power. Whatever definition works for you, I’d go with that.

Reunification

You may have noticed a change in this blog’s appearance. I’ve adopted the design of my other blog, Mickey’s Adventures Through Time and Space. I prefer this design, and I’ve decided to stop posting on that blog. (If anyone knows how to transfer those posts to this blog, I’m all ears.)

After a 4-year experiment (and a 5-year mission) of keeping separate personal and political blogs, I’ve decided to go back to my old, messy, one-blog approach. The distinction between personal and political is essentially arbitrary anyway. I mean, where do you draw the line?

Our society has tried to separate the personal from the political. But I think it’s an attempt to mystify politics, to convince people that the business of running things is best left to the Experts. Of course, the Experts tend to agree with Big Business, but that’s just because Big Biz is usually right. It has nothing to do with the fact that the Experts are paid by the Mainstream Media, which are owned by Big Biz. That is merely a coincidence.

As a result of this arrangement, we’re deluged with official statistics that bear no resemblance to our personal experience. But who are you gonna believe? All these numbers that carry the Establishment’s Seal of Approval or your own lying eyes?

If you buy into the mainstream narrative (like I did), you feel like a freak and a failure for having a seemingly abnormal life. I was vulnerable to this because I felt abandoned by my friends and alienated from my family. I was socially isolated, economically insecure and angry.

Despite going to a good (expensive) college, I have yet to land a job that is both spiritually and financially rewarding. Because of my shame about this failure, I swallowed whole the mainstream narrative that I failed entirely due to my inadequacy and the only way to ease my pain was through material consumption and accumulation.

Consciously, I’d always rejected this philosophy, but unconsciously I believed it. I had no one (whom I believed) to tell me I wasn’t a failure or a freak. I was afraid to even ask the question, to ask for that reassurance. I was a Man, after all, and Men don’t do that. We aren’t supposed to need that.

Needing that kind of support is a sign of weakness, we’re taught. Asking for support is going public with your weakness, an even bigger no-no. I resented anyone I saw, man or woman, who showed vulnerability. They were breaking the Rules, the Rules that I fought so hard to uphold.

But enough about me. Let’s get back to the politics. Or have I been talking about politics all along? (Mind blown!) All these things fed my politics, consciously or not. I became intent on fighting the H-1B visa program that had brought Indians (the kind from India) to work alongside the rest of us at my last steady corporate job.

I think this was a good, smart response to my anger. But if I hadn’t been raised in the upper-middle class, gone to a small, liberal-arts college and been exposed to radical Leftist politics, I might not have even thought of that as a decent, humane option.

Instead, I might’ve given into my racist hatred of Indians and become a white nationalist. It’s not like the Democrats had anything better to offer. Say what you want about Trump, but his anti-“free trade” rhetoric was far more resonant than Hillary’s “stay the course” message.

Thus did the GOP reap the harvest of what its policies had sown. They (with the Dems’ near-lockstep support) undermined public education, economic security and the social safety net, thereby creating the ignorant, scared and angry voters who elected Trump.

But U.S. politics had become too sanitized. The professional politicians were making “adult” decisions that were ruining Americans’ lives. It was OK when those decisions ruined (or ended) Iraqi or Afghan lives, but once the “carnage” came home, something had to change. People could care less about civility in politics when they can’t pay the bills. They just want someone who’ll fix things.

Besides, our idea of political “civility” and “norms” is pretty fucked-up. We mock other countries when their parliamentarians get into fistfights, but we’re the real savages. We pat ourselves on the back because we can coolly and calmly debate the merits of murdering thousands, or millions, of people via “humanitarian intervention.” We should be horrified by the casual manner in which we discuss such things.

The separation of the Personal and the Political seems to enable this cold, bloodless, detached rhetoric about other people’s lives. I’ve fallen into the trap too. My essays often trade in airy abstractions. I’ve been trying to keep my political points nice and clean and “objective.” But no one’s objective. We all have our biases.

Hopefully, with this reunification of my personal life and my politics, I’ll stop worrying about revealing my biases and personal shames. I think I hide them to hide the fact that I’m just as flawed as most people. But I have to let go of that arrogance. It would certainly make me more willing to leave my Ivory Tower every now and then and join my comrades (Yeah, I said it!) in the streets.

Treating the Symptoms

“Free trade” and unfettered immigration are really only useful to the affluent. But, if you question their value, you’re assumed to be a racist xenophobe devoid of anything intelligent to say on the subjects. After all, who in their right mind could possibly object to “free trade” or unfettered immigration? They’re self-evidently beneficial to all, right?

(In the style of John McLaughlin:) WRONG! As the Archdruid has noted (and, if you haven’t read his shit, do it NOW), the American middle and upper classes have long exploited undocumented immigrants as landscapers, nannies, housekeepers, etc.

These immigrants also drove down prices on goods and services that used to be made or provided by U.S. citizens. The immigrants couldn’t demand fair payment or treatment by their employers for fear of being deported (or, now, detained).

As a result, the working class got the shaft. Adding insult to injury, they get mocked for raising concerns about immigration. They’re painted as rednecks who just don’t like POC’s or people from other countries. I laughed at this depiction on South Park. It’s still funny to me, but now I can relate to their fear and anger.

The mistake the working class made was succumbing to racism and xenophobia. Of course, it’s hard to blame them given the pressure they’ve been under for the last 50 years. All it took for me to descend into that headspace was to be thrust into a similar, but still much better, situation for a few years.

Once my friends, job and apartment were gone, all my enlightened, open-minded empathy went right out the window. My anger overrode my intellect and compassion. I can only imagine how difficult it would be if I’d been raised in a family that’s been stuck in the working class for generations. My parents got out while the getting was good (the 1950’s and 60’s), but not everyone was so lucky.

Their parents didn’t have to compete with immigrants. They also grew up in a booming economy, so jobs were plentiful. The idea of a shrinking economy and job market is foreign to them. That’s why they hear the arguments against immigration and free trade as provincial bigotry, the kind of ignorance they wanted to leave behind when they became middle-class.

But the global economic system that enabled their escape from the working class also created the Third World. It’s just hard for those of us in the First World to accept that, because then we feel guilty, like really guilty. I mean, how would you feel if you thought your prosperity was creating the Third World? I hope you’d feel as guilty as I do, which is to say really super-guilty.

A common First-World assumption is that the jobs being shipped to the Third World must be superior to what they replaced. After all, why would people take those jobs if they weren’t better than what they had before?

We don’t realize that our free trade agreements have destroyed many livelihoods in the Third World, and the people are left with little choice but to work in the factories (or work for drug cartels, like in Mexico). That’s why these economic policies must be implemented and enforced so brutally, often at gunpoint. They don’t have popular support in the Third World.

That approach isn’t necessary in the First World, because many of us are benefiting from the policies. Those who aren’t benefiting, the working class, for instance, is no longer organized on a sufficient scale to oppose the policies. If they were, their resistance might be put down with the same violence as it is in the Third World. That’s what happened in the U.S. back in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, when unions were strong.

The irony is that “free trade” is billed as a cure for poverty, but in practice it simply transfers wealth from the Third to the First World. Its opponents are cast as Neanderthals, cavemen who want to go back to “the good old days” of racism and geopolitical isolation. This has proved an effective way to keep hidden the central role of protectionism in building the economies of the First World.

Allowing immigrants into our country is a nice humanitarian gesture, but it’s really just a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. We’re only (barely) treating the symptoms. The disease is the “free trade” of Neoliberal Capitalism that destroys Third World economies and forces people to leave their homes in search of a tolerable life. Until we do away with “free trade,” naturalizing undocumented immigrants is just a stopgap to ease our guilty conscience.

The Hate That Dare Not Speak Its Name

As I expected, my previous post struck a chord with some people. It didn’t go quite as viral as I had hoped, but I got a few comments on Facebook, and it’s been a while since I even got that magnitude of response. I think it’s because I confessed two of the biggest sins in our culture: racism and xenophobia.

However, one of the Facebook comments concerned me. The man said that the Indians I talked about in my essay were of the privileged Brahmin caste and didn’t deserve our sympathy. This filled me with dread. I was afraid of getting sucked into a vortex of racial hatred.

I followed the link he posted to an episode of his podcast, Progressives for Immigration Reform. Despite my trepidation, I found it to be a well-researched, reasonable discussion of the use of H-1B visas by U.S. companies to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. That was a big relief.

It seems like nowadays social media platforms are pockmarked with racist, hate-filled rabbit-holes. I procrastinated on writing that essay because I was afraid of being labeled a racist or attracting the attention of actual racists. Getting stuck with that label can be social suicide, but the second possibility is even more frightening.

I felt like I could get drawn into a racist community, like it would hold some attraction for me. For one, there’s my social isolation and loneliness that make me vulnerable to recruitment. Second is the shame of acknowledging that I have racist feelings sometimes. One of the Alt-Right’s advantages is they won’t shame you for admitting those feelings.

Hatred has become an unforgivable sin in our culture. Not only are you not allowed to act on it, you’re not even allowed to feel it. Just feeling it makes you a Bad Person. As the Archdruid has written, hate is a natural human emotion. Those who deny that fact are guilty of the same kind of repression as the Victorians who denied that sexual desire was natural.

The Archdruid has also written that these hysterias lead to opposite and equally harmful overreactions. The Victorian fear of sex led to the excesses of the Sexual Revolution. The prohibition against hate is likely to provoke a backlash of people wallowing in hatred.

Instead, the Archdruid argues for moderation, splitting the difference between extremes, finding a happy medium. The answer to hatred isn’t shaming anyone who expresses it. It’s understanding why they hate. You might even discover that their reasons are perfectly logical. Then the causes can be addressed before the hate consumes them.

But this would require the Social Justice Warriors (or “SJW’s”) to admit that they feel hatred sometimes. They’re loath to do this, because it’s the only moral advantage they have over others. They can’t claim that they’re suffering as much as the “racists” they attack, because they’re middle or upper class or attending a good college.

At the end of the day, the SJW’s are just another group of bourgeoisie exploiting the global proletariat, including the White working class. On some level, be it conscious or unconscious, they know this. But rather than work to undermine the system that benefits them, they’d rather shame the less fortunate. The only way they’ve figured out how to do this is by turning hatred into a sin of which they’re innocent but the unwashed masses are guilty.

It’s a good way for the SJW’s to ease the guilt they feel about their privilege. I should know: I’ve felt a lotta guilt about my privilege as a product of the upper-middle class. We can tell ourselves that the White working class may not be as privileged as us, but at least we aren’t racist.

That’s the real sin: hating other people, even if you have no intention or power to act on it beyond small acts of violence. The globally hegemonic oppression of Capitalism from which we bourgeoisie benefit is relegated to an afterthought. It’s shoved off-stage to make room for a debate over the morality of personal feelings.

As a therapist (and Counselor Deanna Troi of Star Trek: The Next Generation) once told me, feelings aren’t good or bad. Only the actions they inspire have any moral significance. Considering the words SJW’s have directed at the White working class, I can’t help but think that they “hate” these supposed racists.

There are certainly plenty of racists in that demographic, but you’ll find at least as many racists per capita in the White middle and upper classes. The difference is we run the Mainstream Media, so we’re not gonna spend a lotta time covering our own racism. After all, we’re the Establishment, so our sins are actually virtues.

No, the SJW’s aren’t likely to have an epiphany about their own hatred anytime soon. They’d have to join the rest of us “haters” down here in the gutter. They aren’t gonna do that until they realize that the gutter may be where the sewage ends up, but most of that sewage comes from their own homes, businesses and colleges.