Apocalypse February 2024
Big Sigher
Also a dedicated biologist, Aristotle observed that many of the processes operating in the living world seemed filled with intent. Maybe it’s familiarity breeds contempt, always looking across, grass always greener. So intensely present that you aren’t there — it’s like you can’t even believe it yourself. You don’t need the logic of it to get the essence of it. You’re dealing with a positive-thinking, powerful man here, who has worked his way step by step to the top. He is beside himself. A mentally disturbed, paranoid Jesus. Was that controversial enough for you or should I carry on? We’ve built our society wrong for all the people in it. If you can’t mask, that’s when you’re identified as low-functioning. You just have to be patient with bad feeling. Courage, to live a life and take a break from an identity. Boundless isms, not on equality but on sameness.
I’m not certain. I’m legendarily stupid. I’m asking myself, how much would I delegate my own thinking to artificial intelligence? How much would I delegate my dreams? I don’t want that. I don’t want to become a parrot of myself. Some of these poems are desperately longing for being human, a human voice. Luddism is founded on a politics of refusal, having the right and ability to say no to things that directly impact upon your life. Are we still advancing our relish of the world? Machines could not imagine. It’s remarkable that despite all the changes in technology and tools to make us more efficient, it still takes roughly 40 hours of work per week to earn enough to live on. The Right doesn’t have a systemic critique. More than 11 million Britons have less than £1,000 in savings. Essential (sacrificial) workers. Reality upside down, extremely detached from our shared experience.
Well, it feels like that’s being tested at the moment. Can you keep lying to death and just evade all justice? Raging battles of small semantics — is it a ceasefire or a humanitarian ceasefire? Immediate ceasefire or ceasefire now? Parties all want their own amendment to be the one to go through. Everywhere that Palestinians are being told to go, are being bombed. Have not enough people been dehumanised enough? I am stronger when you are safe — the worldview our discoveries might nurture. The isolation of the tyrant from his subjects and the isolation of the subjects from each other through mutual fear and suspicion. Israel insists on Rafah ground invasion, defying pressure from international allies. Aid deliveries are paused while war cabinet minister Benny Ganz claims promising new signs of progress on a hostage deal. Grieve. Integrate. Act. Rest. Militarism in civil society — military force equals virtue. It’s more extreme there even than America. In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly violence, play the great part (1). History is a story of events and not of forces or ideas with predictable courses.
Donald Trump denies all wrongdoing. The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience — NY penalties set at more than $454m. It will be a case of racing to get back in the White House first, his only hope is outrunning all this until the day he dies. Not expected to change, but to be held accountable. Which will stumble first, the democracy or the tango bollock? Day after the ruling he drops a new line at Sneaker Con, Never Surrender High-Tops, in gold, costing $399. Under this condition of remoteness, every assemblage of things is transformed into a mere multitude. Britain’s deep state thwarted my plans, Liz Truss tells US far-right summit CPAC. She fell victim to the UK’s establishment, its bureaucrats and lawyers. Sat beside Nigel F, both with small union flags on the table in front of them. They might be trans activists, they might be environmental extremists. They fundamentally don’t want the status quo to change because they’re doing quite fine out of it. So I think that’s the issue we now face as conservatives. There was a collective cheer in the conservative movement in the United States saying, wow, Margaret Thatcher is back!
The European Union cannot defend Europe. Eighty percent of Nato’s defence expenditures come from non-EU Nato states. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says Nato is ready and able to defend all allies, after Trump invited Russia to attack member countries that he perceived as not meeting their financial obligations. We should not undermine the credibility of Nato’s deterrence. Deterrence is in the mind of our adversaries. Germany is now the second-biggest supporter of Ukraine after the US. If you’re supporting one side in a war against a murderous dictator, you must really want them to win and not merely “not to lose”, the formula to which Scholz and Macron have often reverted. Putin: All this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and the destruction of civilisation. Don’t they get that? They think this is some kind of game. They are blinded by their own superiority complex. His comments are backed by recent Russian successes on the battlefield, as delays in US and EU aid to Ukraine have forced troops to scale back military operations, further lifting the mood in Moscow. The burden is placed on those left in Russia to figure out how to get rid of Putin under conditions of military censorship. Putin has found allies in North Korea and Iran and this coalition of totalitarian regimes is dangerous for everyone — not just Ukraine.
It’s a premeditated act of violence, and the question is why did it happen? Navalny died in an Arctic gulag. Putin had him in his grasp for the last three years. Tortured for three years, 365 days solitary confinement, malnourished, neglected medical treatment. The circumstances of his death obviously are not clear. Perhaps they will never be clear. He was sure that he could be president of Russia. We shouldn’t whitewash the nationalism, but that doesn’t make him Putin. You have a bad health system because they have super-yachts. Veterans come to schools speaking to six, seven, eight-year olds, saying that it’s not scary to die, that death is not something to be feared as long as you’re sacrificing your life for the motherland. There’s this pervasive death cult that’s being ingrained in these children. They’ve taken away this guy that was the guy that made you feel strong. The times may create the man. He wanted to be in Russia. He wanted to die in Russia. That kind of guts gives other people courage (2).
All those steps in the right direction, eh? You would have thought we’d be there by now. A hope disappointed by reality. The dark heart of the story that is all the reason for its telling. A newsmanish voice. Restorer of crumbling cathedrals, I like to speak without the clink of crockery. Starting things, setting in action processes of no return. Human pride and human conscience, the one can only be achieved by the many bound together. But it is good because it is risky. Effort and luck. Straw camel back. Stagnating phalluses. Confusion of command. One day all the problems will be solved, if you believe in progress. Joe Biden was meant to be a bridge candidate from the old guard to the future, but then it appears there is no future. Where human pride is still intact, it is tragedy rather than absurdity which is taken to be the hallmark of human existence — for they know not what they do.
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(1) Karl Marx
(2) Alexander Kabonovsky
