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To sacrifice everything, for nothing
“Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”
– Attributed to various officers in many wars
As a rule institutional leaders and “respectable”, reputable citizens agree that there come times where it’s necessary for a society to go to war. Soldiers are expected to sacrifice every freedom and comfort, even the most basic necessities and be willing to run tremendous risks, where necessary sacrificing their lives. Society as a whole is expected to send off its young people to this fate, while civilians where necessary sacrifice their own freedoms, comforts, necessities.
And why are people supposed to make these sacrifices? Down through history many societies have faced direct existential threats. But this has never been the case for the United States, protected by such a moat that a physical invasion is close to inconceivable. No, America’s war motives always have been ideological and aggressively economic.
For purposes of this essay let’s leave aside US imperialism as America’s core war motive throughout its history and focus on its ideological proclamations. Why has America sent its soldiers to kill and die?
The quote that best sums up many others throughout US history is Franklin Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress in January 1941. While this was months before the US formally entered the war, Roosevelt and those who thought like him already regarded the US as under clear threat and already de facto at war, with the de jure state imminent.
“No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, of freedom of expression, or freedom of religion – or even good business.
“Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. “Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”…
“There is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are: Equality of opportunity for youth and for others, jobs for those who can work, security for those who need it, the ending of special privilege for the few, the preservation of civil liberties for all…
“These are the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations…
“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
* The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world.
* The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world.
* The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world.
* The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world.”
In justifying his escalation of the Vietnam War Lyndon Johnson explicitly reaffirmed these principles, as has every subsequent warmonger:
“In the years since then, those four freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear – have stood as a summary of our aspirations for the American Republic and for the world.”
Today almost everyone agrees this is good and right for dying in war, but not for the sake of living as a human being.
Of course all these values are precisely what the US system, domestically and internationally, holds in contempt and dishonors far more often than honors. But in principle the average citizen is supposed to believe that these really are the values of the system, and to believe that these values are in fact worth going to war, in order to preserve the reality of these things.
What are the things you’re willing to send others kill and die for? And you would send them, not for the empty words but for the reality of living these things?
Today we see everywhere in America how most are willing to send others to kill and die, but most definitely are not willing to live the principles of the rhetoric. The terror-lockdown offensive using Covid as a pretext is met with rapturous enthusiasm by all the same people who claimed to be willing to kill and die, or at least force others to kill and die, for freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of mobility and economic action, freedom from fear (including the free-floating fear-itself Roosevelt invoked earlier in a different but related context), community, family values, living in peace.
They’re not willing to run even the most minuscule alleged risk to live these things in reality, the moment they were terrorized with the notion that freedom, community, family, living in peace in themselves contained a kernel of physical risk. The second the fraudulent system falsely shrilled “Pandemic! Stampede!”, every patriot and tough guy suddenly was willing to surrender unconditionally, as if to a foreign invader.
The same people who would send their own children into combat on the other side of the world in the name of these human relations and values, or who themselves would volunteer, are willing to throw these away on the spur of the moment, evidently permanently, for no reason at all other than because the TV says people are seeing ghosts. (Most consumers of the propaganda admit they themselves have not seen any ghosts, but they insist the ghosts must be everywhere nevertheless.) The same who romanticize charging into fire are in such terror of the air they clamp face diapers onto themselves and live in abject terror of the physical proximity of what used to be their fellow human beings, their fellow citizens, the same people on whose behalf they’re supposed to be willing to lay down their lives in war.
Some might laud this extreme reaction as being willing to take the extreme sacrifice of the war upon oneself. Of course the elites driving it all don’t actually undertake any sacrifice whatsoever. They may parade their uniform masks in public but don’t wear them anywhere they don’t think there’s a camera on them. The criminals against humanity who drive the terror-lockdown assault, the likes of Neal Ferguson, Dominic Cummings, Nancy Pelosi and many others flout what they know are pointless fraudulent lockdown prescriptions whose only goal is social control and which have zero to do with public health. This proves, among other things, that they regard as a scam the very lockdown measures they prescribe or order for others.
These government officials, media scribblers, NGO cadres, every last one of them would agree with the proposition: “Sometimes it’s necessary to send millions to war and have many thousands die for the sake of…[fill in the blank]”. For all of them the [blank] would include things like freedom, the pursuit of happiness, our human way of life. In theory many would say the same about political protest, the value of being willing to risk oppression, violence and death for the sake of trying to live a human life without oppression.
Yet today and for months now almost all those same persons are saying that we MUST NOT be willing to risk anything or (if it really were necessary) sacrifice anything in order to live the very things for which we’re supposed to be willing to go to war or to run the risks of protest against a violent state.
That’s yet another proof that the whole thing is a Big Lie.
It’s also proof how much all government officials, everyone in the media, all system NGOs etc. and all other lockdown supporters love war and hate the human way of life. Their credo is, Any and all risk and sacrifice (of others) for war, no risk allowed at all for the sake of living; All sacrifice for war, none for peace, none for community, none for happiness, none for well-being.
In turn this is really part of a their lying malign propaganda offensive whose real goal is war on the people themselves on behalf of economic plunderers, social control and the police state, and completing modern civilization’s drive to totally atomize and dissolve all human togetherness, all human solidarity, all human community.
Thus while war may still be invoked as the need to sacrifice on behalf of the community, the real war is waged to destroy the community, and all the sacrifices called for really are calls upon the human spirit to destroy itself voluntarily. Those who think they need to defend themselves against the ghost of a pandemic really are committing suicide by failing to defend themselves against the very real system assault on the basis of their very lives.
The logical conclusion of the mindset: We should kill ourselves to avoid being killed by this alleged pandemic. As it is they want us all to cease and desist from living, and they want to prevent any chance for today’s children ever to live – the entire generation is to serve at least psychologically as a mass human sacrifice – all in the name of avoiding physical risk.
Nothing is worse than totalitarianism. I’d run any physical risk rather than run any significant risk of this level of tyranny. As would any intact human being. This is the same principle often invoked under more dubious circumstances to justify running off to fight in a foreign war, or sending others to do so. Millions have fought and died for this principle. But here we invoke it on more sure grounds.
From the start I’ve been clear I would let Covid do its worst with zero prophylactic measures before I’d be willing to run any totalitarian risk. This is the only meaningful precautionary principle which applies to any political case under the conditions of modern mass society. Those who sincerely regard themselves as having responsibilities as citizens of a polity always are ready to do their own research, reject the lies of the system and support those who speak out against the lies.
Contrary to the rhetoric of the corporate media and its prefabricated Covid death cult, the truly selfish are the idiots that let themselves be panicked and since then have submitted abjectly and brainlessly to every decree of the same governments and media they previously claimed to distrust. They are failures as citizens and as human beings.
Hitherto this mass abdication of responsibility has been most pronounced during times of war fever. It’s no surprise that the Covid propaganda has been heavily leavened with militarist rhetoric, just as pesticide propaganda has been since the 1920s, and just as even the most formal scientific literature often is.
This episode has given the most stark demonstration of how every politician, every opinion leader, every patriot, every warmonger, the voters for these, all are liars since none are willing to endure the slightest perception of danger in order to live these values in whose name they’re willing to have others kill and die for elsewhere. It turns out that, just as much as their worthless masks, their invocation of the name of these values never was more than empty, virtue-signaling posturing.
To repeat what’s been obvious from early days, there is no danger from any virus anyway, but we see how almost everyone is willing to cast away the substance of every value, to spit on and trample it all at the slightest wisp of a ghost in the closet.
Just like the citizen soldiers America claims to honor in its historical observances and daily propaganda, we must be willing to risk and sacrifice in order to combat those who would enslave us. Most of all we must be willing to risk and sacrifice for the sake of keeping our humanity. That means getting back to living as human beings, even if most of us still are afraid solely on account of a terrorist propaganda campaign based on nothing but lies.
Don’t let the terrorists win? Most of all, don’t let these domestic terrorists win.