As I said yesterday, the journal section is my free-fire zone, so whenever you see bizarre headlines like the one above, please put on your armor to protect yourselves.
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Caesar doesn’t realize he has grown smarter, just as humans don’t notice themselves growing dumber. The hell created here isn’t because one or more apes suddenly evolved into an intelligent species; rather, it’s the sheer insecurity our own species feels toward anything new or different—unable to stomach the existence of another species at least as intelligent as itself. The science of history owes its entire existence to a chain of events rooted in this fundamental insecurity. It’s a bug. It’s hard to deny that this served a purpose in the earliest days of evolution, but it’s equally obvious that once intellect emerged, our ancestors should have abandoned certain old habits.
Million-dollar investments in offensive and defensive capabilities, R&D, and all that jazz… Am I the only one who finds it absurd to tear millions of people away from productive life based on the paranoia that “we might have to fight one day,” only to reserve, train, employ, and retire them for a mere “maybe”—paying them pensions until the day they die? Who knows how many billions of dollars the USSR and the USA left to rot in warehouses during the Cold War, hoarding weapons they would never use, even at the cost of leaving their people starving or homeless. And especially Pakistan, especially North Korea, especially Bharat—a land associated with pacifism—and especially Turkey, a country founded by a leader whose motto was “peace at home, peace in the world”… These are nothing but meaningless dick-measuring contests in a boys’ club that smells of sweaty jockstraps. Everyone knows what is rational, yet for some reason, doing the simple thing seems impossible to everyone. Since it’s impossible for me to single-handedly alter thousands of years of history and human nature, I’m here pouring my heart out to you. I hope you don’t mind?
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Fortunately, unlike those who control the majority of our species, many people I see here write beautiful poems and stories, offer great advice, and share their life experiences. My role here is to be the fly in the soup. To spoil people’s appetite, to make them a little uneasy, to bug them.
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By the way, despite everything, it’s a beautiful day to blast some ’90s glam rock—specifically Cinderella’s Long Cold Winter album in this wretched heat. I think we all need to drift back into our youth, guided by Tom Keifer’s raspy voice.
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Thank you to everyone who reads this, wrinkles their nose, and says—just as it was written about William Godwin in The Magazine Man—”this man should never have lived.”
ANARCHISTALES 