a youtube title caught my attention the other day. it was this guy hanging around subways in the us asking people uncomfortable questions, maybe you know the channel, and the latest question was:
should we nuke iran?
and of course, the first logical thought is…who’s ‘we’? because i highly doubt joe smith, getting off the subway to go to the freaking dentist is in the business of nuking anyone, regardless of his answer.
it is, however, the sort of talk that’s been common these past few hectic weeks. should ‘we’ this, and if ‘they’ that. very non-descriptive, vague terms, and i’m generally cautious about those. gotta be careful with herd mentality. just look at the world we’re living in, eh.
it’s highly unlikely that you personally are nuking anyone. and so, it stands to reason you’d take any kind of military action (as satisfying as it may seem) with a grain of salt. because while it replies to a personal need for validation, it does not, in fact, pertain to a personal action. in other words, other people’s guns ain’t making you more manly or powerful. and things get tricky when you start taking personal pride and pleasure in someone else’s actions. especially violent ones.
but we love to think we’re big. we love to bandy around the word ‘we’ when it comes to military exploits and other such manly things, forgetting all the while that the people that lead us and often are in charge of said military exploits have a very different definition of ‘we’. in fact, time and again, the pandemic notwithstanding, politicians have shown their colors and proven quite clearly that ‘we’ and ‘our common good’ don’t mean what we think they mean.
usually, when you meet somebody new, you give it a long time of knowing that person before you let the lines blur, and before ‘we’ truly becomes a common we that both parties can speak on behalf of, and work towards. friendship works like that. romance, also. and yet, you get one donald duck on the tv enough times, you start forgetting who’s who and mistaking your ‘i’s for ‘we’s.
and here, i thought conservatives were more skeptical about changing their pronouns.
now, in all fairness, i didn’t watch the video. perhaps the people interviewed said ‘no’ to this proposed gen pop expedition. we should not nuke iran. strange, though, because the people who would say no would (ironically) also think in terms of ‘we’. look at what we are doing in the middle east. we should feel shame for the people we’ve chosen to govern us (regardless of your vote).
‘we’-ness goes both ways, doesn’t it?
i am watching the world come to pieces with great skepticism, but also a renewed sense of we-ness. it’s more of a general we. it’s a ‘we the many’ as opposed to you, the few. it contains both the apologists and the weak men (i say men because women have had a long and complex relationship with the patriarchy, so perhaps there’s more nuance there) that take such vicarious pleasure in other men’s big, phallic rockets.
it is always ‘we’. it is always ‘they’. the trouble is, as long as some of us insist on identifying with them, we’ll never manage to do anything about it. it was the same during the pandemic, when so many took pleasure in being good little boys that daddy pats on the back, and it’s much the same now. should we…
… except notice they don’t really ask your opinion, unless it suits them. and if it’s your children that must die in the name of righteousness, then so be it. theirs will be safely away, somewhere cushy and untouchable. i reckon whose kids are first to die is a good indicator of how much we’re a ‘we’.
meanwhile, i have been watching the continuation to “the handmaid’s tale”, “the testaments”. which, i must say, is an unnerving watch. it was, nine years ago, when the original series premiered. it was, in 1985, when margaret atwood first published the book, presumably. yet you’d think we’d move further from the storyline, not closer. to look at america now, the insane proselytism, the merging of state once more with “god” (or at least a vicious mask, because it’s certainly not the christian god that reigns terror and death upon the earth in this way). the reduction of women that has seen such a rise in the past decade.
the world of commanders and divine oppression seems only heartbeats away, but perhaps there’s some comfort in that. because to every oppressor, there must be an opposition. to every psycho, a group of subversive right-thinkers. the fight, as it tends to, wearing on.
still, we’re talking about a book written more than forty years ago. isn’t it time we got better villains. i’m just asking.
Do all those who lie here know why they died
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause,
did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing and dying, it was all done in vain,
Oh Willie McBride, it all happened again, and again, and again, and again."
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I think to truly embrace "we" people need to find a little more empathy and sadly the half of the country who voted a certain way don't believe in empathy. There is a severe lack of it these days.
Absolutely. The unwillingness to understand that we (the broad, 99% we) are more alike than we are different is simply astonishing to me. The truth is, we'll always have more in common with our neighbors who voted differently than with either name on the ballot.
So very true!
You might want to watch this. It makes sense of a lot of what you just said.
However, when I saw a headline in the NYTimes today that said "Trump bombs Iran" or some such, I thought "Trump isn't doing it, we are." We have become inured to the horrors of war, perhaps because the frontlines have not been on our shores for a very long time. We think there is nothing we can do about it.
Thank you. Bookmarked.
That's a fine line between responsibility and powerlessness that we're walking. Me, I come back to a well-loved Rome lyric,
Exactly.
That "we" is just tricking people into thinking that they have an imminent choice there. They don't on the subject. They have the choice on how to live, though, when to stand up and when to sit still.
I love that Dropkic Murphy's song. Always one of my favorites of theirs. Since it seems like you're prone to punk, here's a line from one of my favorite bands from Germany, "Love A":
If you know the rules, you can confidently break them
Because most of them are stupid, it’s not hard for us at all
Only those who have stood up are allowed to sit down
And that’s why so many chairs here remain empty
So few who stand up when it's needed. Love the song, thank you. And yes, while the choice isn't directed at us, many are. We are not powerless (because once we start feeling powerless against the great forces of evil, all might as well be lost, no?).
Fear makes weak ! So it will stay as it is. Ignorance is Bliss...!?
I really think that politician's children and grandchildren should be forced to serve in the military—not just cushy desk-jockey positions where they never have to put their lives on the line. I think we'd see some real change then. The biggest problem with our world today might be the ones making the policy decisions and "rules" live in a safe, luxurious bubble and don't have to live by them.
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