JR'S Free Thought Pages
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JR'S Free Thought Pages |
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Everything Russian Being Cancelled is Bullshit By JR, March 28, 2022 Nationalism is an infantile disease – Albert Einstein He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder – Albert Einstein Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons – Bertrand Russell Russian artists, musicians, athletes and other iconic Russians are being subjected to “cancel culture” because of a war over which they have no control. Wars have a reason but the people who feel compelled to fight in them and subsequently maimed both physically and psychologically and die in them is not their choosing. It’s a truism that “money talks, bullshit walks” and the “first casualty of war is the truth”. Wars are rarely if ever about what we are told by the power elites and their political lackeys. Someone certainly benefits from war (guess who?) but not the primarily working class men who join the military and do the dirty work. These bigoted prohibitions and “cancellations” of all things Russian perversely presuppose that all Russians agree with Putin's actions - or in the case of Americans and the rest of the world - the endless imperialist wars of the US and NATO and the demented militarism and rash statements of the current senile POTUS. Did any of you personally support the latest bloated military budget verging on $ 1 trillion, the purchase of multi-million dollar killing machines and the shipping of weapons to the Ukraine? Nations and the inane nationalism and patriotism that they often vomit up are mere contingencies of birth and have no meaning or relevance outside the state apparatus. These irrational biases are mere mind viruses that the world would be better off without. The next logical step would be to abolish the idea of the state altogether. If patriotism and nationalism have any meaning to a person at all, it’s perhaps citizen solidarity in promoting truth, peace, justice and real democracy in one’s country and neighborhood, that people desire these values wherever they live. It is surely not “my country right or wrong” or the idiotic utterances such as “you are either with us or against us” like George W Bush following 9-11 and the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq that he claimed was directed by “God”. God Bless America! If anyone is a patriot it is truth tellers and whistleblowers such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden who expose corruption, lies, scams, false flags, torture and mass murder by their government and the private sector. But no; they are deemed “enemies of the state”. My advice to young people is to avoid the endless promotions and enticements to join the military and let the rich bastards die for their own profits. With no military, wars would not be possible. In Benedict Anderson's famous interpretation, the country to which one is accidentally born is an "imagined community." There are countless ways to imagine a real community that values mutual aid, the common good and caring for society’s worst off, including the ideas inspired by John Lennon’s idea in his great song “Imagine”. Imagine “no heaven, no hell and no country to die for”. The task of imagining has ethical import because what is imagined can possibly become real. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to think of a socio-economic order that rejects the supernatural and other superstitious nonsense, our culture of greed and selfishness, war and the state and imagine a genuine democracy with peace, fairness and justice for all. Here is Putin's vision and the vision of every American president who went to war in the past century or more: the notion that men who fight in them are mere cannon fodder sacrificed for those who profit from wars. Russia, or any other country that chooses war, is an abstract entity separate from the piece of dirt on which you happen to be born, imposing an agenda of its own, created by power hungry political and business leaders and power elites that own most of the wealth in any country. These politicians and corporate oligarchs are rarely troubled that the war is killing their own country's soldiers by the thousands. For example, the Russians lost 30 million people in World War II and several million in World War I until the Bolsheviks ended the slaughter in 1917 and told the men to come home. Recall the scenes in the great movie Dr. Zhivago, in particular one scene in which replacements are heading to the Eastern front while hundreds of starving stragglers, most without weapons, are heading back home. Doctor Zhivago 1965 : Your Country officer - YouTube Sadly, there are many who have been indoctrinated into the nobility of the rich man’s war and who even enjoy the chaos, adrenalin rushes and killing of other working class men. If you believe in the bullshit war narrative and that the working class stiff (or the peasant in the Vietnam War who Mohammed Ali refused to kill and paid a huge price for his moral decision) on the other side with the same life and dreams as you ought to be killed, then it’s a sad comment on the human condition. Some of the best movies and all-time favorites I have seen are anti-war such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Paths of Glory(1957), The Hill (1965) and The Red Badge of Courage (1951) , just to name a few. Having a few confrontations with dumb ass cops was at least one reason I never in my wildest dreams ever considered the police or military as a civilized way to “earn a living”. When we were about 15 or 16, as a lame experiment, my best friend and I thought we’d give the Air Head Cadets a shot. We had both tried the boy scouts and thought it was retarded; especially having to sing “God Save the Queen” (we believed in neither) and wear silly clownish uniforms like the Hitler Youth. I lasted almost a full day in the Air Head Cadets and my buddy two days who was the only one in step when “marching up and down the square” as Monty Python called it in a great satirical skit. Monty Python - marching up and down the Square - Bing video After having some power hungry jerk with a 75 IQ screaming at you all afternoon in World War I wool uniforms to which I was allergic, was enough humiliation for me. If you watch the 1965 Sidney Lumet movie The Hill, you will never ever in your wildest dreams consider the military. British Sergeant Major Explains The Rules of Black People in The British Army - YouTube What drives people to now hate all things Russian when perhaps a few days ago they had a few drinks of vodka and listened to the genius of Sergei Rachmaninoff? Brilliant Russian philosophers, writers, composers, artists are trashed and the disgraceful Canadian bigots and philistines who were responsible for cancelling performances in Montreal and Vancouver by the 21 year old (he looks about 16) virtuoso pianist Alexander Malofeev. Sasha wrote wrote on Facebook that "every Russian will feel guilty for decades because of the terrible and bloody decision that none of us could influence and predict." Alexander Malofeev -- S.Rachmaninoff. Piano Concerto No.2 - YouTube Some Russian NHL hockey stars such as Alex Ovechkin (IMHO the best player in the NHL – in addition to being a generous caring human being) were heckled and booed at several hockey games by idiots who simply follow the lead of red neck celebrity know-nothings, government drones and the echo chamber corporate media jerks who have decided to hate all things Russian. The most talented players who ever played with the Vancouver Canucks since their inception in 1970 were Russian: Pavel Bure (The Russian Rocket), Alexander Mogilny and Igor Larionov. Are these great players about to be stricken from the record books? Many of us watched the Canucks just to see these amazing athletes do their thing. I have probably over a hundred books either by Russians or on Russia and many of my favorite writers of all time are Russian. If I had to pick one book, I would rate Victor Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary (or any other books by Serge) perhaps the best book among many thousands I have read in my 78 years of living on a planet that with all the recent irrational Russian vitriol seems to be getting dumb and dumber by the day. For me nationalism and patriotism are forms of idiocy, a serious inability to think not only about the conceptual problems of what is meant by these words, but by the dumb behaviors elicited by them. Patriotism is not only the last refuge of a scoundrel, it’s the first. A better vision of pride in one’s nation, if one feels compelled to have these emotions, might consider nationhood as merely a distinctive style of being human in the context of the sum total of cultural practices and values. Most people, regardless of where they live simply want peace, to be with friends and family, to pursue our intellectual and other passions such as art and sport - and to be left alone. Russians are no exception; they probably have as much contempt for their undemocratic governments, corporate vultures and wealthy oligarchs as do most Canadians. It seems to me that the moronic campaign against all things Russian is yet another reflex of cancel culture - the notion (here, evidently, metastasized beyond the United States) that some people are intrinsically contaminated and that we are morally obligated to separate ourselves from them. The demonization of Russians is unsurprising at a time when racism and demonization of the other is all too common. I’ve written on this theme in the past: https://www.skeptic.ca/Patriotic_Drivel.htm www.skeptic.ca/meaning_of_patriotism.htm JR
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