An incandescent moment in an otherwise forgettable movie. En route to committing a crime (stealing $10 million of platinum), a car full of thieves (and murderers) gets caught in the uprising (riot?) following the acquittal of the police who beat Rodney King. “Animals!” says one of the thieves. “Well, can you really blame them?” asks another (the tragic hero). “It’s still wrong. It’s not their property” says the main malefactor. “Not their property” says the thief.
Subtle, unsubtle, whatever it might be, there are standards for us and standards for them. When our client bombs hospitals, it is because the “terrorists” on the other side hide in these hospitals. When their side does, it shows what heinous, depraved, and atavistic animals they are. When we assassinate others, it is to defend Democracy. If they tried to do the same, they are tribal, theocratic, anti-modern, and evil.
But it is curious, always, to understand the leaps of logic and the moral extensibility required to think as colonialists do.
These people are primitive, they say, but they are “days away” from enriching enough Uranium for several nuclear bombs. They are primitive of course but they are experts at cyber-warfare.
Bad logic and bogus philosophy are as fundamental to the ongoing colonial mission as propaganda, redaction of history, and the use of force. Colonialists use dissonance to harmonize their own malevolence, contradictions to unify their own forces. They lie to create their own truths.
So we are here again. The West and its vassals have an opportunity to destroy yet another Asian country. The leader of the most powerful country on Earth will decide, maybe on a whim, whether to attack a country of 90 million people with a long, sophisticated, brilliant history.
“We” don’t see “them” properly, for what they are. We see them for what they need to be to justify our lusts, for blood, power, and control.
We will know soon what happens in Iran (we already know what has been done in Gaza.) But the tragedy is likely already written.
