Bells of Christmas

December 19, 2024

Bell tower, Church of the Nativity — Belll tower at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, West Bank

‘Bells of Christmas’

I was about to call it a day

The walk was such a pleasant way

When a lady called out to say

Did you hear the Bells of Christmas today?

She said it was her favourite tradition

To listen to the rendition

Without any conditions

The clear sound of inspiration.

I recalled climbing long winding stairs to the rooftop

Past the great bells, I came to a stop

The ringers were watching the clock

In silence, we all stopped our talk.

We listened for the magic

Of the ringing sounds so fantastic

For with no bells, it would be tragic

It keeps us from becoming plastic.

Down, down, I came to become grounded

To the waiting world it all sounded

Like a page from the past that had ended

In Christmas now we only pretended.

For Christmas is not ‘Happy holidays’

That leave us in a daze

This is a Holy season

Have we forgot the reason?

The bells toll to tell

Of a message to dwell

Upon the sounds from above

For the reason for being – is Love!

Bob Morley

That Which Can Be Destroyed By The Truth, Should Be

December 19, 2024

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

DEC 15, 2024

“That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.”

This is a line by fantasy author PC Hodgell, though it’s often misattributed to Carl Sagan.

I think about this quote a lot.

I think about it when reflecting on the way Israel is exterminating Palestinian journalists in Gaza while keeping western journalists out of the enclave to prevent the world from learning the truth about what the IDF is doing there.

I think about it when reflecting on the mountains of government secrecy with which the western empire protects its information interests, imprisoning whistleblowers and persecuting journalists who try to expose the truth about its criminal actions around the world.

I think about it when reflecting on the nonstop deluge of empire propaganda that public consciousness is hammered with to manipulate the masses into accepting the global leadership the US-centralized power structure.

I think about it when reflecting on the US war machine and how all the military operations of Washington and its allies are always justified by lies.

I think about it when reflecting on dysfunctional relationships that are held in place by secrets and dishonesty, preventing the ones being deceived from freeing themselves and finding their way into a life of authenticity.

I think about it when reflecting on the ego and how easily its illusory nature can be seen with a penetrating insight into the truth of how human perception and cognition are really operating.

There are times when withholding the truth would be in the highest interest. Someone lying to the police to protect someone from unjust persecution at the hands of an unjust system. A journalist protecting a source by obfuscating the truth from government agents. A battered wife lying to her husband to calm him down. An abused child lying to their abuser about what they’ve been doing.

But as near as I can tell the only times when withholding the truth is in the highest interest is when there’s an abusive power dynamic at play and the person in the down-power position is using untruth to protect someone in an unjust situation which should not exist in the first place. In all other instances, truth is best.

Truth is the great equalizer. It makes the abuses of the powerful much more difficult to execute, and gives the disempowered much more power. This is why our rulers are constantly working to expand surveillance and eliminate the privacy of ordinary citizens while increasing government secrecy to allow themselves to hide the truth, when in a healthy society it would be the exact opposite. In a healthy society ordinary members of the public would have enshrined privacy protections against the government, and any governmental systems would be as transparent as air.

In a healthy society there would be a direct one-to-one correlation between power and transparency. The more power you have the more transparency should be required of you, and the less power you have the more secrecy you should be shielded with. This would protect ordinary citizens from abuse at the hands of the powerful, and prevent the powerful from becoming abusive toward the citizenry. We know this is true because all the most abusive power structures work constantly to reverse this dynamic to the furthest extent possible.

A healthy society will be a truth-based society. It’s hard to imagine what a society that is guided by truth would look like, because we live in a society that is made of lies. If deceit magically became impossible today, all our institutions would crumble by tomorrow. A truth-based society would mean the total destruction of all that is familiar to us right now. But that which can be destroyed by the truth should be.

Truth can be scary, because in any situation sustained by falsehood, truth is a destructive force. It can cause political upheaval. It can end relationships. It can annihilate egoic delusion. Any of these will typically feel like a giant leap into the unknown, and are generally terrifying for exactly that reason. But this is the only path toward health.

If we are to survive on this planet, eventually we’re going to have to take that leap. Eventually we’re going to have to become a truth-driven species. Everything about our current status quo will resist this movement — the untruth in our current power structures, and the untruth within ourselves.

Maybe we won’t take that leap until things get so bad that the unknown looks less terrifying than what the familiar has become. Maybe we will find our courage before it comes to that point. But we’re going to have to jump for it eventually, or we will go the way of the dinosaur.

And if it does come to that, if we are collectively unable to take the leap because we value our lies more than our lives, that too will reveal a truth to us about who we are and what we were always made of. One way or the other, truth will have the final say.

That which can be destroyed by the truth should be. And, eventually, will be.

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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go hereto buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Featured image via Adobe Stock.

Olde Tyme Christmas Dinner

December 12, 2024

Be sure to mark Sunday, December 22nd on your calendar. That’s the date of this year’s “Olde Tyme” Christmas Party at the Denman Community Hall, starting at 5:00 pm.

This unique historical event, started by Diana and Mike Comeau more than 20 years ago, brings together many community members in the spirit of friendship and sharing. Watch, and listen for, Santa and his Elf to arrive at about 7:00.

Families with young children might want to consider arriving after 6:00, as we know how excited little people can get restless in anticipation.

The basics – turkey, dressing, potatoes, peas and carrots, gravy, cranberries and beverages – are provided.

We request that you bring a salad, side dish or dessert to share. Also to help reduce the amount of trash created, please bring your own plate, cup and cutlery.

Your help is needed. This event would not happen, were it not for the volunteers (about 60) who work the morning of, during the party, and the morning after, not to mention those involved in the preparation the week before. Shifts on Sunday are approximately 1 to 1 ½ hours long.

Last year we served a record 350 meals. Let’s see if we can break that record. The dinner is financially supported by donations from the community to purchase all food, drink and gifts. Donations can be dropped at earth club factory in jar or etransfer to oldeTymeChristmasDinner@gmail.com or to volunteer.

Thank you

The Olde Tyme Christmas Dinner Committee

DICES Holiday Hampers

December 12, 2024

The DICES annual Holiday Hamper program is well underway but there’s still time to get involved.

If you want a hamper, you can complete an information/application form at the Food Bank on Thursdays 4 – 7 pm (just ask our volunteers) or at the Denman Island General Store where you will find them in a large envelope on the wall just inside the front door of the store. You can also call or email DICES, our contact information is below. We have extended the deadline for applications to December 14.

If you want to donate to the hampers, there are several ways you can participate.

Donate cash or cheques made out to DICES in the donation jars at the General Store and at the Hardware Store.
Donate via e-transfer to dices.communityprograms@gmail.com with “holiday hamper” in the message
Participate in the Adopt a Family program – buy gifts and/or donate funds to purchase gifts for local folks to make Christmas gift wishes come true. This program is 100% confidential (no identifying information is shared between donor and recipient) to ensure privacy for everyone. Application forms are available at the Earth Club Factory Bistro or online on our website, dices.ca You can also call or email DICES for more information or to register.
Donate a new unwrapped gift item in the gift box at the Denman Hardware Store – gifts for children and adults are gratefully accepted – DICES volunteers will wrap the gifts and place them in the hampers.

If you want to volunteer to pack hampers and wrap gifts for the Holiday Hampers on the morning of December 21, there are still a few spots left to fill. Please call 250-335-2058 or email dices.communityprograms@gmail.com to inquire about volunteering or if you have any other questions or concerns about the Holiday Hamper program.

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Co-Counselling: Free Introductory Session

December 11, 2024 5:30 – 7:30 pm

In the Hub (foodbank/old preschool) at the Community Hall

Next Wednesday, enjoy a bowl of hearty vegan soup and learn about the Co-Counselling model. This introductory session is open to anyone who wishes to learn more about effectively “holding space” for the emotions in ourselves and others in this supportive peer to peer framework. Miki Fox and David Berger are your hosts for the evening and will be sharing more about the model and answering your questions to help you discover if co-counselling is for you.

This free introductory session is in preparation for our upcoming Co-Counselling 10 week course (January – March).

Please register by phone 250-335-2058 or by email to dices.communityprograms@gmail.com

Everyone loves a good mystery

December 12, 2024

BEAUFORT WATERSHED STEWARDS – DECEMBER 2024

Everyone loves a good mystery. Book store and library shelves are stacked with murder mysteries. Police procedurals are a staple of television. True crime podcasts are a hot trend. If you explore the history of science, you will find that it is one mystery after another. A current scientific mystery has to do with the mass of the neutrino. Two different methods for measuring this quantity produce differing results. Physicists are excited about this conflict because its resolution will produce new insights into how the universe is put together.

The Beaufort Watershed Stewards (BWS) will not be working on the neutrino mass problem any time soon. We have our own mystery to resolve. We commissioned the firm, Ecoscape, to perform a trend analysis on the data from three of our creeks, Cowie, Mud Bay, and Wilfred. These are the creeks we started sampling first and are the only ones for which we have five years’ worth of data. (Trend analysis isn’t credible for data sets of less than five years.) This is a milestone for BWS. When we first started sampling local creeks, we dreamed of the day when we would have five years’ worth of data. That day has finally arrived!

Trend analysis, for all the non-statisticians in the audience, is simply looking for patterns of change. The parameters we measure when we sample our creeks are, Dissolved Oxygen, Specific Conductivity, Turbidity, Temperature, and pH. These parameters all change with the seasons as temperatures go up and down and rainfall ebbs and flows. Over a five-year period, however, some of the highs might get higher or some of the lows might get lower. This is important for tracking the health of our water supply. (For those of you in the audience who ARE statisticians, Ecoscape used the Mann-Kendall or Seasonal Mann-Kendall test, as appropriate.)

And now for the mystery. None of the parameters showed a significant trend except for one, Dissolved Oxygen (DO), a basic measure of stream health. On all three creeks, DO showed a downward trend. There is an inverse relationship between water temperature and dissolved oxygen; when temperature goes up, DO goes down and vice versa. We see this consistently in our data. DO goes down during the warmer months and comes back up during the colder months. But the trend of ever lowering DO was NOT matched by a trend of warming water. How could that be? Aha! A mystery!

There may be a simple explanation, in which case we will have broadened our understanding of stream health. Or the explanation may not be simple, in which case we may get to do some scientific sleuthing. There is probably no chance that this problem will be the basis for a best-selling mystery novel but it’s a fun little puzzle, nonetheless.

Green Wizardries: Presents for the Holidays

December 12, 2024

I am cooking and baking today. It is milky with fog outside and so bright, warm and cheerful in the house by my little fire. I am only eating one meal a day, these days, and it is making me feel a lot healthier and more energetic. It also makes me keenly interested in that one meal!

Today, I saw my husband having some beautiful orange-yoked fried eggs for breakfast. If you want a good orange-yolked egg you need to feed greens to your hens. Kale is the best if you have lots.

Along with the eggs, I started craving baked beans. I find beans so comforting and filling and they keep my appetite satiated for a long time because they have so much fiber. I always cook my own baked beans as it is such an absurdly simple recipe and the resulting beans are tons better than anything you can buy. I have been making these beans for over twenty years and get great results each time.

Here is my recipe which is one of my presents to you today. I think I got this recipe from a book of inexpensive recipes for students. I have copied it into three cooking notebooks so far as it is such a favourite recipe it always makes it into my new cookbooks when the old one is destroyed through overuse.

Put two cups of small, dry white beans, four cups of water, 1/3 of a cup of molasses, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1 medium onion chopped, one tablespoon of Dijon mustard, 1/2 a teaspoon of sea salt and two ounces of bacon cut into strips into a slow cooker. Stir it up. Cook it on high for about five hours and stir again. Cook another two hours until the beans are very tender.

That is all there is to it. I gave this recipe to one friend who insisted on soaking the beans in water overnight and the beans were insipid and the sauce very runny. The beans are cooked from dry so they soak up all the flavour from the other ingredients.

The way the house smells when these beans are cooking is heavenly. Another thing that I was doing today was to bake bread. I always bake eight loaves at a time. I mix up the bread dough and knead it for about eight minutes. I usually do this one handed as I was taught to just roll the dough around to wake up the gluten.

Some people work far too hard, knead the dough very strongly and add too much flour into the mix. The rule with wheat bread is to add the least amount of flour to get the best bread. I just sprinkle a little bit of flour on the dough when it begins to get sticky.

Here is my recipe for four loaves of white bread. I always double the recipe but for the first few times, stick to the single recipe until you get the hang of it. 5 cups of warm water, 2 tablespoons of sugar, two tablespoons of yeast, excellent organic white flour which I buy at Donna’s Grocery Store at the Guest House on Denman, 2 tablespoons of sea salt and 4 tablespoons of olive oil or melted butter.

Put the warm water, sugar and yeast into a large bowl. Wait for a few minutes until the yeast foams up. Beat in some flour and the salt and oil. Keep adding flour a little at a time until you get a stiffish batter. Pour it out onto a floured counter or table and dust the surface with flour and begin to knead gently. Keep on kneading and adding flour when the dough gets sticky until you have a firm, elastic dough that pushes back against your hands. Pinch a triangle into the dough with both your hands. When the triangle holds, your dough is done and should be placed in an oiled bowl and covered with a clean tea towel and left in a warm place to rise until it doubles in size.

Once the dough doubles in size, punch it down and cut the dough into four equal pieces. Oil the counter and put the first lump of dough on it. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a long rectangle. Roll the dough up and pinch the ends and the seam closed. Place the dough into a greased metal loaf pan and put it back in the warm place and cover it with a cloth until it is doubles in size. Do this again with the remaining pieces of dough. Bake at 400 degrees for thirty minutes. Take a loaf out of its pan and tap the bottom. The bottom of the bread should be golden and sound hollow when you tap it.

Between the beans and the bread, your house will smell fantastically cozy!

Shucking Oysters: Loose Words

December 12, 2024

0_TAKEN-WITHOUT-PERMISSION-Psychologist-weighs-in-on-Lucky-girl-manifestation-trendLINKhttpsww — Laura Galebe

Rawdogging. Yapping. Delulu. Surf boarding terms? Kinky yoga positions? No, these are just a sample of the runners-up for the 2024 Word of the Year title. Dictionary.com, the Cambridge Dictionary, Collins Dictionary and Oxford Dictionary have all recently announced their winners. The criteria: Which word was looked up most? Which word captured what was happening in 2024? And what was interesting about the word from a language point of view?

Cambridge Dictionary’s 2024 Word of the Year is “manifest,” as in we can all channel our dreams. US gymnast Simone Biles manifested her medals at the Paris Olympics and English-Albanian singer Dua Lipa (voted one of the most influential people of 2024 by Time magazine), manifested headlining the five-day Glastonbury music festival, among other venues.

For those with less lofty ambitions, you can manifest your “influencer” channel and become a part of the trillion-dollar global “wellness” market. On TikTok and Instagram, people you have never heard of, like Toronto “growth for girlies mindset coach” Alicia Tghilian and New York “product pusher” Laura Galebe teach their followers “how to manifest anything you want.” Why live an ordinary life, when you can live an extraordinary one?

Galebe shared her “lucky girl syndrome” secret to her 42 million plus followers. “I just always expect great things to happen to me, and so, they do.” Manifest your monetary future. “Be delusional,” she gushes. Between getting spray tans, facial filler, hair and lash extensions, and spouting advice on “how to spot insecure friends” Galebe is so walking her talk. People (mainly girls and women it would seem) are crediting the law of entitlement for helping them get raises, find amazing apartments, and cheap flights.

On a different tone, the Dictionary.com Word of the Year is “demure.” Weekly searches for demure peaked at over 13,000,000 queries in the week of August 19. Why? All because of TikTokker and beauty influencer, Jools Lebron’s “very demure, very mindful” mantra she constantly posts in her videos. “Chase those dreams. Be responsible. Be mindful, be demure and don’t ever let no b*tch dull your shine.” Lebron, in her usual makeup of black, winged eyeliner and fake eyelashes, has amassed more than 2 million followers on TikTok.

Not to be outdone, Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, and “Drag Race” host RuPaul have all taken the Lebrontra to the next level to promote their celebrity brands. From a recent campaign for her “sculpting solutions” shape wear, Skims, KK used the phrase: “See how I take my bts pictures…very cutsie, very mindful, very demure.” On Instagram, JLO promoted her new cocktail line Delola, with a video of her elegantly sipping a glass of sparkling “very demure, very mindful” Paloma Rosa, crafted with premium tequila, grapefruit, and elderflower.

The Word of the Year isn’t just about popular usage. Dictionary.com explains: “To select the 2024 Word of the Year, our lexicographers analyzed a large amount of data including newsworthy headlines, trends on social media, search engine results, and more to identify words that made an impact on our conversations, online and in the real world.”

Collins Dictionary declared “brat” its 2024 Word of the Year (not A brat; just brat). Brat, the title of Scottish-Pakistani, Charli XCX’ album, refers to someone “who is confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold and playfully defiant.” Others characterize brat as those who have “a hedonistic attitude.” The marketing spin-offs are endless. Cologne. Sausages. Surf boards.

More relatable in my cortex, Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year: “Brain rot.” Oxford defines brain rot as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially…as the result of over consumption of material…considered to be trivial or unchallenging.” People use the term to mean brain fog, poor attention span, or gullible to misinformation. That’s pretty much what happens when we’re online, we’re continually lured and baited down endless, mindless rabbit holes.

As Rebecca Jennings said on the CBC Radio show Commotion: “…as long as there’s that incentive for people to keep creating these giant brain rot empires, then it will keep being shoved in our faces…. It’s good for the attention economy, which is the world we’re all living in.” Mel Woods added “that we are all just on our own little dissociation islands trying to process what’s happening out there… I think brain rot fits really well for this year because [it] is that isolated; I’m alone in my bed, scrolling and trying to feel something…because that’s the only thing that’s keeping me [distracted from] all of the horrible things going on right now.”

Some other words that didn’t make the cut: “Extreme weather” which needs no introduction. “Midwest nice,” describing the characteristic politeness, friendliness and hospitality of people from the Midwest, like Tim Walz. And a word that many Denman Islanders embrace with patriotic passion: “Weird.” It was searched more often than the word “strange” and spiked this year with the US Democrats describing every Republican candidate (in actions and words) as “weird” during the heady days of the 2024 presidential election.

And speaking of heady, here’s a bumper sticker idea: “Denman Island: Very Demure, Very Mindful.” Now that’s Brat.

Understanding Hamas & Why that Matters (Part 2)

December 12, 2024

“We’re doing this series not to either advocate for Hamas or to criticize it, but simply to clarify for people what it is, and then people can make up their own minds.” (Rami Khouri, Understanding Hamas @ 39.) One of my early learnings in training to become a mediator was the idea of the ease with which we demonize the ”other side” of a struggle, how we use the Drama Triangle, about which I’ve written previously, to create villains, victims & heroes, how we create fear and distrust of the other side, how we unconsciously fight cognitive dissonance by disregarding the positive aspects of our “enemy” or opponent, and strive for cognitive consonance, by reinforcing ideas that are consistent with our fears and prejudices. How we look for allies who agree with us, build constituencies with them and manage to close ourselves off from even hearing the viewpoint of “the other”, let alone taking it seriously and seeking ways to accommodate the interests of the other.

I was in deep need of more integrative, non-distributive ways of addressing conflict as a practising lawyer, working largely in the realm of family law and estates, highly relational areas where unresolved conflict has the potential to destroy families, at the very least, cause harsh divisions, harm to health, and serious psychological injury to children. Not to mention the money people spend fighting one another. Mediation training was one of the best things I ever undertook, because it gave me some “hows” for helping people listen to and speak respectfully with those with whom they had strong disagreement – the idea of “having tea with your demons”. It gave me a concrete practical path to recommend to my clients, and thankfully took me out of the firing line of litigation and positional advocacy. It is not that hard to extrapolate from interpersonal conflict to warfare.

Warfare always ends at some point, though hurts, wounds, losses and resentments not dealt with post-war, through such avenues as truth & reconciliation processes, can and do leave intergenerational scars. It’s my view that Jewish Israelis never engaged in the healing process necessary after the Holocaust, and we are seeing the results of trauma-damaged psyches taking out vengeance on the Palestinians, who ironically had nothing to do with the Holocaust. And because western governments have long had an agenda of creating and maintaining instability in the Middle East, and great reluctance to confront their own past settler-colonialism, any resistance to Israel’s settler-colonial agenda will be demonized. That means the international community must step up and help find ways to peace.

“Now it’s time to talk about Hamas as a representative of an important, a very important strand in the Palestinian national movement”. (Helena Cobban, ibid. @ 36.) Hamas is a necessary party to finding a resolution to the war on Gaza, and their representatives must be brought to the table along with Fatah (Mahmoud Abbas’ mostly ineffectual party) and perhaps Marwan Barghouthi, a Fatah leader, in Israeli prison since the 2^nd Intifada, who consistently tops Palestinian polls as their preferred leader. Hamas has called for the release of Barghouthi. The Palestinians themselves will include Hamas among their representatives. Peace in South Africa could never have been accomplished without the inclusion of the ANF; peace in Ireland would be impossible without the inclusion of the IRA. These are a few examples for us to learn from.

So what is Hamas’ main agenda?

There has long been the Idea of 2 strands within Hamas’ thinking – the Islamist (religious) and the Palestinian nationalist. But it’s more nuanced than that. Middle East scholar/professor Dr. Khaled Hroub says: “Hamas is a multi-faceted… organization or movement. This means they are a political party; they are a charitable organization; they are a military faction; all of these combined together….If we want to… go to the simplified… I would say we have been witnessing a steady increase of the nationalist force within Hamas at the expense of the religious tendency within Hamas over the last two, three decades “. (ibid. @ 41)

Why do Palestinians say that you can never eradicate Hamas?

“I think maybe the key word for this is resistance. The Palestinians specifically, and then the Arab audiences and Arab peoples at large: I think the main reason they support Hamas is because of resistance, not because of religion, … nationalism, not because of anything else….This organization is clean-handed in their delivery, in social work, in running the business of government, but I think the core issue is resistance”. (ibid. @ 43) Hroub also points out that at the signing of Oslo in the early 90’s, Fatah, which began as a resistance movement headed by Yasser Arafat, started to decline because they “put resistance to the side”.

Don’t Gazans blame Hamas for the genocide they’re experiencing now?

No. A recent survey (2^nd quarter, 2024) shows that most Gazans surveyed place blame for their suffering on Israel and the US, only 8% on Hamas. (Appendix 6, p.199)

(Next week: final Part 3)

Netanyahu Hilariously Claims Israel Doesn’t Seek To Intervene In Syria’s Affairs

December 12, 2024

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

DEC 11, 2024

Benjamin Netanyahu is hilariously saying that Israel has “no intention of interfering in Syria’s internal affairs.”

Only Israel could invade and occupy large stretches of a country, bomb it 480 times in 48 hours, destroy 80 percent of its military defenses, and then claim that it has no intention of interfering in that country’s internal affairs.

Western regime change cheerleaders are partying about Syria as hard as they can right now because they know soon they’re going to have to turn a blind eye to everything that happens in that country for years to come, just like they did with Libya.

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The new people in charge in Syria have announced that they’re going to be opening up the nation’s markets and integrating into the global economy, which is one of the least surprising developments in this story so far. This is textbook disaster capitalism which we see in every major imperial power grab on a disobedient nation. Syria is now set to be picked apart and cannibalized by the highest bidder. Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys.

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TikTok apparently really will be getting banned or sold to more empire-loyal ownership soon. All because the US government doesn’t want kids sharing facts about Palestine.

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People who say violence is never the answer are usually ignoring some massive and hugely consequential forms of systemic violence which gave rise to the violence they’re denouncing. It happened with October 7, and it happened with the health insurance CEO.

Yesterday I asked my Twitter followers to complete the following sentence: “Instead of physically attacking the abusive plutocrats who expand their wealth and power by ruining lives and killing people, ordinary citizens should use the other options that are available to them to address such injustices, such as _________.”

The responses were interesting. I got a lot of angry replies from people saying I was encouraging violence by posing this question, which is actually pretty revealing if you think about it. I didn’t actually encourage violence, I just asked people to list what the alternative options to violence were. If these respondents were aware of options besides violence for dealing with the abuses of wealthy oligarchs, it would never have occurred to them to see my question that way. They themselves see no way to resolve these abuses besides violence; they just think people should submit to continued abuse.

Watching all the widespread support for the CEO’s suspected killer Luigi Mangione reminds me of a 2014 essay by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer titled “The Pitchforks Are Coming For Us Plutocrats” warning what he termed his “fellow zillionaires” that “No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality.”

“The problem isn’t that we have inequality,” Hanauer wrote. “The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.”

“If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us,” warned Hanauer. “No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.”

Hanauer wasn’t speaking out of compassion or altruism but basic self-concern. He wasn’t trying to help the poor, he was trying to avoid meeting his maker at the business end of a guillotine blade.

All the rage and bloodlust directed toward these plutocrats does seem to be approaching the boiling point he warned of. I don’t know how this is going to play out, but I will say we’re at a fascinating point in history.

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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go hereto buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.