 Always opposing past wars, but never the present one. Notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. A lot of empire sycophancy hides behind the fact that it's always permissible to retroactively oppose US wars that already happened, but not the current one. It's permitted now to say the destruction of Vietnam and Iraq and Libya were mistakes, for example. But if you said it at the time, people would treat you like a monster and call you all kinds of names. And it's important to understand that this is still happening today. One day it will be permissible to say in mainstream circles that it was wrong for the US empire to deliberately provoke the war in Ukraine and keep it going as long as possible to bleed Russia. But it's taboo to say that now because the empire hasn't yet accomplished all its goals in Ukraine. They always act like the most recent interventionist disaster was the final one. They always act like the hawks may have been wrong all those other times, but they're not wrong now. And then when they've killed everyone they wanted to kill and grabbed everything they wanted to grab and there's no possibility of losing anything they gained, it will suddenly become permissible to make the present disaster the final one while they assure us the next one is completely righteous. By far the most dangerous disinformation published on online platforms is the mainstream war propaganda that's paved the way to mountains of human corpses throughout the global South and now in Ukraine. But rather than being censored, it's being loudly algorithmically amplified. US empire managers keep saying they need to move more and more war machinery to challenge China in the South China Sea because China is behaving aggressively. Only a complete moron would believe this narrative. Imagine how shitty and soul-sucking it would feel to have to be a mainstream news pundit. Having to treat presidential races like they're real things that actually matter. Talking about partisan feuds between Democrats and Republicans like they're consequential and relevant. Talking about the United States like it's just a normal country in a world full of similar normal countries, participating in world events just like any other country, passively witnessing terrible things happening in other countries like it didn't actively cause those terrible things to happen. Your whole life would be dedicated to co-authoring a fiction but a really boring, vapid, stupid fiction that everyone around you is pretending is real life. But you'd know it's not real. On some level you'd know. There are only so many years you can closely observe the kayfabe performance of electoral politics where nothing ever changes without noticing that that seems to be a feature and not a bug in the system. There's only so long you can closely observe geopolitics before you notice that the US and its client states play a role in every major international conflict and notice who benefits from this dynamic. The awareness that you're giving your life to a lie would creep in and sit in the periphery of your awareness like a terrible memory of something that definitely happened but you don't want to think about. And on some level you'd be aware that you don't have to do this anymore. On some level you'd be aware that you could turn around and start talking about how America's real government works about how the empire works, about how power actually moves on the world stage, real things that actually matter. And you'd be aware on some level of how right this would feel, how freeing it would feel, how expansive it would feel. But you'd also be aware that it would cost you everything. Your job, your friends, your social standing, your carefully cultivated relationships with all the right kind of people, your expensive house, your fancy car, your spouse, your kids Ivy League educations, the respect of everyone you know. And you look at those two options and you'll weigh them out and every day you pick the easy way. Every day you choose your own cowardice over truth. Every day you choose fear and fraudulence over courage and authenticity. And you have to live like that every day for the rest of your life. Imagine how awful that would be, how gross and unfulfilling life would feel. Every waking minute of every day, year after year, until you die. It's not a fate I would wish on anybody. You wanna know how fucking stupid Australians are? Australians are so fucking stupid. They think the US empire is filling their country up with war machinery because it loves them and wants to protect them from the Chinese. That's how fucking stupid Australians are. So much empire epilogia today is just people pretending not to understand what the word provoked means. Oh, so you're saying the West's actions justify Putin's invasion? You're saying we made Putin invade? You're saying we used Jedi mind control to force Putin to invade? It's like, shut up, Blanker. You know what provoked means. The age of Western domination has been defined by imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, narrative control, and dog shit mainstream culture manufactured in New York and Hollywood. Hopefully these things can be flushed out of human civilization along with Western domination.