I think the more chilling part of this is the implication that a university is working with the FBI to erase this person at the drop of a hat, with no due process. Not that it’s surprising, considering universities that take the side of the genocidal settler state israel over student protesters, for example. But it doesn’t make it any less fucked up.
Reminds me of this sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
For sure. When the reality US people are probably some of the worst in the world in terms of having an understanding of morality tied to material realities. We in the US have plenty of should-based thinking about how people should act morally, but, and I am once again being reminded of the “purity” issue that others have written about, we have little in substance that contends with day to day realities. Anyone can get up on a pedestal and talk about what’s right in theory, but actually doing it is a whole other thing and until the region is run by people with a decolonial mindset, much less working class rule at all, much of our “morality” is hypothetical. Not applied power. The actual power brokers imperialists presumably have some sense of dog eat dog morality, but there’s a disconnect between that and the regular people who buy the propaganda and think the US is policing against actual terrorism; some of whom would actually give you their shirt, but might also react badly if you say you’re communist because they’re disconnected from the morality that is said and what is actually being done and by whom. Much of them (or I could say “us”, since I live in the US myself) don’t wield any meaningful power, so there’s not even a basis through which to form morality at scale beyond charity and ideals that are never tested. I don’t feel I’m really doing the subject justice with this post, maybe oversimplifying a bit too much, but it’s a bizarre dynamic, is all I can say.
USians have been conditioned to externalize all badness as originating from either other countries or “the human species” (in a vague, hand waving way) and all goodness as originating from their “one of a kind” (very generic and not lived up to at all) constitution. The only thing that seems exceptional to me in USian culture is con artistry skill. Which would fit with so much of US positive reputation propaganda revolving around pretending like some stuff laid out in the constitution means something sacred and special in practice that it doesn’t mean and never has (e.g. conning people is in its roots). We’re supposed to believe a bunch of genocidal slave owners were really into human rights and thought ahead on it. What they did think ahead on was their own class interests, which are not the interests of most people in the region and never have been.
Anywho, I like to point out to people that the Nazis learned from Jim Crow laws when they bring out the whole “the US is acting like Nazi Germany” comparison. Like no, sweet summer child, Nazi Germany acted like the US and the US was never a real opponent to Nazism. But if people do want to blame something the US is a big part of since its inception, but that goes beyond the US as villainy, they can point to colonialism.
There’s something poetic about the fact that it was during a screening of Captain America and the only reason no one was injured is because almost no one was there watching it. Almost feels like an Onion article, it’s so on the nose.
“The FBI and our partners often can’t obtain digital evidence, which makes it even harder for us to stop the bad guys,” warned former director Christopher Wray, in comments the bureau directed me towards. “The reality is we have an entirely unfettered space that’s completely beyond fully lawful access — a place where child predators, terrorists, and spies can conceal their communications and operate with impunity — and we’ve got to find a way to deal with that problem.”
Damn, encryption is preventing the FBI from investigating itself. 😔
I get that and kudos for having a forward-moving mindset about it. Sometimes I’m not as patient as I should be with others, especially knowing how briefly I’ve known better compared to how long I’ve been a grown adult and could have if I’d been exposed to the right information and worked it out. But we all come from different places and it’s not a contest, after all. Once we know better, we can start to do better, and that’s exponentially more helpful than being in the way.
Liberals when asked to side with imperialism, colonization, exploitation: 👍
Liberals when asked to do virtually anything else:
* man who has headed up an organization of mass murder through conscious neglect and profiteering
* who helped murder god knows how many fathers, mothers, and more through exploiting people’s health conditions for money
* for rich white men who exploit others, as if most of them don’t already walk scot-free anyway
* to scare straight anyone who thinks of holding accountable rich white men who exploit others