How will it all end? You decide.
I was at the climbing centre on Monday. I’m crazy about climbing; I had a great session, and it left me with a feeling of pure joy and exhilaration.
On the way home I listened to a podcast where a woman from Palestine was interviewed about the current situation there.
I was listening to Tony Gosling’s Not the BCFM Politics Show, which played part of this video.
I found the interview very moving, and started to feel a sense of guilt that I am in a position to choose from a range of exciting leisure activities while people in the Middle East are living in fear, disablement due to injury, and experiencing the loss of friends, family and livelihood. I felt quite maudlin for a while, but I realised that being sad about the situation is not going to help anyone. What can help is the awareness of it, and the recognition that we all have choices, and that those choices can have a tangible influence over whether we have peace or bloodshed in the world.
I can imagine many people strongly disputing this with a range of arguments. I see such attitudes as stemming from the propaganda that we’ve all been imbued with from birth, propaganda that leads us to see ourselves as tiny cogs in a giant system run by people who are much more important, intelligent and accomplished than ourselves. The reality is that the collective will is central to the outcome of many global events. This is why authorities are so keen to control what people read and think.
Yet despite the fact that most people see themselves as unimportant on a global scale, the choices they make are often beset with anxieties and compromises. Try telling a group of people that you don’t vote, for example, and note their reactions. There will likely be at least one who gets angry and says you’re throwing away the privileges that our ancestors fought and died for.
I would argue that people like the Scottish Martyrs from the 1790s and 1820s, who were sent to the colonies or hanged for campaigning for one man, one vote, wanted a fair system of democracy, not the corrupt and captured political system we have today in the UK.
I actually do vote, but usually for “NONE” or NONE OF THE ABOVE” which means my vote is registered as a protest vote. So when people are discussing election options, I often say “I’m not voting for any of them” – and then I get the angry reactions.
My brother-in-law is American, and despite loving him dearly, I notice that he spends a lot of energy getting furious at Donald Trump. I say to him, “Well, Biden’s just as bad” and it’s like pouring fuel on the fire. He knows I don’t like Trump either, but he struggles to see outside that duopoly.
Last time this happened he said “Well, which politician do you like?” I thought for a bit, and then said “Imran Khan”.
I’m sure Imran Khan has his flaws too, but he’s the only politician I can think of who has had the courage and sincerity to stand up for what he believes in, despite those opinions being considered unacceptable to the powers that would control him. He has thereby put his life at risk, and is currently in a Pakistan jail as a result. This has been a surprise to me, as I remember the days when Imran Khan was rarely out of the British press, sometimes for his cricketing skills and at other times for “bowling a maiden over”.
President Obama, whom my brother-in-law sees as a kind of patron saint, did not have the courage to stand up for what he said he believed in. Either that, or maybe he was the kind of psychopath who makes stirring speeches while blitzing Libya and killing innocents with drones in the Middle East.
If I was American, would I vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr? When I first heard the news that he’d joined the presidential race for the White House, I groaned inwardly, because I’d been following his campaigns against coerced vaccination, I’d admired his outspoken efforts in this area, but with my strong scepticism about the political process, I now wondered if he was part of a “controlled opposition” effort to steer people with anti-establishment views in a particular direction. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. No one in the public eye, no matter how much I admire them and the work they’ve done, is going to have 100 percent identical views to mine, so I can admire someone and their work without necessarily having to admire them as a politician. I could even hope for their success in the presidential race, hoping that it might shake up the system a bit.
Those were my thoughts at the time of the announcement of his presidential bid.
The only “sides” I see in such conflicts are the sides of peace and aggression
I don’t listen to the mainstream “news” as I see it as propaganda, and it often provokes very negative emotions which I would prefer not to subject myself to. But I do like to keep abreast of current affairs. This often means I hear about world events a bit later than everyone else, and that was the case when the news of the October 7th Hamas attacks broke. At that time I was in the midst of frenetic preparations for my first overseas holiday in seven years. I was in the Caribbean for most of October, and when I returned I gathered that there had been terrible slaughter and atrocities on “both sides” in Israel and Palestine. I use parenthesis because personally speaking, I would not identify “sides” across geographical, racial or religious lines. The only “sides” I see in such grisly and inhumane conflicts are the sides of peace and aggression, and I know which side I’m on. I would want to arrest the leaders of any country or state that inflicts death and destruction on any people, and have them all answer for their actions in the International Criminal Court. But that court has lost its credibility, as it only acts against the leaders of relatively powerless regimes.
If the International Criminal Court was a credible organisation, Robert F. Kennedy Jr could well be standing in the dock if he were to win power in the 2024 US presidential elections. It pains me to write this, as I have genuine admiration for the work he’s done with Children’s Health Defense, and I think he is a great speaker. But the tweet that he posted on 7th October showed that if he had presidential power he would sanction “Israel’s right to defend itself”, which effectively entails the slaughter of innocents as “collateral damage” for atrocities enacted by the murderous few.
Barbarity leads to more barbarity. It never solves anything, and never leads to peace. Whatever the reasons or excuses behind it, it is never justified. This is why I would not vote for RFK jr, even if I was able to.
Choices count
I am not an oracle, and if others disagree with my views and want to support Robert F. Kennedy in his presidential bid, I would not think less of them. That is their choice, and this is mine. I write this to emphasise the importance of choices, and that even choices that seem small on a global scale can be difficult and painful.
I’m not “cancelling” Robert F. Kennedy, as Bret Weinstein suggested many people are doing in a recent podcast – I think it was number 195. (By the way, I also admire Bret Weinstein, and continue to listen to his podcasts, even though I don’t agree with every single one of his views.)
But again, I want to emphasise the importance of individual choices, of refusing to be swept along with the herd, with your chosen tribe. Imran Khan has become a surprising hero of mine, and that could change tomorrow. He’s a man after all, not a deity, and not someone I’ve ever met. I always believe that you can’t really find out what someone is like just going by their public image – you can’t get a sense of what they’re really like until you meet them, and in any case, no one is perfect – we all have flaws and weaknesses. But Khan’s recent actions demonstrate that he has had the courage to make very difficult and painful choices.
And that is where our real power lies.