No Ice Agent or National Guard member headed to Washington DC, no IDF assassin shooting kids who seek food, no media person, politician, or at this point all but an incredibly disconnected subset of people in the U.S. or Israel will have even tenuous legitimacy to later claim that in 2025 they didn’t know, much less that they couldn’t know what was going on. 

In the Mideast, there is one of the most singularly self satisfied, unrepentant, graphically visible and overtly celebratory genocides in history. Yes, the U.S. blew Hiroshima and Nagasaki to bits. And yes, many Americans sickly celebrated that. Yay. We incinerated them. It is hard to do worse than that or, for that matter, to do worse than carpet bombing Indochina. Kissinger’s description: “Everything that flies on anything that moves.” The U.S. is extremely good at being extremely bad. But what about to literally blow cities to bits precisely to leave nothing but a moonscape of demolished dwellings, schools, hospitals, and anything else that previously preciously stood, plus fields of blood and bones from intentionally starved children spread beneath the rubble? To do that step by agonizing step, and to even brag about each step while doing it? That is Israel on Palestine. Isn’t that right up in the same rarified air of evil as the U.S. brand, and even the Nazi brand? 

And, meanwhile, in the U.S. itself, the self described land of the free and home of the brave, we are enduring of the most singularly self-satisfied and unrepentant beheadings of human possibilities to impose fascistic police state mechanics that, to quote its cowardly thug in chief, anyone has ever seen. Yes, there was Nazi Germany, among other abominable historical episodes. But isn’t there something incomparably vile about our current police-statification’s blatant visibility? Something incomparably vile about its bragging? About its abject capitulations? Trump unfolds his fascist agenda step by step: Test the waters. Refine the plan. Proceed. Pause when need be. But then do it over. And again. All in plain sight. Exceptionally grotesque. 

We the people must end genocide and fascism. Our paramount immediate need is for more resistance to end those and to of course also end ecological planetary suicide.

Amidst all this disgusting mayhem, I ask myself: self, you write and speak often. You do so in hopes that others will actively benefit from your words. But what should a writer or speaker choose to write or say in genocidal, fascistic, suicidal times like ours? What words now matter?

One possible answer is to write or say whatever you like. Don’t become a slave to today’s crises. Do as you have done. Push on. Write romance stories, mysteries, obscure academic tomes, disconnected lyrics, sports updates, innocuous celebrity reports, ads, jingles, and clickbait titles or whatever you have usually written. Look around. Business as usual is the preponderant current answer to what to write or say. Stay your course.

Another possible answer is to not let all aspects of caring and joyful communication slip away. Write and speak to enjoy. Produce words to entertain or play. Keep joyful human practices alive. We have plenty of that too. Maintain your course.

A third possible answer is to report truthfully the mayhem that is happening for those who still don’t get it. Produce revelations, details, explanations, and demystifications. This occurs too, but not enough—in the mainstream. Demand more. Produce more. For audiences that need more.

My fourth possible answer adds a contextual condition. What if one writes or speaks for an audience like the one my words may get seen or heard by—an audience of people like you, dear reader? Is there any point in graphically conveying the carnage for you? Is there any point in detailing and dissecting each new disgusting revelation for you? Does revelatory reporting still serve a purpose for you? Hasn’t anyone who my words might be seen or heard by gotten to the point where more revelation just shines a small light on what is already bathed in a large light? For an audience like you, what does it accomplish for a writer or speaker to repeatedly reveal what you already know?

For what it’s worth, I wonder about that and I think I am not alone. I tend to think that the only words worth saying or writing for people who are already well versed in the consequences of genocide, the consequences of police statification, and the consequences of ecological dissolution is words that aim to inspire active resistance and that offer possible insights about how to resist steadily more successfully. Perhaps even that too is by now redundant for already alert audiences, but, nonetheless, I will give it yet another try since I believe you who may read this are already highly alert. So I wonder, what things should we who know what is going on do to help end genocide, fascism, and ecological suicide?

First, we should respond to calls that say, “we will meet here, we will gather at noon, or at one, or whenever, and we will demonstrate in the following manner. Please join us.” To join such mobilizations collectively connects us and shows worthy dissent to those who doubt their possibility. Display collective dissent.

Second, we should try to think through creative and sometimes even outside the box choices to make our dissent matter more. We should look for ways to raise social costs for the genocidal, fascistic, oil promoting perpetrators. We should consider how best to assemble, march, interrupt, disrupt, block, occupy, or strike so as to raise costs for elites while we simultaneously inspire, induce, and embolden still more dissent. Be strategic.

Third, we should specifically expand what people who answer calls to demonstrate think about and desire and thereby nourish their inclinations not to go home and turn away after they demonstrate, but to protest again and again, larger, more diversely, and more militantly each time. We should make clear that victory is mandatory but that victory does not arise from a single act, or two, or three. Victory takes time. It takes sustained involvement. Attract, welcome, and nourish sustained involvement.

Fourth, whenever we can we should carefully, respectfully, and continuously reach out with our actions and our words not just to people like us, to people willing to mobilize, but also to people who aren’t yet ready to act, to people who even disagree with us. Mobilize but also organize.

Fifth, and incredibly importantly, we should carefully think through the consequences of our actions. We should evaluate what we do in light of its effects. We should stop doing what doesn’t help and do more of what does help. Be self conscious.

Sixth, by all this we should work in whatever ways we are able to induce new participants to become sustained participants and to inspire sustained participants to undertake still more effective actions. To reject and terminate genocide, fascism, and ecological suicide, but also to construct in their place what we positively desire. To plant the seeds of the future in the present so the future we win is not just old business as usual but becomes another world. Act now, but do so with eyes on the future.

I wonder, is to write or talk to advance those six pursuits what makes sense when one writes or talks to audiences who already detest Israeli genocide, abhor dictatorial police-state power, and reject ecological suicide? And doesn’t the same logic hold for similar situations operative elsewhere?

Okay, but how might one write or talk to further the six suggested aims? It is not rocket science. One might write or talk about people who are already doing such things. One might report and also assess their methods and actions to inspire others to emulate what works and to transcend what doesn’t work. One might offer and assess proposals that aim to address the six strategic aims. 

Yes, I agree that we still need revelations. We still need exhortations. But don’t we also need proposals to try, followed by assessments of our efforts so that we can creatively pursue and work to strengthen whatever has desirable consequences while we recognize not so great or detrimental consequences and work to minimize those?

These are simple observations. No heavy philosophy needed. No in-group jargon required. Yet don’t these simple observations constitute desirable criteria to use to plan and later judge demonstrations, demands, projects, and campaigns? Can’t these observations orient our energies and thoughts, including our writing and speaking, as we seek to stop the current madness? If not, propose better.

To repeat: No media person. No politician. No Ice Agent or National Guard member headed to Washington DC. And at this point no one other than a modest incredibly disconnected subset of people in the U.S. or Israel will have any even tenuous legitimacy to later claim “I didn’t know,” much less “I couldn’t know.” You know. I know. We will all be asked and hopefully ask ourselves what we did. What answer will we have?

It is wise to resist. It is worthy to resist. Great are the temptations to moan, watch, and wait. Great are the temptations to do business as usual. To not resist is deadly.

A Somewhat Idiosyncratic Seemingly Disconnected But Nonetheless Subtly Related Addendum

I have recently attempted to convey that along with genocide, fascism, and ecological suicide, continued development and proliferation of Artificial Intelligence may if it doesn’t plateau on its own need to join our list of immediately, urgently, existentially paramount targets to resist and even to transcend if we are to attain a better world.

Remember back to the initial rise of Facebook and Twitter. In those distant days some social media critics were aghast and argued with most other leftists who thought the social media trends were a great harbinger of democratic participation and who got rather furious at “negativity” toward social media. The critics of social media’s critics, were often surprisingly aggravated and aggressive. They dismissed warnings to take a precautionary approach to social media as foolish denial of a grand opportunity. Those who urged caution said we need to contemplate not just one source of danger—who controls and intentionally perverts the technology—but also a possible second source of danger: the technology’s intrinsic implications.

Similarly, some leftists have opposed and still oppose markets and a corporate division of labor for analogous reasons. They argue that it isn’t just the owners currently in charge of markets and ruling corporate divisions of labor that yields their ills. It is also their intrinsic attributes. So while to eliminate private ownership is part of what we need, that alone will not be enough to make markets and corporate divisions of labor beneficial to use. We would also have to transcend markets and corporate division of labor’s intrinsic implications. Not all at once. Not in a day. But nonetheless, in time, to reach a lastingly better world.

Some critics recently growing concerns about the intrinsic implications of AI’s further development and proliferation is analogous regarding paying attention not just to bad actors, but to the intrinsic implications of the structures that bad actors favor. It is an obvious insight that we ought to apply as well to Trump, Netanyahu, billionaires and millionaires, racists, and misogynists, as well as tech psychotics. Confront the perpetrators, remove the perpetrators, but also reject and replace whichever structures intrinsically produce and abet them. Not overnight. It will take time, of course. But resistance, to fully succeed, needs to get to underlying structures and plant the seeds of and then further construct what we desire instead.

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