To influence, we must have some knowledge to impart, some skill in speaking of it, and a listener who would hear us. We have some knowledge—the knowledge that war is a horror, the knowledge that when a missile falls from the sky and rends bodies into pieces that a terrible evil has been done. We can speak of this too, can point to the photos and videos that flit across our screens, children with missing limbs begging for food amid the ruins. These are images and reports of atrocity, undeniably and unequivocally. Yet who would listen, and how? Where can these words be spoken? Here we find we are in some trouble, for the supreme form of speech in our time is not words but money, both in legal doctrine and in fact of order … When we speak against war we find our words drowned out, lost in the deepfakes and the advertising, the psyops and the slop, the stock market reports, the casual declarations of war crimes, the oil futures, the gilded festivities, the chattering and nattering among a purportedly progressive political class concerned with the appearance of civility but indifferent to its obligations. No knowledge moves through such mediums, only information, a ravening, unending stream of data in which knowing anything is nigh impossible.
[…]
… even the wealthiest worker has little compared to the investor class pushing for war, those who see war not as an abomination but as yet another opportunity to increase their bloated purse. What is our wealth compared to the billions spent on fighter jets, the $2.5 million spent on a single Tomahawk as it tears through a school full of little girls? What is our wealth compared to the mind-boggling quantities spent on the drones and satellites that make death as easy as clicking a button from the safety of a desk on the other side of the world? The same flick of a thumb can reduce a hospital to rubble or post a racist meme, often one right after the other. What is our wealth compared to the record-breaking $1.5 trillion requested for the military, a military that is already the richest on the planet? Trump: “We have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons. Wars can be fought ‘forever.’”
A worthy excerpt from a piece I found especially worth reading but didn’t find especially helpful. Every once in a while the urge to disclaim a discreteness asserts itself: I don’t like everything Mandy Brown says. Worse, I think some of what she says contributes in no small way to the “slop” of our civic chatter.
(One e.g. among others: With Brown, it simply goes without saying that you can’t have any real thoughts about sexuality, about biology and the medical and capital manipulation of it, without being a phobe or, with irony too thick for sight, a fascist. This is the sort of slop that leads one to say, with the reigning air of disgusted dismissal, something like, “Well, JK Rowling is a transphobe.” As though one who speaks that not-so-subtly manipulative sentence speaks as one who can be trusted. Brown’s piece has nothing to do with Rowling, but it is full of such communication-breaking expressions that are exactly as helpful and exactly as trustworthy as that.)
But… Brown continues to say things worth reading and hearing. And, for me, she’s a reminder of the importance to read and listen and speak across the lines.