Rest Day Ruminations: The P Word

Some links

Oct 29, 2023

If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes truth printed wall taken at daytime — Photo by Brian Wertheim on Unsplash

Here’s a Rest Day Ruminations post. I’m opening this one to all.

The P Word

The P word today is politics.

“Don’t be political, Karl. It is bad news! You’ll lose followers!”

Everything is political. What we buy or don’t buy, say or don’t say, action or inaction, it is all political. When someone says “don’t be political” they mean they don’t want to see change from the current status quo, or don’t want to be reminded of injustices done in their name.

Anyone who knows me will also be aware that I would rather be poor than compromise my principles. And if someone following me hates that so much that even deleting this post isn’t enough, then they can also unsubscribe. To be honest, there’s little point reading my fiction if you don’t have any overlap with my world view, because my stories are about life, connection, injustice, poverty, being the underdog, and fighting when necessary. If you just want entertaining, then there are other authors far better at writing books which won’t challenge us. You’ll have no problem finding them. Enjoy.

For this post I’m going to amplify some other voices by sharing articles they have written about the ongoing genocide, which is being cheered on by western politicians. I never thought I’d see such barefaced hypocrisy and cruelty in my lifetime.

In addition to this post, yesterday I went to a peaceful protest in support of the innocent civilians, men, women and children being slaughtered in Gaza by the Israeli army. I also joined Jewish Voice for Peace (you don't have to be Jewish or American to support their goals) and sent a donation to BDS. I wrote to my politicians but they were useless: the main parties in the UK and US support the genocide. It is another sign that we don’t live in a democracy when there’s no party you can vote for that represents justice.

For anyone who thinks “But what about …?” or “You haven’t explained …” - that’s because the posts below do all that, with far more informed evidence than I could provide. My own post was Fiction Becomes Reality, where I tried to illustrate what it might be like to be thrown out of part of your country, and then to have an occupying force take over the rest of it and begin exterminating you while the world looks on and does nothing for decades.

Even though it shouldn’t need saying, this is about politics and states, not religion. The current Israeli government is not Judaism. It doesn’t even represent all the people in its country, let alone worldwide. There is a massive Jewish opposition to Israel’s actions in Palestine, and my Jewish friends are often furious when Israel lies, and says it represents them, just as I am furious when the UK government claims to speak for me. What Israel is doing is creating the conditions for more violence in the future, more terrorism, more hatred, more war. The same as Russia is. The same as England has often done, and the US. The cycle of bloodshed is profitable, and the rich and powerful are protected from it. The victims are always the poorest. The environment. Other species.

Oh yes, and probably more than half of the articles written below were by wonderful Jewish people. And even saying that seems misleading, because they happen to be good people first, Jewish second. It doesn’t matter if someone is Jewish, pagan (hello!), Christian, atheist, scientist, Hindu, ginger-haired, tall, musically talented, blue-eyed, brown skinned, old, young, whatever. We’re not defined by those attributes, but by how we act, and what we support, and how we live our lives. It actually benefits those in power to pit us against each other, so that we forget how rich and manipulative the elite are.

And so, some links, in no particular order. I hope you find some of them as enlightening as I did. You won’t hear many of these voices, revelations or sentiments in the mass media.