I Care About The World’s Future Too Much To Promote The Russia Narrative

The Doomsday Clock, the scale from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Which shows how close humanity is to self-inflicted annihilation, has been moved in this last month to “two minutes to midnight.” This is the closest the clock has been to that point since the most tense part of the Cold War, a moment in human history that’s only had any following chapter because of luck. With the new hysteria and military escalations surrounding Russia, humanity has decided to return to that precipice.

After around four years of the U.S. and its allies demonizing Russia and advancingmilitary aggressions, we’ve nearly re-entered the state illustrated in Kevin Rafferty’s Cold War movie The Atomic Cafe. Last week the UK Defense Minister Gavin Williamson accused Russia of planning to kill “thousands.” The U.S. neocon establishment’s insistence on escalating conflict in Syria has caused U.S.-Russia tensions to verge on outright combat for months, and I’m surprised that this hasn’t already led to something catastrophic. Many observers agree that a confrontationbetween the major world powers is very possible, with Russia and the U.S. being central players in this potential third world war.

America, its fellow imperialist NATO allies, and their manufactured hysteria around Russia are to blame for this. The cynical motives of these powers are made clear in the inconveniences Russia was causing for U.S. mideast regime change plans around the time that the new cold war provocations started. The narratives the “New Cold Warriors” use to justify their reckless actions are based in fabrication, mainly with the now thoroughly debunked claim that Russia “hacked” the DNC in 2016. The Trump administration didn’t recently block their plans for Russia sanctions because Trump is Putin’s puppet. Trump did this because, despite his warmongering against Iran and North Korea, he doesn’t operate along the new cold war playbook.

The gravity of our situation was movingly articulated by Caitlin Johnstone last August, in her piece about the new cold war titled Serious Question: Have You Done Everything In Your Power To Prevent This?:

Look around at everything you’ve ever loved, everything you’ve ever appreciated, everything you’ve ever found beautiful or interesting, and ask yourself if you’re really, honestly indifferent enough to the possibility that it will all disappear because of some idiotic geopolitical power grab by a few blinkered elitists.

This is what we need to think of as we make our decisions going through these pivotal times. Our actions must be centered around a desire to protect and nurture life. Not around the mindless, soulless march into the apocalypse that the system behind this cold war orders us to accept.

I care about the world’s future too much to let it be defined by neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, whose think tank the Alliance for Securing Democracy is behind many of the media’s recent Russia narratives. I’m not willing to put all life on earth under threat of nuclear annihilation so that the U.S. government can hold onto control over distant sovereign lands. I can’t support this new cold war, because the motives behind it don’t apply to what I value.

The same goes for the 1000 military bases that America has around the world. And for the depraved corporate capitalism that keeps most Americans in poverty. And for the paradigm of mass incarceration. And for the state-enforced oil economy that’s destroying the climate. And for the surveillance and police state. And for the censorship measures that governments and corporations are imposing on dissenting media under guise of fighting Russia. And for the murderous U.S. drone program. And for the additional war runups around Iran and North Korea. And for the existence of an unelected, sociopathic power establishment whose elimination would end much of the world’s injustice. We have the power to replace all of these things with something worth valuing, if we recognize that each of us has the potential to profoundly change our circumstances.