So Donald Trump assassinated Iranian military leader Qassem Soliemani (as well as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, leader of an important Iraqi Shia militia that is a part of Iraq's official military establishment). Many people, both for and against these murders, say that this is tantamount to an act of war. Trump himself doesn't appear to think this. Personally, I think Trump wanted a distraction from the impeachment drama, and that his long-term exposure to psychopaths like John Bolton, Sheldon Adelson, Pompeo, and the other assorted human garbage in the USA's mainstream media, has caused him to lose all sense of proportion. On the other hand, people confidently predicting an Iranian retaliation ignore the huge disparity in power between Iran and the USA. Sure, Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, but then what? The USA would launch airstrike after airstrike and turn its major cities into smoking ruins. People who imagine that Russia and/or China would come to Iran's assistance similarly forget Russia's relative weakness and overestimate China's devotion to Iran. Both of these countries would counsel restraint.
Regardless, the prospect of World War III has produced a flicker of life in the West's moribund peace movement. Don't expect it to last. People are always bitching that I'm so negative. I, conversely, bitch about how progressives and leftists are deluded shit-heads wedded to masturbatory outbursts of stirring rhetoric while being short on proposing solutions or making their actions match their brave words.
The peace movement has been slumbering because those who tend to organize it and those who tend to show up at its rallies all have this dull sense of the futility of their actions. They don't consciously realize (and will never consciously admit) that gathering in a public place for an afternoon to wave signs and shout things has about zero influence on the insane mass murderers they say they're trying to influence. The USA has been rampaging from Afghanistan to Libya (and elsewhere) for DECADES now. At first there was a peace movement. Especially when it was the Republican, George Dubya Bush who was in power. He stole two terms of office and carried on slaughtering regardless of the peaceful afternoon rallies calling on him to stop. Then, it was the debonair, inspiring symbol of so much that is good, Barack Obama who carried out the killings and assassinations (admittedly with a greater degree of restraint than any other likely candidate for the office of president would have shown) and the peace movement pretty much went to sleep. Now, the obnoxious, disgusting human swill, Republican Donald Trump is seemingly moving the country towards a nation-to-nation war with Iran and there are rallies again.
But what hasn't changed is that teams of organizers working for a couple of weeks or a month to organize a peaceful rally, and hundreds (or even thousands) or ordinary people showing up at these peaceful afternoon rallies are still completely ineffectual at influencing the decisions of powerful murderers who are accountable to a very few oligarchs in the Military-Industrial-Complex (and other coteries of scum). This uselessness will soon make itself undeniable and the peace movement will go back to sleep. (Sleeping the sleep of the righteous, knowing that they demonstrated their opposition to this evil, even if it had zero impact.)
Prove me wrong.
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