Dear Liberals,

This meme popped up in my Reddit feed. I was going to post it on Facebook and remembered that I got Jetpack installed on my phone so I can post to my own site instead of feeding their algorithm.

Every US President IS a war criminal. Those of us in the USA must confront this, along with learning the real history of the US, if we want to understand reality correctly.

I’ve been doing truth and reconciliation research and education regarding US history, alongside current policies and practices, for several years now. It is difficult work.

The global majority is rebuilding the world order to pursue resilient cooperative trading relationships with the goals of peace and common prosperity. The US/NATO Empire is going through its death throes, and is lashing out.

The Empire’s lies are plentiful, and our lives in the Imperial Core have been built on cultivated illusions. The experience of recognizing I was in a cult after being raised in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, then finding out how my understanding of the world had been corrupted by the JW belief system, is a simile for my experiences as I recognized what kind of government we actually have, and discovering (ongoing) the things the Empire has hidden and lied to us about – and like extracting myself from the JW cult, it too is a painful process.

But my personal pain is not an excuse for not learning the horrifying things the Empire has done, because any privileges I’ve had in my life here in the Imperial Core have come at a cost to other lives around the world. It doesn’t matter that I was blissfully ignorant of it most of my life. I know it now, and I must change accordingly.

Now that I know, I’m not letting the monsters who think the price of millions of other (not European or Eurosettler) lives to fuel the Capitalist Imperialist system of the Empire is “worth it” inform me on what is good, acceptable, or even possible. I refuse to share the worldview of eugenicist genocidaires.

I am working to identify and purge what French psychiatrist Frantz Fanon called the “germs of rot” that the Empire has infected our minds -and the land itself – with, for generations.

I have been exercising my ability to expand my framework of reference for understanding: of myself and others, relationships, contradictions, history, and the world, by learning and applying Dialectical and Historical Materialism alongside an extensive study of history over the last few years. It is helping me to mature and heal emotionally.

I can’t tell you what to do, but as a former Liberal, I can tell you that my life and outlook has improved since I grew beyond the framework of reference that US schools, capitalist owned and serving media, and government work to cultivate in us. It’s so similar to my experiences as I exited the Jehovah’s Witness doomsday cult in the 90s, I’m writing a book that will, among other things, explain all of the similarities and parallels between both experiences.

I hope you’ll read it.

I hope you wake up and see through the Empire’s lies, propaganda, and conditioning, even if you don’t read my book.

Life doesn’t have to be this way, but with a captured government and media here in the Core, we can’t resolve the contradictions of wealth inequality, ecosystem collapse, and Settler-Colonialism through the ballot box. The ruling class has outmaneuvered the working class, after spending over a century attacking labor rights and movements, while indoctrinating anti-union ideologies and divisiveness  into the US workforce.

But the working class outnumbers the ruling class, and they damn well know it, because they’ve worked hard to divide and manipulate us to keep us at one another’s throats, instead of joining together to turn on them.

Building enough working class solidarity organizations in the US to achieve significant revolutionary victories is an ongoing challenge. Unfortunately those divisions are so common that they’re often insidious, and people typically don’t notice it in themselves as much as in others unless they’re especially introspective and radically honest with themselves. In my experiences, very few Americans possess those qualities, but US culture doesn’t encourage deep thinking, so that’s not terribly surprising.

I read lots of books on history and political theory- some of my recommendations are on my other site, Comrade Birb, where I updated that section to a new plugin over the weekend. I’ll be adding more books, as I’ve read many more since my last update years ago.

I hope you’ll do some truth and reconciliation work. It’s hard, it can be painful, but it is also often validating, particularly if, like me, something has always seemed seriously inhumane and unjust about this system we live under. It doesn’t have to be this way. That’s not idealism or utopianism. It truly doesn’t. Learning actual US history transformed me and my understanding of everything. The ruling class has gone to the lengths they have so they can keep this system in place and convince us no alternative is possible – all so they can keep Jakarta Methoding and Gaza Holocausting.

The working class can do better and build a better world with each other. But we gotta get our shit together, and that involves resolving contradictions, and the divisions and corruption that have resulted from those, and those being artificially cultivated by the ruling class.

This is a complex process of facing truths – historical records that contradict many things we’ve held to be true, then reconciling it, by updating our own understanding, sharing it to help others learn, correcting the historical record, learning about the impacts of US history – and its present policies and practices – to help work for reparations and dismantling the Empire.

I see this work as my duty to humanity and the historical record. We live in a deeply dangerous time. I hope we make it.