02-27-2024, 12:42 AM
In response to shoutbox discussion.
Last Sunday Aaron Bushnell, 25 year old Chair Force DevOps humanoid-drone, walked up to the Israeli embassy in Washington DC wearing his fatigues and self immolated while screaming 'FREE PALESTINE'.
This is all known because he was recording himself in the lead up, his last message to the world being (according to a transcript from a guy on twitter):
Thanks to TIME we can read some more or his last thoughts and statements.
So, this was clearly about Palestine, but also clearly about more than Palestine. As TIME themselves say, self-immolation is a tradition. Rather like libtardism. That's what I want to talk about first. The tradition. Here's how TIME puts it.
The attempt at branching out to India I just find funny, but the Christian connection is what I really find interesting. Before I get to the bolded part.
Morrison didn't kill himself with his child, TIME are retarded and got that part wrong. But a Quaker got in on the party during Vietnam. Isn't that interesting.
But back to the above, why did I bold that part? Doesn't it seem so perfectly striking an episode in libtard history? Dumb Americans thought they were doing democracy against communism, and then a monk kills himself to protest the American government. Because America is uniquely offensive to Asian monks apparently. Have you ever thought about this story?
Conservative elements of American society and the press were dissenting all along, and appear to have been very strongly vindicated. Several of these people were very experienced, such as reporters who had witnessed the communisation of China and Cuba. Mark Moyar, probably the Vietnam War's strongest American revisionist, shares in 'Triumph Forsaken'
Interesting point about the conservative skepticism over the "buddhist" protests, one of the greatest pioneering lady journalists of all time got memory holed over this. Have you ever heard of Margueritte Higgins? If you haven't it's because she thought David Halberstram was a retarded pinko Jew (which he was).
You can find 'Our Vietnam Nightmare' in all the usual places. Here she is investigating the suicide of a young monk at his home village's pagoda, after observing a battle between the city buddhist authorities and the monk's parents over the remains.
Do you think if I had forced Aaron Bushnell to read these pages at gunpoint the morning before he did this there would have been any impact? Would he, perhaps like Pham Ngoc Cam, have found himself agape? Or does it not matter? Or would he not be able to process this (stupid or zealous?)?
My point in sharing this is to raise several questions. What did Bushnell see himself doing? Is this about Palestine, or a greater perceived tradition of progressive resistance to tyranny and social injustice? The duped Vietnamese rubes believed both that they would be reincarnated, and that their people were suffering unique and extreme oppression and that their sacrifices would strike an immediate counterblow. There is a clear perceived self-interest on the part of the Vietnamese suicides.
Zed called Bushnell's self-immolation "an act of profound conviction". But I don't think that's a clear conclusion at all here. It was conclusive, sure. He's fucking dead. Aaron Bushnell has concluded. But was it profound? I hope that Miss Higgins' hard work above demonstrates the point that it is possible for very ignorant and deluded people to reach very conclusive positions and make very conclusive actions. But where does profundity come in? The depth or strength of the belief? Again, the above should demonstrate that it's possible to draw strong conviction from shallow sources. Depth and strength do not always correlate. Strong, shallow, convictions exist. In fact not only do they exist, I would say that they constitute the majority.
The words "heroic act" appear in our shoutbox too. Again I ask, where does "heroism" come into this? He's dead. Conclusive act. Life spent, willingly. Is this innately heroic?
Zed sez:
"Courage"... "the will from which such things emerge"...
Was this an act of will or courage? The premise of this thread I suppose is, is it possible to do something this radical from feeble, fickle, insipid, and downright stupid foundations of character? I am personally of the opinion that yes, it absolutely is. Not only that, but that that is the only place actions of this specific type could be coming from.
This man is not achieving the apotheosis of a complete vision of humanity and justice. He is ending his life by becoming a living r/history meme he saw last month so that he can escape the gaze of Cool Nigger and maybe become worthy.
Hope he didn't think it'd be that easy. He's not good looking so nobody cares, and he's white, so these people won't even pretend to care. Intelligence assets tell me girl instagram gives zero fucks about this guy.
Of course it probably goes without saying that there isn't really a good principled position upon which to believe that what's happening in Palestine is a uniquely criminal or evil thing, or at least if there is one, this guy didn't have it. What this guy has is Current Thing Brain. Sure maybe there's a general standing opinion for violence and terror being bad, with all of the standard modifiers for niggers and browns to do what they want. This guy is a complete tool and saying that he had any kind of integrity or courage is absurd. Attempting to pin any kind of vision or greater intention towards his act surely paints him as merely deeply insane, rather than shallowly deluded to the point of zeal/mania.
My read of all of this is that there is no good case to be made for this man's actions and there is nothing innately courageous or heroic about killing yourself. I would say this is far less respectable an act than the average personal suicide. This is just a news cycle casualty. A particularly pathetic one.
But please, everyone else weigh in now. Especially Zed.
Last Sunday Aaron Bushnell, 25 year old Chair Force DevOps humanoid-drone, walked up to the Israeli embassy in Washington DC wearing his fatigues and self immolated while screaming 'FREE PALESTINE'.
This is all known because he was recording himself in the lead up, his last message to the world being (according to a transcript from a guy on twitter):
Quote:"Hi my name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided, will be normal". *Bushnell arrives at embassy gate and places the camera down, empties flammable liquid from canteen on his head and takes out light* "Free Palestine!" *uses lighter to ignite himself* "Free Palestine! FREE PALESTINE! FREE PALESTINE! FREE PALESTINE! FREE PALESTINE!" *screams of pain* "Free Palestine" *Bushnell is silent*
Thanks to TIME we can read some more or his last thoughts and statements.
Quote:Bushnell reportedly sent a message to media outlets before his self-immolation. “Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people,” he warned.
On Facebook Sunday morning, he also wrote: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.” The post included a link to a live-stream of his protest on the web-broadcasting platform Twitch, which took down the video for violations of its community guidelines and terms of service.
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” the airman repeated, in footage reviewed by TIME, as he walked toward the driveway of the Israeli embassy. “But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
After Bushnell doused himself with liquid and reached for his lighter, unidentified law enforcement or security officers could be heard asking him, “Can I help you?” After setting himself aflame, Bushnell repeatedly shouted “Free Palestine.”
So, this was clearly about Palestine, but also clearly about more than Palestine. As TIME themselves say, self-immolation is a tradition. Rather like libtardism. That's what I want to talk about first. The tradition. Here's how TIME puts it.
Quote:The practice of self-immolation dates back centuries, according to ancient Hindu tales of Sati, the wife of a Hindu god who got married without her father’s approval. Some retellings of her life say that Sati burned herself to death on her husband’s funeral pyre, and are used as justification for the practice of ritual suicide that has long been banned in India. Self-immolation was also seen as a sacrificial act committed by Christian devotees who chose to be burned alive when they were being persecuted for their religion by Roman emperor Diocletian around 300 A.D.
One of the first and most well known acts of self-immolation in modern history was conducted by Thich Quang Duc during the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese monk set himself on fire in Saigon in 1963 in protest of the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government backed by the U.S. Several other monks followed his example.
Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation became one of the most enduring and haunting images of the war. “The average American would have said, ‘Well, we're supporting democracy, and fighting against communism,’ and this image of this monk choosing this terrible way to die to protest against the American government, was really shocking,” says Michael Biggs, associate professor of sociology at Oxford University.
The attempt at branching out to India I just find funny, but the Christian connection is what I really find interesting. Before I get to the bolded part.
Quote:Some people in the U.S. also self-immolated as a means of protest during the Vietnam War, including a Quaker named Norman Morrison who set himself on fire outside the Pentagon while clinging to his child.
Morrison didn't kill himself with his child, TIME are retarded and got that part wrong. But a Quaker got in on the party during Vietnam. Isn't that interesting.
But back to the above, why did I bold that part? Doesn't it seem so perfectly striking an episode in libtard history? Dumb Americans thought they were doing democracy against communism, and then a monk kills himself to protest the American government. Because America is uniquely offensive to Asian monks apparently. Have you ever thought about this story?
Conservative elements of American society and the press were dissenting all along, and appear to have been very strongly vindicated. Several of these people were very experienced, such as reporters who had witnessed the communisation of China and Cuba. Mark Moyar, probably the Vietnam War's strongest American revisionist, shares in 'Triumph Forsaken'
Interesting point about the conservative skepticism over the "buddhist" protests, one of the greatest pioneering lady journalists of all time got memory holed over this. Have you ever heard of Margueritte Higgins? If you haven't it's because she thought David Halberstram was a retarded pinko Jew (which he was).
Quote:In 1963, she joined Newsday and was assigned to cover South Vietnam, where she "visited hundreds of villages", interviewed most of the major figures, and wrote a book entitled Our Vietnam Nightmare.[sup][10][/sup] While in South Vietnam, another feud developed between Higgins and David Halberstam, a New York Times correspondent who was assigned to replace Bigart.[sup][2][/sup] Her battle was not for scoops or headlines this time. Instead, it was based on the ideological differences and ego between an experienced correspondent, Higgins, and a young Halberstam.[sup][5][/sup]
As a war correspondent with two decades under her belt, Higgins's anti-Communist sentiments were well established. There were many Buddhist protests against the Ngo Dinh Diem regime, which she believed were set up by communists. This contradicted Halberstam's views and reporting, who thought of Higgins as a "past-her-prime sell-out whose anti-Communist views rose to the level of propaganda."[sup][5][/sup] Halberstam and many of the young correspondents in Vietnam at the time opposed the Diem regime and reported a negative view of the war. Higgins believed they did not have a real understanding of the war and oftentimes called them Rover Boys, who never ventured outside of Saigon to the countryside to see what was going on. The Higgins–Halberstam rivalry never seemed to end, as Halberstam would continue to criticize her after her death in 1966.[sup][5][/sup]
You can find 'Our Vietnam Nightmare' in all the usual places. Here she is investigating the suicide of a young monk at his home village's pagoda, after observing a battle between the city buddhist authorities and the monk's parents over the remains.
Do you think if I had forced Aaron Bushnell to read these pages at gunpoint the morning before he did this there would have been any impact? Would he, perhaps like Pham Ngoc Cam, have found himself agape? Or does it not matter? Or would he not be able to process this (stupid or zealous?)?
My point in sharing this is to raise several questions. What did Bushnell see himself doing? Is this about Palestine, or a greater perceived tradition of progressive resistance to tyranny and social injustice? The duped Vietnamese rubes believed both that they would be reincarnated, and that their people were suffering unique and extreme oppression and that their sacrifices would strike an immediate counterblow. There is a clear perceived self-interest on the part of the Vietnamese suicides.
Zed called Bushnell's self-immolation "an act of profound conviction". But I don't think that's a clear conclusion at all here. It was conclusive, sure. He's fucking dead. Aaron Bushnell has concluded. But was it profound? I hope that Miss Higgins' hard work above demonstrates the point that it is possible for very ignorant and deluded people to reach very conclusive positions and make very conclusive actions. But where does profundity come in? The depth or strength of the belief? Again, the above should demonstrate that it's possible to draw strong conviction from shallow sources. Depth and strength do not always correlate. Strong, shallow, convictions exist. In fact not only do they exist, I would say that they constitute the majority.
The words "heroic act" appear in our shoutbox too. Again I ask, where does "heroism" come into this? He's dead. Conclusive act. Life spent, willingly. Is this innately heroic?
Zed sez:
Quote:What bothers me here is not so much that, as much as... watching a guy fighting to scream his manta as he is burning alive and trying to maintain physical composure, and then getting mocked by faggots without a thousandth of the courage. It bothers me in the same way as when people mock school shooters, 9/11 hijackers, suicide bombers, etc.
The inability to kind of distill such a thing as a sacred act. Even, perhaps especially, if it is opposition to your values.
[...]
What he said is of no consequence to me, nor his reasons or justifications. His act will have no bearing on my politics, but the willingness to die for a cause (any cause) in such a brutal fashion is indicative of a kind of strength of conscience that should be esteemed. One should wish for allies whose commitment was as resolute.
To diminish the act, in my eyes, is to diminish the will from which such things emerge.
"Courage"... "the will from which such things emerge"...
Was this an act of will or courage? The premise of this thread I suppose is, is it possible to do something this radical from feeble, fickle, insipid, and downright stupid foundations of character? I am personally of the opinion that yes, it absolutely is. Not only that, but that that is the only place actions of this specific type could be coming from.
This man is not achieving the apotheosis of a complete vision of humanity and justice. He is ending his life by becoming a living r/history meme he saw last month so that he can escape the gaze of Cool Nigger and maybe become worthy.
Hope he didn't think it'd be that easy. He's not good looking so nobody cares, and he's white, so these people won't even pretend to care. Intelligence assets tell me girl instagram gives zero fucks about this guy.
Of course it probably goes without saying that there isn't really a good principled position upon which to believe that what's happening in Palestine is a uniquely criminal or evil thing, or at least if there is one, this guy didn't have it. What this guy has is Current Thing Brain. Sure maybe there's a general standing opinion for violence and terror being bad, with all of the standard modifiers for niggers and browns to do what they want. This guy is a complete tool and saying that he had any kind of integrity or courage is absurd. Attempting to pin any kind of vision or greater intention towards his act surely paints him as merely deeply insane, rather than shallowly deluded to the point of zeal/mania.
My read of all of this is that there is no good case to be made for this man's actions and there is nothing innately courageous or heroic about killing yourself. I would say this is far less respectable an act than the average personal suicide. This is just a news cycle casualty. A particularly pathetic one.
But please, everyone else weigh in now. Especially Zed.