Dispatches Mailbag: Are We Putting Boots on the Ground?
Life in modern America is an exercise in confusion and frustration. And that was before the war. I’ve been getting a lot of emails and messages lately from people trying to make sense about what is going on and I’m right there with you. So much of my research right now is split between the psychological underpinnings of American Fascism, organizing and decolonization strategies, and sorting through the weaponized confusion of the war and all its different components.
Anyway, I hear a lot that these mailbags are handy, so I wanted to continue. Today, we get into a couple of questions regarding the war, including the disconnect between the American experience and the Iranian experience, the lingering possibility that Trump might put boots on the ground, a grab-bag of questions asking after the influence of Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and the recently high-profile “Prof.” Jiang, and, finally, a discussion about this weekend’s No Kings protests and whether the protest is moving in the direction of becoming a movement.
As always, if you have questions, please feel free to reply to any published article or email me. These questions are helpful for me, as well, as I get to take the temperature of where you are and also a chance to build on some of the thoughts I’ve been putting together. Questions and topics are always welcome.
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Alex: I had a strange realization the other day and I couldn’t believe how shocked I was. I grew up always hearing about how people in the Soviet Union were lied to about what was happening in their country and then I would see it with North Korea. Later with Iraq it was Baghdad Bob lying about what was going on in that war. I’m not dumb. I’ve always known our government lied but trying to sort through the Trump Administration’s obvious lies about this war, I realized how different the experience of a person in Iran and here in the United States really is and how they probably have a much better understanding of what’s going on than we do. Does that feel right to you? This doesn’t sound stupid, does it?
Oh, for sure. And it’s not stupid at all. Living is strange and there are times where even obvious things get obscured because you’re trying to live your life and do what needs to be done and then, like snapping away during a long drive, you’ll come to and wonder what the hell happened. That’s just dissociation, and there’s a reason why it’s such an integral coping mechanism.
So, trying to wrap your head around how an Iranian views what’s going on is essential right now because the American experience of war is very peculiar and part of the reason we’re such a mess. War, as I wrote back in February, is the American religion. It’s how we were able to gain a foothold on this continent, how we achieved independence, how we stole this continent from its original inhabitants, and how we built this wretched empire. Our creation of “modern warfare,” or what used to be modern warfare, was a telling innovation. We built a war machine that could hit vulnerable people all over the world without having to put troops in harm’s way and expected to never really suffer consequences or loss of life. It became something that happened in the background and we occasionally heard about on the news if something went really, really wrong.
It is…pretty gross when you really think about it.