I don’t know what to say anymore. For all I try to be optimistic about China and other anti-imperialist actors, it’s hard not to be shaken by the audacity of the US, through israel, carrying out a genocide that is by this point extremely overt and televised - and it keeps going in spite of worldwide protest against it. No one powerful is stepping in with military might to try to put a stop to it. The only ones trying with direct force are severely under-equipped for it. And they are heroes and martyrs for trying anyway, but it’s horrific that it’s reduced to such a desperate fight for survival.

For an empire in decline, the US is certainly getting away with a lot, with near impunity. I know the strongest anti-imperialist actors have to address things with careful long-term planning rather than foolhardy idealism and I’ve written sometimes in defense of them myself. But the people of Palestine don’t have the time. They don’t have the time for a gradual shift of global hegemony toward a multipolar world. They don’t have the time for a gradual decline of the prevailing genocidal empire. Someone or something is going to have to end colonialism by force for it to ever truly end. Whether that is local resistance forces succeeding against all odds against them, or something external. But starving people can’t wait around to see if they’ll somehow succeed in liberation, given enough time. It scares me more than I want to let on that colonialism has succeeded in genocidal campaigns before in history and gotten away with it, that there is already a precedent for such. What does it say about the balance of power in the world if it can’t find the military strength and political will to step in, when another such campaign is happening at an accelerated pace and this time while the whole world is watching? Are the global forces of liberation too weak or too restrained?

It is haunting to exist in a world where this is even possible.

Rusty wheels of justice