The Real Terrorists Have Offices

Let’s get one thing straight: the United States isn’t a benevolent empire. It never has been. It didn’t “spread democracy” to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Vietnam. It didn’t “liberate” anyone when it installed dictators across Latin America or propped up apartheid in South Africa. What it did do–and still does–is colonize, exploit, and annihilate in the name of profit.

This isn’t ancient history. It’s currently happening. It’s the drone strikes that don’t make the news. It’s the “aid” packages that comes with strings attached and private contractors waiting in the wings. It’s military bases dotting the globe like pimples of power on every continent but Antarctica.

I’m anti-imperialist because I don’t believe any nation has the moral authority to dominate another. Especially not through force, especially not under the smokescreen of “freedom.” American imperialism wears many disguises: NGOs, trade agreements, coups, color revolutions, Hollywood, but underneath, it’s always the same face: power backed by violence.

I’m anti-colonial because the world is still bleeding from wounds inflicted by white supremacy and extraction-based economies. Colonization didn’t end with flags being lowered. It evolved into debt traps, resource plunder, and forced dependency. Look at how the Global South is treated when it tries to resist. Look at how indigenous people in the so-called “developed world” are still pushed off their land for pipelines and lithium mines.

And I’m absolutely anti-military industrial complex because we spend trillions every year not on health, not on housing, not on education, but on weapons, surveillance, and endless wars. The Pentagon is the world’s biggest polluter. Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, these are the real welfare queens, sucking on our tax dollars to build machines that blow up brown children in countries most Americans can’t find on a globe or a map.

And we’re told to be proud of this.

We’re told this is “defense.” That’s Orwellian doublespeak. You don’t “defend freedom” with cluster bombs and occupation. You defend it by dismantling the systems that profit from bloodshed.

To be anti-imperialist today is to be a threat to bipartisan consensus. Democrats and Republicans alike bow to the altar of militarism. They clap in unison for war budgets, while telling us there’s no money for universal healthcare. The only thing they agree on is that endless war is good business.

But some of us aren’t buying it anymore.

We’re organizing. We’re protesting. We’re resisting not just war, but the machinery that makes war possible. That means opposing U.S. hegemony, standing in solidarity with liberation movements worldwide, and rejecting the normalization of violence as policy.

The empire has no clothes. And it’s time more of us said so … loudly

Ash and Seed

The cities fell quietly. Not with fire or fanfare, but with a flicker. Supply chains snapping like old rope, currencies crumbling into irrelevance, and governments too bloated to breathe. People had waited for rescue. None came. Then, something stranger happened: they stopped waiting.

Maya lived in one of the Transition Zones, carved out of the skeleton of what had once been Pittsburgh. Skyscrapers stood hollow, colonized by vertical gardens and data relays. Streets were no longer roads, but corridors of barterless exchange: food grown by solar-fueled machines, distributed by drones with no masters.

She remembered the old world in fragments: clocks, ads, the endless scrolling of fake urgency. In this new world, days were marked by need and contribution. Some days she coded for the mesh network. Other days she repaired the water-capture towers or helped with conflict mediation—though those requests were rarer now.

There was no money. No one starved. The idea of “earning a living” had become as quaint as leeches in medicine. What did it mean to earn what had always been a birthright?

Occasionally, envoys came from outside the Zone—wandering emissaries from collapsing enclaves or liberated factories. Some brought new blueprints, others just stories. Maya loved the stories. One woman spoke of how a collective in former Indonesia had wired up an entire island to run itself, then dismantled their last police drone ceremonially, like a funeral for fear.

In the evenings, Maya sat under the wind trees, their turbines singing above, and read aloud to anyone who wandered by. Tonight it was McCarthy. Tomorrow, maybe Marx. No one made her do this. That was the point.

They lived without rulers or markets, not because they had to—but because they finally could.

And in the ruins of profit, something strange had taken root:

Hope.

But not the kind you wait for.

The kind you build.

Without Empathy, We Don’t See People as People

I’ve been recently reading the book James by Percival Everett. It’s about the slave Jim from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It’s gotten me thinking about empathy and the lack of it in humans. Empathy is not just a virtue–it’s the lens through which we recognize the humanity in others. Without it, people become objects, obstacles, or threats. History is soaked in the blood of empathy’s absence and the most chilling atrocities share a common root: the failure to see others as truly human.

The transatlantic slave trade didn’t just rely on violence; it depended on a systemic denial of empathy. Enslaved Africans were stripped of names, families, and identities. In the book I’m reading, Jim is just trying to get back to his family, but he is bought and sold by others in the book. Africans were branded, auctioned, and bred like livestock. This wasn’t ignorance, it was deliberate dehumanization. By turning people into property, slaveholders absolved themselves of guilt. Empathy would have made the cruelty unbearable. So it was repressed, silenced, replaced with pseudoscience and theology that justified oppression.

In Nazi Germany, Jews, Roma, disabled people, and others were targeted in a genocide that industrialized death. What made the Holocaust possible wasn’t just hatred–it was the meticulous suppression of empathy. People were reduced to numbers. Their names erased, their histories burned, their deaths cataloged in ledgers. The architecture of the Holocaust depended on millions participating–guards, secretaries, engineers–many of whom lived normal lives, compartmentalizing their complicity. Empathy had no place in the Final Solution.

But empathy’s absence isn’t just a relic of history. Under Trump’s administration, immigrants and asylum seekers are routinely described as “animals” or “vermin” or “invaders.” Children are separated from their parents and kept in cages, detained by ICE without due process, sometimes without adequate hygiene or comfort. The policy wasn’t a mistake; it was a strategy of deterrence through cruelty. To justify it, the administration relied on rhetoric that erased the humanity of migrants, calling them criminals, rapists, and threats to American “purity.” Empathy was a political liability, and it was treated as such.

Empathy is not weakness. It is an act of defiance in a world that profits from division and fear. To feel for another–to recognize a stranger’s suffering as real–is to refuse the machinery of dehumanization. When we listen, when we care, when we act in solidarity, we’re not just being kind. We’re fighting back against every system that says some lives matter less.

We don’t need more tolerance. We need more imagination: the kind that lets us picture ourselves in someone else’s place. Without empathy, history repeats itself. With it, maybe we can write a better one.

Congrats on the Tumor–You’re Fired!

Imagine waking up with chest pain, or getting hit by a drunk driver, or being diagnosed with cancer–and also still having to worry about whether your boss will still employ you next week so you can afford to stay alive.

Welcome to the great U S of A! Where your right to life is tied to your productivity.

We’ve normalized a system where healthcare is a perk, not a right. Like a company-branded tote bag or pizza in the breakroom. Need insulin to live? Better hope your employer hasn’t “restructured.” Broke your leg? You better not be unemployed–or you’ll be crawling to the E.R. and then into debt.

It’s cartoonishly dystopian when you think about it. We don’t tie firefighters to employment status. If your house is on fire, they don’t ask if you have a job before putting it out. But if your body is actually on fucking fire? Well, if you don’t have employer-sponsored insurance then best of fucking luck to you!

It’s also a massive scam. Tying healthcare to employment keeps people terrified of quitting, terrified of organizing, and terrified of speaking out. It’s wage-slavery dressed in HR-approved language. “We’re like a family” they’ll say. I’ve heard that one a few times in my life at work. Sure, a family that charges you $600 a month to maybe see a doctor if you’re lucky.

And don’t get me started on COBRA, the cruel joke of a system where you can keep your insurance after being laid off–by paying both your premium and the employer’s. As if anyone newly unemployed has a few extra grand lying around for monthly premiums. That’s not a bridge, it’s a toll road to bankruptcy.

Other countries keep healthcare as a basic human right. The USA treats it like a prize you can earn for being useful to capitalism.

Sick? Get a job. Too sick to work? Die quietly.

Let’s stop pretending this is normal. Let’s stop congratulating companies for offering healthcare, as if that makes them moral. The bare minimum shouldn’t feel like a gift.

Healthcare shouldn’t be a reward for surviving capitalism.

It should be a fucking right.

Living with Bipolar 2 Disorder

Living with bipolar 2 disorder is a journey I never chose, but one that has shaped me in ways I’m learning to appreciate.

At its core, bipolar 2 is about navigating two very different worlds: hypomania, where energy and ideas flow faster than I can keep up with, and depression, where even getting out of bed can feel impossible. Neither lasts forever, and learning that was the first step toward building a life I actually want to live.

In the past, I thought stability was impossible. When hypomania hits, I’ll race ahead without sleep, full of excitement, and bold plans. When the depression takes over, I’ll crash so hard it feels like nothing will ever get better. It took some time (and a lot of help involving a wonderful psychiatrist and medication) to realize that these cycles don’t define me. They were just part of the landscape I needed to learn to navigate.

Today, things are different. They’re not perfect–never perfect–but better. With the right support, the right tools, and a lot of self-awareness, I’ve found ways to catch the early signs of a shift. I’ve learned how to slow myself down when I start to climb too fast, and how to reach out when I feel myself sinking.

Therapy, medication, and daily routines have been game changers. So having self-compassion, patience, and the courage to admit when I need help. Recovery isn’t about never struggling again, it’s about building a life that can survive the struggles.

There are gifts in this too. Bipolar 2 has made me more creative, more empathetic, more resilient. It’s taught me to appreciate stability when I have it, to savor the small moments of peace, to celebrate progress no matter how small. It’s taught me that healing isn’t a straight line, and that setbacks don’t erase the work I’ve done and continue to do.

Living with bipolar 2 isn’t easy, but it’s not hopeless although sometimes it feels that way and there are days I want to give up. Every day I’m learning more about who I am, and every day I’m choosing, again and again, to keep going.

If you’re struggling: it’s not your fault.

You’re not broken.

And there is a way through.

Maybe not a perfect cure, but a path: messy, winding, but real. And it’s worth walking.

Mandatory Breeding Thesis

In the year 2084 birth was no longer a right; it was a privilege earned through argument. The Global Rebalancing Accord had made it law: before anyone could conceive a child, they had to defend the decision before a council of judges. A Procreation Thesis was required–minimum fifty pages, peer-reviewed, complete with ethical citations and projected environmental impact report.

They called it The Great Pause. The birth rate dopped so sharply that entire industries collapsed overnight: toy companies, children’s television, suburban housing developments. People had to ask themselves a question that had never been asked before, not seriously: Why bring another life into this world?

Julia had spent six months writing her thesis. It was called “Replenishing Wonder: A Case for Ethical Renewal Through Parenthood.” She cited studies on human empathy, argued that carefully planned upbringing could forge more compassionate generations. Her bibliography spanned philosophy, biology, environmental science, and obscure treatises on the metaphysics of suffering. She even included a footnote quoting Albert Camus: “Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”

Her defense was scheduled for a Tuesday afternoon in a pale marble building called the Bureau of Intent.

The judges–three gray-suited scholars and one AI adjudicator–read her thesis in silence. Occasionally, the AI blinked its cold blue eyes as it processed her arguments. Finally, they asked her to stand.

“Ms. Lewis,” said one of the human judges. “You argue persuasively for the ethical upbringing of a future generation. You demonstrate awareness of resource limitations, existential risks, and psychological burdens. However, you fail to address one critical point: what gives you the right to gamble with another being’s non-consensual existence?”

Julia’s mouth went dry. She’d prepared for this.

She quoted her thesis: “Because existence, while a risk, is a canvas. It is not the guarantee of suffering or joy but the possibility of either. To deny that possibility altogether is to deny hope.”

The AI processed her words for several long seconds, then it spoke in its chilling neutral voice: “Hope is not permission.”

Thousands failed every year. Those who passed were granted a Parenthood License, good for one child. If they wanted another, they had to write a new thesis, and it had to be better than the first.

Julia failed.

She walked out of the Bureau under a blackening sky. Couples clutched each other on the steps, some sobbing, some enraged, some simply silent. In the plaza, a massive bronze statue depicted and ancient figure: a faceless mother offering a tiny child up to the stars, as if pleading. At the base of the statue were engraved the words:

“To create life is to stand trial before the future.”

Julie went home to her small apartment. She poured herself a glass of wine and opened a new document.

Title:

“The Ethics of Refusing to Create: A Defense of Non-Parenthood in an Age of Crisis.”

She smiled for the first time all day. Maybe she hadn’t failed after all.

I got the idea for this post from one of my dear friends, Scarlett (not sure how she feels using her real name online.) Go check out her blog:
https://mammonelleblog.wordpress.com/

Trumpism vs Conservatism

Once upon a time, conservatism had a brand. You might not have liked it–hell, you might have hated it–but you knew what it stood for: limited government, free markets, family values, and a worship of Ronald Reagan that bordered on the religious. It was buttoned-up, corporate-friendly, and polite at dinner parties. Conservatism had talking points, a think tank for everything, and just enough moral panic to keep the suburban vote.

Then came Trump.

Traditional conservatism is like a country club: exclusive, outdated, and pretending it’s still 1955. It champions small government while bloating the military. It preaches personal responsibility while handing tax breaks to the wealthy. It’s a polished ideology, wrapped in American flags and “founding father” cosplay, with a Constitution in one hand and Ayn Rand in the other.

At its core, conservatism believed in institutions such as courts, constitutions, and capitalism. You could argue with it, debate it, but it had a script. Trumpism burned the script though.

Trumpism isn’t an ideology. It’s a vibe. A movement built not on principles but on performance. Trumpism is what happens when conservatism gets radicalized by reality TV, Twitter algorithms, and decades of right-wing media rage. It’s not about shrinking government. It’s about weaponizing it. It’s not about free markets, but about loyalty, tribalism, and the illusion of “winning.” Where conservatism says “let’s preserve tradition,” Trumpism screams, “Burn it down unless it worships me!”

Trumpism didn’t evolve from conservatism. It hijacked it. It slapped a red hat on it, handed it a flamethrower, and said, “Say something racist on live TV.” Suddenly, the old guard–McConnell, Bush, Cheney–look like moderates. Even Mitt Romney, the human embodiment of corporate power is now “too liberal” for the party he once led.

This isn’t a party shift. It’s a personality cult, draped in the decaying skin of the GOP.

If you’re hoping this ends with a return to “normal,” good luck. “Normal” is what built the staircase Trump descended. Conservatism laid the foundation. Trumpism built the casino on top and rigged every slot machine to spit out conspiracy theories and bootlicking.

But here’s the thing: we don’t have to pick between Reagan’s America and Trump’s circus. The problem isn’t just the flavor of right-wing decay, it’s the whole rotten system. Conservatism and Trumpism are two wings of the same vulture, circling the corpse of a world built on exploitation. So…

What if we stopped trying to salvage this system altogether? What if we built something beyond it? No billionaires, on bootlickers, no CEOs, no bosses. No political theatre where our choices are a condescending suit or a fascist clown. Imagine direct democracy. Mutual aid instead of tax breaks for mansions and yachts and private jets. Housing and food because you’re alive, not because you’re useful to a corporation. Community defense instead of bloated police budgets. Power, not hoarded at the top, but shared at the roots.

We don’t need Trumpism or conservatism. We need liberation. Burn the script. Burn the stage. Tear it all down and re-build something worth living in.

Hitler, Guevara, and Lenin and the Line We Walk

There’s a reflex in our culture–especially online–to flatten political history into a moral binary. You’re either on the side of the good guys or the monsters. In this simplified universe, to admire Lenin or Che Guevara is to place yourself in the same camp as those who admire Hitler. That comparison isn’t just historically false, it’s intellectually lazy.

Let’s draw a clear line, shall we?

Admiring Lenin or Che is not the same as admiring Hitler. It’s important to understand why, especially if we want to engage in political conversations that go beyond slogans and settle into substance.

Their goals were fundamentally different.

Hitler’s ideology was rooted in racial supremacy, conquest, and genocide. His vision required extermination. It was designed around hate. There is no version of Hitler that isn’t a fascist or a mass murderer.

By contrast, Lenin and Guevara operated under a radically different vision, however flawed. They saw themselves as liberators, fighting systems of exploitation and imperialism. Lenin wanted to smash the czarist monarchy and capitalism to empower workers. Che fought for global revolution against colonialism and U.S. theory, about freedom, equality, and solidarity, not domination and extermination.

Does that mean they got everything right? Hell no. The crimes can’t be ignored though.

Lenin authorized the Red Terror and laid the groundwork for the state repression in the USSR. Che oversaw executions of political enemies in revolutionary Cuba. They believed violence was a necessary tool of revolution. That can’t be whitewashed or excused with historical whataboutism.

However, here’s where critical admiration comes in.

You can admire someone’s courage, clarity of purpose, or strategic brilliance without endorsing every action they took. You can appreciate Guevara’s fearless commitment to anti-imperialism and still mourn the people who died because of him. You can study Lenin’s revolutionary theory and still criticize how it was implemented.

There’s a difference between admiration and apology. Admiration is honest. It sees both the brilliance and the brutality. It doesn’t romanticize, but it also doesn’t erase the context or potential of revolutionary struggle.

Apology is denial. It minimizes or justifies atrocities, insisting the ends always justify the means. That’s where things get dangerous.

If your admiration turns into excuse-making–“they had to do it,” “it was for the greater good”–you’ve stopped thinking critically. You’re no longer admiring. You’re worshipping. And revolutionary icons don’t need worship, they need interrogation.

Bottom line is history is messy and so are its heroes. We don’t need to build saints out of revolutionaries, and we don’t need to pretend they’re all devils either. The left does itself no favors by refusing to wrestle with the full truth of its icons. And the right discredits itself by comparing every revolutionary to a fascist.

So yes, I admire Lenin and Guevara. I admire their courage, their clarity, their willingness to challenge empires and imagine a different world. But I don’t ignore their flaws. I don’t excuse their crimes. And I don’t pretend they didn’t make serious mistakes at the cost of real lives.

That’s not an apology.

That’s what it means to learn from history instead of being trapped by it.

The U.S. War Machine

Let’s stop pretending the U.S. is a reluctant world police officer, dragged into conflict by duty or democracy. The truth is uglier: The U.S. war machine exists to prop up imperial interests, feed the military-industrial complex, and maintain global dominance. It’s not about freedom and it never was.

The U.S. spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing … they’re not building weapons for defense. They’re building profit pipelines, and their stock value depends on war. It’s no coincidence that conflicts abroad send defense stocks soaring. War is an investment, and the return is drenched in blood.

We’ve normalized endless war. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, some Americans couldn’t even locate these countries on a map, but their tax dollars funded drone strikes, invasions, coups, and occupation. These aren’t defensive wars, they’re acts of aggression dressed up in patriotic drag (which is much better and more American than drag queens.) The U.S. war economy requires perpetual enemies. If they don’t exist, we invent them.

U.S. imperialism isn’t just about boots on the ground. It’s about toppling governments that won’t play ball with Western capital. Iran in 1953. Chile in 1973. Haiti, Guatemala, the Congo. The list goes on. When diplomacy doesn’t serve U.S. interests, regime change becomes the foreign policy of choice. Empire with a smile.

The justification for U.S. imperialism is still the same colonial lie: “We’re bringing civilization.” Only now it’s rebranded as democracy promotion and humanitarian intervention. But we’re not spreading democracy, we’re spreading McDonald’s, oil pipelines, military bases, and sweatshops. And if a country resists? Sanctions, bombs, and coups.

While the Pentagon devours over $800 billion a year, Americans go bankrupt from medical bills, ration insulin, and drown in student debt. Empire is expensive. It always comes home. It militarizes police, surveils dissent, and turns the nation into a fortress built on fear. Meanwhile, infrastructure crumbles and the planet burns. And we want to bring more children into this wasteland so they can keep feeding the war machine when they turn 18, but they come back with PTSD and have to wait until they’re 21 to have a drinking problem because of it.

The war machine doesn’t protect us. It protects capital. Real security comes from housing, healthcare, education, and dignity. Not aircraft carriers and drone fleets. It’s time we stop worshiping the military and start dismantling it. That means defunding the Pentagon, ending the imperialist wars, and refusing to let our lives serve empire.

Republicans Pushing for More Births

I saw yesterday that Republicans are pushing for women to have more babies again, but…

They’re not offering paid parental leave.

They’re not fighting for universal healthcare.

They’re not fixing the housing crisis.

They’re not easing the cost of childcare.

They’re banning abortion, cutting food assistance, and telling you it’s your duty to breed for God and country.

Because if people stop having kids, the whole system starts cracking. Who’s going to work the low-wage jobs? Who’s going to fuel the next war or keep the machine turning?

They don’t see kids.

They see future labor.

They see a woman’s womb as a factory.

And they want production up.

This isn’t about life. It’s about power.