Ignore Their Words; Watch Their Actions

Israel has been raining hellfire on Lebanon with such extreme ferocity that as of this writing authorities can only make the roughest estimates of the number of dead. Hundreds of people were killed today.

CNN reports destruction “as large as a city block” in Beirut from a strike on six residential towers in what Israel claims was an attempt to assassinate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. From the looks of things they’ll probably be counting the dead for many days as they comb through the rubble.

As you might expect, the imperial spin machine is falling all over itself to wash the US government’s hands of this savagery. Axios has published another of its signature “sources say Biden is privately angry with Netanyahu” pieces, reporting that the president is experiencing such adjectives as “frustrated”, “humiliated” and “livid” toward the Israeli prime minister over rejected ceasefire proposals and increased escalations.

We’ve been seeing articles like this for a year now. It’s become a whole new genre of news reporting in the mainstream press to transcribe statements fed to the media by anonymous White House officials saying the president’s feelings are feeling upset feelings toward the Israeli government in order to frame the Biden administration as some kind of reluctant passive witness to all this butchery and genocide instead of the willing participant that it so obviously is.

CNN has an article out titled “Blinken issues forceful plea for diplomacy after Israeli strike on Beirut,” which is of course nonsense. “Forceful plea” is an oxymoron; the two words contradict each other. You don’t plead with someone forcefully, you make demands forcefully. This administration could have reined in Israel at any time between last October and today with a phone call, because Israel’s military operations and very existence are fully dependent on US military support. Instead they’re making a performative “plea” that Israel start acting nice, because they don’t actually want these atrocities to end.

You can see that the Biden administration is a willing participant in all this bloodshed by simply ignoring their words and their narrative spin and watching their actions instead. While the mass media publish White House press releases disguised as news stories about the president’s feelings and celebrity progressives assure us that this administration is “working tirelessly for a ceasefire,” the Israeli Defense Ministry is announcing that it has secured another $8.7 billion in military aid from the US.

That’s really all you need to know to understand what’s really happening here: that this administration is continuing to pour mountains of war machinery into Israel after a year of genocide. Their words say one thing, but their actions say another.

Ignore their words, and watch their actions. This is great advice for this current situation in particular and for politicians in general, and even more broadly for anyone in your life whose real motives you’re unsure about.

The other day I got into a conversation online with a Kamala supporter who insisted that backing Harris is the best way to support Israel’s victims, because Harris sometimes says nice words about Palestinian people while Donald Trump does not.

“Given the current two options, would you prefer a president who urges Netanyahu to cease, who calls for a ceasefire, and calls for Palestinian freedom and rights, over one who does none of those?” he asked.

I told him, “You’re asking me if I prefer someone who murders kids while saying nice words or someone who murders kids while not saying nice words. I don’t care. They are exactly the same to me.”

But that’s what Democrats have to offer. Nice feelings and words. Vibes. Bombing middle eastern kids to shreds while saying they support human rights and a two-state solution. It’s their whole entire schtick.

I saw a liberal think tanker named Maya Luna saying “If you’re not voting for Kamala, you don’t care about Palestinians,” arguing that “it’s objectively the case that Kamala has a policy that will be much more empathetic to Palestinians.”

This is the Democratic Party right here. They can’t point to any concrete material reason to believe their candidate would be better on Palestine, so they say their candidate “will be much more empathetic”, i.e. words and feelings as opposed to actions. This is who western liberals are.

And Trump supporters are the same. They insist their candidate will bring peace if elected even after he spent four years as president advancing the longstanding agendas of neocons and the US intelligence cartel, with a cabinet staffed with some of the nastiest warmongers in Washington. If they’d ignored his words which occasionally give lip service to peace and watched his actions instead, they’d see that the empire will never let anyone elect a peacemaker as president.

Mentally mute the narratives and instead watch the actual material movements of war machinery, troops, resources and wealth. That’s how you sort out what’s really happening in this world from the empty narrative fluff, and that’s how you recognize who the true monsters really are.

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/ignore-their-words-watch-their-actions