Christmas at the childhood home, which means a lot of lazing about. I catch that Hobbit-like tendency to generally overindulge, in food and in indolence. This also takes the form of not checking the news to torment myself with goings-on that I cannot do a damn thing about, not today. I am one of those people who live too much in the mind who–while I am intellectually aware it is not and therefore torture myself for it–feels doomscrolling like to activism, awareness like to action.

All going according to custom past few days–I’ve been comfortably pillowed by the sand–but this morning I got a push notification of Breaking News.

It’s tedious to announce, with some flourish, as though it would make any difference if I could be arsed, that I put the phone down after some confirmation of what, exactly, happened, made coffee, and played vidya instead. “Instead.” Instead of what? Self-flagellation is just narcissism with its back turned. What the Odonians on Anarres would call “egoizing”, or performative. I’m not going out protesting, which, while it may arguably have once pushed policy, and may even now act as PR for the American intellectual-worldly class in showing the world there are Americans who Do Not Approve of the actions of our government (I doubt The World gives a shit), seems to have no effect on this regime. Feeling bad about that inaction doesn’t make it any better, in a moral sense.

And yet I wonder…

———–

Of course I hit this part of the game today.

Elder Simon: It exposes the deception of the Church–that its doctrine is founded upon lies.
Ramza: A book?
Elder Simon: That is why we fear it so, and have kept it hidden since the beginning… Heed me well, Ramza. This book possesses power. How you use this power is your decision… and your burden.

-from Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

(I don’t even have to explain this; you can guess exactly what is going on in the narrative if you’ve ever, once in your life, consumed narrative media.)

This is so typical of the intellectual writer-ly class, the sort of person who likes video games enough to write them, or books, or movies or what-have-you: the idea that ideas and Truth have such inherent power that they can change everything just by being revealed. If you are the sort of person who is in thrall to ideas this is bone-deep truth. But even the most rarefied of the intellectual class limits itself to hemming and hawing and acknowledging if this Truth negatively impacts their material conditi0ns. No, I do not know if I am talking about Elder Simon-the-character or the writers of FFT or the players of games; everybody in that feels culpable. Even within the context of the game that “truth” is going to come escorted at the barrel of a gun**.

But here I am reminded of why I have a fondness for this game:

“But Ajora was apparently more than just a religious founder. He was a saboteur who infiltrated enemy states to collect information and sow disorder. Ajora was a spy, dispatched to the Holy Ydoran Empire by a rival state. His teachings, the faith they inspired, and the influence he wielded were but contrivances to enact the downfall of the empire, orchestrated from within its borders by Ajora himself. Germonique wrote of him: “As the founder of a new religion with a rising number of followers, Ajora was seen as no more than a nuisance to the empire. But to the slaves and the destitute, who suffered most under imperial rule, the fair treatment and equal opportunities espoused by Ajora appeared as a ray of hope, and he as their savior.”

—Scriptures of Germonique, or: that powerful book of Truth Elder Simon was going on about

There is acknowledgement of the fact that it is by appealing to material conditions that one makes a movement. I haven’t much sympathy for an Empire-as-entity (i.e. not individual people in that empire against whom atrocities of opportunity are committed) that is undermined this way; I don’t give sympathy to the target because the intent of the opposing power was their own imperial gain, but I don’t respect that opposing power, either, other than on an strategic level. Is that opposing empire a “liberator”? Sure, to the people who materially benefit, but the opposing empire gets no moral accolade for acting on its own interests. Don’t run an empire on a fundamental inequality, then, if not because it is wrong in a moral sense, then only because it is strategically unsound on a century-scale. All you can hope for the people is that there is more net material justice in distribution of resources and ‘rights’ as a result–that the burden of the underclass of humanity is lightened, and not just shifted to another part of the underclass.

This sort of we’re-the-good-guys-actually justification is what I’m talking about:

Both of these things are be true:

1. Maduro was a dictator who stole elections, and the people of Venezuela would just as soon see him gone.
2. The United States materially benefits from “seeing Maduro gone” (which is really just a pretense for invasion). It is not doing this out of a desire to set things right, and may well make things materially worse for the people of Venezuela.

Venezuela has oil. North Korea does not. That’s it. That is all, total, and sum, what is motivating the US. Never look to the smokescreens and platitudes of empire. If this magically somehow ‘liberates’ people along the way, I am glad, truly, for those people. But I’ll never consider the US liberators or a force of ‘good’. If things go well for the people of Venezuela it is the whim of chance, the struggle of the people themselves–not the benevolence of the US–that is to thank.

I do not think things will go well.

I’m a Millennial American. My coming-of-political-awareness was defined by Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course I am biased toward pessimism. May time prove me wrong, and if and when it does, I will have no share of joy or pride to share with the American military.

*The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin — I firmly maintain performing awareness is a self-indulgent, attention-as-absolution-seeking activity, so it fits within the Odonian idea of “egoizing”.

**I have spent a great deal of time grinding my white mages to be able to carry guns–which, in an ironic way, is a skill of the orator class, or the class of battlefield persuasion.