A Million Yard Signs for Floyd, Flags at Half-Mast for Feinstein, but for Bushnell...
We honored the lives of George Floyd and Diane Feinstein, though neither deserved it. The world honors Aaron Bushnell for his noble sacrifice, while his own people are too base to comprehend it.
A felt urgency to write this post got me out of bed before dawn this morning and, just now, when I stepped outside to feed my dog, squirming with joy at the appearance of this unusually early breakfast, I was struck by a strong breeze. “Struck” isn’t the right word. “Caressed” is better.
The American flag flapping at full mast in front of a business down the street tells me the breeze is southerly and the temperature that flashes electronically on a sign next to that business reads 61°F (16°C). Here, just down the road from the geographic center of the United States,1 61 degrees at five o’clock in the morning on a March 4th, is as unexpected, but as welcome, as the predawn breakfast was for my dog, already, by the way, back to snoring contentedly on the rug at my feet.
The humidity outside, according to my phone, is 88 percent, so the warm southerly breeze is wet and carries a scent. It smells like spices and spring and carries, perhaps, traces of the oceans and tropical islands and distant places it has passed through on its way here and through which, eventually, it will pass again. It’s an optimistic scent—clean and guiltless. The stench arising from the rotting corpses of the tens of thousands of little kids we’ve burned or buried alive in Gaza over the past few months is undetectable on the Kansas breeze. Luckily for us, Gaza is 6,666 miles from Council Grove, Kansas and while the stench of John Hagee’s Christianity does sometimes reach us from San Antonio on a strong SSW breeze, the stench from the slaughter in Gaza that his Christianity enables—even encourages—never does. In Council Grove, it is easy to ignore the crimes we commit for the Jews.
Except, Aaron Bushnell happened. He brought the stench of burning human flesh to the very center of his homeland—not the geographical center, where I am, but the political center—the Israeli embassy in our capital city. When he self-immolated eight days ago, he forced us to smell our handiwork. He sacrificed his own life to make us look and that has enraged a lot of us.
That rage is a deep betrayal of Aaron Bushnell—just how deep a betrayal becomes clear when you consider the assumption implicit in Aaron Bushnell’s sacrifice.
Many of us like to wonder what we would do, Aaron began the message—his last, ever—in which he explained himself to his people, if our country were committing genocide. Then he points out the enraging answer. You are already doing it. Right now. Take a good whiff, America, of that stench.
The fact that he was willing to die in such agony to make us ask ourselves that question—a question to which there is only one answer—means Aaron Bushnell assumed we would be unable, in the face of his sacrifice, to remain complicit in the crimes of the Jews and their Christian Zionist dupes.
In other words, the assumption implicit in Aaron Bushnell’s sacrifice is the assumption that his people are decent and good. That once we understood, we would do something about it.
Granted, many of us are not decent and good. John Hagee, for example, who said calling for a ceasefire in Gaza was doing the work of the Anti-Christ, is not even sane, let alone decent and good. And Senator Tom Cotton, who characterized Aaron Bushnell as mentally ill and wrote a letter to the Pentagon demanding to know how someone (hopefully you are sitting down for this) with Bushnell’s anti-American views ever got into the US military, is not only not decent and good, he should, in fact, be executed for treason.2
But what about the rest of us?
has offered a brilliant and thoughtful scenario for how Aaron Bushnell’s sacrifice could redeem us:Regrettably, Barrett’s article sparked a stream of cynicism and tautology from commenters at Unz: It’ll never work Kevin, because the situation is hopeless. In other words, it’s hopeless, Kevin, because it’s hopeless.
OK, doomer. Here’s what you need to understand about political success and failure. In a cause like ours, no effort is ever a failure. Unless you believe the natural course of every political achievement is always a series of perfect decisions leading to invariable success, you understand that in all great political causes there will be efforts that fail, proposals that don’t work, and setbacks on the path to success.
In other words, failure is a part of success. Anyone who makes an argument against a proposed political effort, without offering an alternative, on the sole ground that the effort may fail is an enemy of political victory—i.e., he is a political enemy.
Barrett’s thought experiment, his “what if,” takes that first necessary step toward regime change by asking, intelligently, how could regime change work? He came up with the most reasonable scenario I can remember ever coming across.
I think Barrett knows, as many of us do, that we aren’t going to vote our way out of our subjugation. His scenario imagines how we could achieve emancipation from the Talmudic cabal through a top-down, non-democratic effort. Good on him.
Below, I offer an idea for a complementary bottom-up effort,3 —a symbiotic grassroots efforts.
Hopefully, the power of Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation has sparked grassroots efforts all over this country. Maybe a college student somewhere has started an anti-genocide club. Maybe a six-hour daily podcast exposing the lies of the New York Times has begun airing. Maybe important, informed conversations have begun in corporate lunchrooms around the country. Maybe young Jews are demanding old Jews stop sending money to the ADL, SPLC, and AIPAC. Maybe lynching parties have already started hunting Tom Cotton and John Hagee. Who knows, but every effort, whether it has any lasting impact or not, is a success because it is an effort. Period.
So here’s my effort.
I’m going to order 12x12 yard signs that look like this, front and back:
I can get 100 signs with wire stands for $293.40 delivered by the end of next week. I’m trusting that enough people will upgrade their subscriptions to “paid” to cover the $293.40. Otherwise, I’ll have to sell my dog to the Chinese take-out downtown to cover the cost.
We’ll give the signs out for free. If you want a free yard sign publicly thanking Aaron Bushnell for his sacrifice for our people, send your mailing address to cnelsen@craignelsen.us and I’ll send you one. Or wait until this evening. I’m going to put up a secure order form to process mailing addresses on my personal website. I’ll post the link in the comments below this article when I get it all set up.
There. The effort has been made. That means Aaron Bushnell’s divine sacrifice has already resulted in, now, two success. Kevin Barrett’s effort and this one. And do you see how it’s like when two people are in a committed, loving marriage and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts? The complementary nature of the two efforts makes each more powerful than they would be alone. That’s why the doomers are just wrong on top of being annoying.
We cannot betray Aaron Bushnell’s faith in us that we are good enough and decent enough that we would honor his sacrifice by doing something to end our complicity in Israel’s savage genocide of innocent children (did you see where we mowed down starving Palestinians trying to reach aid trucks yesterday?)
Just imagine if Thank You Aaron Bushnell signs start popping up here and there and all over the place as this summer wears on. They are distinctive and would quickly become noticeable as a movement. Imagine social media taking notice, people discussing, asking questions, learning, and the campaign to thank Aaron Bushnell for his sacrifice goes viral, especially among Aaron’s age cohort. Avatars, stickers, someone writes a hit song, who knows? But if Kevin Barrett’s top-down idea has found fertile ground somewhere, imagine how much impetus the Odysseus Unsheathed grass roots campaign would give it.
The Lower 48, that is.
If you are a staffer for Senator Cotton, or an intern in his office, and haven’t resigned by now, you have no soul.
Much as I might sympathize with the sentiment, a plan to hole up in a local dive and stay drunk until everything works itself out does not count as a valid bottoms-up effort.
The screen shot from the Times of Gaza brought tears to my eyes. I am sure every last Palestinian knows Aaron's name by now - despite the communications embargo they are under. You can't keep the news of things changing down.
Save your dog, friend.