What Everyone Seems To Be Getting Wrong about Aaron Bushnell

There was a consistent response that visitors to Russia, during the chaotic time leading up to and through the Bolshevik Revolution, had when asked upon their return, “How are things in Russia?”

“There is much confusion among the people” was the standard reply.

If you’ve been reading this stack for any length of time, you’ll know that we here think the West is lurching down the same tragic and deadly path the Russians trod in 1917.

The Red Terror - Chapter One: Hostages (Official 1925 Translation)

So we recognize that, yes, there is much confusion among our people. And, if we recognize that, we can view the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell in front of the Israeli embassy at the end of last week with the charity the young man deserves. And, with charity, as well, given all the confusion among our people, we can respond to the tsunami of stupid bullshit commentary our people have spewed online regarding his shocking act.

Take a deep breath, Craig. Ohmmmmmmmmmm……

First, what happened?

A 25-year-old,¹ active-duty, US soldier named Aaron Bushnell, in protest against the role his country is playing in the ongoing slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza, doused himself with gasoline or some similar liquid and lit a match, thus killing himself in possibly the most gruesome and painful way possible.

He explained himself to his people with the following:

Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.

It isn’t possible to write a more lucid statement.

Aaron Bushnell reaches out his hand to save his people, drowning in a sea of lies.

The clarity of that statement is undeniable. Like a brilliant shaft of sunlight piercing through the dirty swarm of lies and corruption and treason that blankets this dark, collapsing failure called the United States, Aaron Bushnell asks each and every one of his people: What would you do if your country were committing unspeakable evil?

Yes, what? What would you do?

Don’t bother answering, bro. Aaron has answered for you with truth so pure it is still ringing around the world—ringing with the unfathomable act of selfless bravery that made damn sure you heard the answer: you, American, you are doing it. Right now.

And, truly, sheep doth hate the truth. The indignant bleating arises on all sides: a man burning to death on the sidewalk has disturbed our complacency—has forced us to face our complicity. Ba-a-a-a-d A-a-a-a-ron!

So, let me defend Aaron.

But, first, a short message for our Jews. If you are a Jew who has ever uttered the phrase, “Israel has the right to defend itself” in justification of Israeli blood lust, you need to stfu about Aaron Bushnell. He is one of ours, not yours. He committed his act of heroism in front of the Israeli embassy not as a message to you, but as an accusation against you—to emphasize your alien apartness. You are, every one of you, by choosing Israel over your native land (not to mention, humanity), the Israeli agent who held his gun on our burning hero in his death agonies. So go find a corner somewhere to sit down and be quiet in before you make us angry. You aren’t a part of this conversation.

Visible some years ago from I-80 in Bedford, Pennsylvania, which seemed otherwise to be a cool little town. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America,, “Religious insanity is frequently to be met with in the United States.”

And if you are a gentile fan of John Hagee and think that calling for a ceasefire in Gaza is “doing the work of the Anti-Christ,” you, too, need to sit down, shut your mouth, open your mind, and let the enormity of your son’s sacrifice last Sunday penetrate that thick, Old-Testament-polluted head of yours. (I’m being as charitable as possible under the circumstances.)

Now, to those of you who have characterized Aaron Bushnell’s breath-taking sacrifice as “suicide,” really? Suicide? Aaron was just one of the 92 white men who killed themselves in the United States last Sunday? Nothing else to distinguish his death except the “selfishness” (as it was described at

Disaffected Newsletter

) of its extravagance? Josh, please reread Aaron’s message explaining himself above and then give Aaron the respect he deserves.

Then there are those like

jjinUK64

, who dismisses Bushnell as sick in the head, writing, “Valorising, ‘affirming’ and promoting mental illness has profound and terrible consequences, and we should not be doing it.”

No, guy, if you want to see mental illness, try looking among a citizenry that, momentarily alarmed by the daily slaughter of innocent children in which they are complicit, are easily soothed into docile compliance by the outrageous lies of the New York Times. That self-deception (adopted for the vilest of reasons—personal comfort), that willing participation in the pretend world of the lies our enemies tell us, that dumb acquiescence in genocide, is manifestly mental illness. If you are incapable of seeing it, you, yourself, are mentally ill. And if you are unwilling to see it, you are blinded by cowardice—a kind of mental illness from which Aaron Bushnell undeniably did not suffer.

Recently,

Linh Dinh

posted an interesting interview he gave to a fifteen-year-old American in which he, Linh, makes the argument that one should judge a poem by its content. If a poem is worthy, it is worthy, regardless whether the poet is a Christian/Nazi/Jew/Antisemite/Republican/Communist/Sheep/Aquarian/Felon/Rotarian/Negro/Martian/Oriental. This is, of course, just true. But, oh the condemnation of Aaron Bushnell raining down because he included his pronouns in his message.

Sheep 1: Sa-a-a-y, did you hear about the member of the flock who self-immolated to protest the genocide we are condoning in Gaza?

Sheep 2: Yea-a-a-a-h.

Sheep 1: He left a messa-a-a-ge. “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.” Ma-a-a-a-kes you think, huh?

Sheep 2: He included his pronouns.

Sheep 1: Oh, fuck, thank God. Let’s go back to gra-a-a-zing.

As it turns out, on the day the news broke of the young airman’s heroic sacrifice in protest of his country’s participation in the genocide of God’s children, I was on the last pages of The Brothers Karamozov by the 19th Century Russian novelist, Fyodor Doestoevsky. They struck me as somehow particularly poignant at that moment, though perhaps I was just carried away by an old man’s sentimentality. Nevertheless, I am including the ending here in its entirety. Read it, or not, but whatever you do, make it a point some time today to thank publicly our brother, Aaron Bushnell.

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“There’s Ilusha’s stone, under which they wanted to bury him.”

They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole picture of what Snegiryov had described to him that day, how Ilusha, weeping and hugging his father, had cried, “Father, father, how he insulted you,” rose at once before his imagination.

A sudden impulse seemed to come into his soul. With a serious and earnest expression he looked from one to another of the bright, pleasant faces of Ilusha’s schoolfellows, and suddenly said to them:

“Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place.”

The boys stood round him and at once bent attentive and expectant eyes upon him.

“Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death’s door. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long time, so we shall part. Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha’s stone, that we will never forget Ilusha and one another. And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don’t meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kindhearted, brave boy, he felt for his father’s honor and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first place, we will remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occupied with most important things, if we attain to honor or fall into great misfortune⁠—still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are. My little doves⁠—let me call you so, for you are very like them, those pretty blue birds, at this minute as I look at your good dear faces. My dear children, perhaps you won’t understand what I am saying to you, because I often speak very unintelligibly, but you’ll remember it all the same and will agree with my words some time. You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. Perhaps we may even grow wicked later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at men’s tears and at those people who say as Kolya did just now, ‘I want to suffer for all men,’ and may even jeer spitefully at such people. But however bad we may become⁠—which God forbid⁠—yet, when we recall how we buried Ilusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends all together, at this stone, the cruelest and most mocking of us⁠—if we do become so⁠—will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good at this moment! What’s more, perhaps, that one memory may keep him from great evil and he will reflect and say, ‘Yes, I was good and brave and honest then!’ Let him laugh to himself, that’s no matter, a man often laughs at what’s good and kind. That’s only from thoughtlessness. But I assure you, boys, that as he laughs he will say at once in his heart, ‘No, I do wrong to laugh, for that’s not a thing to laugh at.’ ”

“That will be so, I understand you, Karamazov!” cried Kolya, with flashing eyes.

The boys were excited and they, too, wanted to say something, but they restrained themselves, looking with intentness and emotion at the speaker.

“I say this in case we become bad,” Alyosha went on, “but there’s no reason why we should become bad, is there, boys? Let us be, first and above all, kind, then honest and then let us never forget each other! I say that again. I give you my word for my part that I’ll never forget one of you. Every face looking at me now I shall remember even for thirty years. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that we did not care to know whether he exists or not. But I cannot forget that Kartashov exists and that he is not blushing now as he did when he discovered the founders of Troy, but is looking at me with his jolly, kind, dear little eyes. Boys, my dear boys, let us all be generous and brave like Ilusha, clever, brave and generous like Kolya (though he will be ever so much cleverer when he is grown up), and let us all be as modest, as clever and sweet as Kartashov. But why am I talking about those two? You are all dear to me, boys, from this day forth, I have a place in my heart for you all, and I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me! Well, and who has united us in this kind, good feeling which we shall remember and intend to remember all our lives? Who, if not Ilusha, the good boy, the dear boy, precious to us forever! Let us never forget him. May his memory live forever in our hearts from this time forth!”

“Yes, yes, forever, forever!” the boys cried in their ringing voices, with softened faces.

“Let us remember his face and his clothes and his poor little boots, his coffin and his unhappy, sinful father, and how boldly he stood up for him alone against the whole school.”

“We will remember, we will remember,” cried the boys. “He was brave, he was good!”

“Ah, how I loved him!” exclaimed Kolya.

“Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don’t be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just!”

“Yes, yes,” the boys repeated enthusiastically.

“Karamazov, we love you!” a voice, probably Kartashov’s, cried impulsively.

“We love you, we love you!” they all caught it up. There were tears in the eyes of many of them.

“Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya shouted ecstatically.

“And may the dead boy’s memory live forever!” Alyosha added again with feeling.

“For ever!” the boys chimed in again.

“Karamazov,” cried Kolya, “can it be true what’s taught us in religion, that we shall all rise again from the dead and shall live and see each other again, all, Ilusha too?”

“Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!” Alyosha answered, half laughing, half enthusiastic.

“Ah, how splendid it will be!” broke from Kolya.

“Well, now we will finish talking and go to his funeral dinner. Don’t be put out at our eating pancakes⁠—it’s a very old custom and there’s something nice in that!” laughed Alyosha. “Well, let us go! And now we go hand in hand.”

“And always so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya cried once more rapturously, and once more the boys took up his exclamation: “Hurrah for Karamazov!”

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And, thank you, Aaron Bushnell.

Aaron Bushnell attempts to save his people.

1. At first, I thought Aaron was 24, but, now they are saying he was 25. Either way, he was a youth. How were you, boomer, when you were that age? When I was 25, I had convictions. At that age, I made Atlas Shrugged look like the nanny state and had only recently retired my beat-up leather jacket with the @ symbol (uppercase A) scrawled on it. I was a full-blown anarchist and would argue with you about it no matter how loud the music was. And I mean argue with you. Angrily. But that was many, many intellectual miles ago, so fuck off, nazi punk. The kid, Bushnell, was a baby.