hoping aaron bushnell's sacrifice won't be swept under the rug by politicians/media and forgotten about in another fucking week as the genocide on palestinians continues
Bushnell did not give up in despair. He made a deliberate choice, one calculated to maximize the impact of his protest, to give appropriate weight to the atrocities being perpetrated in his name as an American and as a servicemember. He explained his thinking, chose his last words, set up a dead man’s link to ensure his sacrifice would not be censored or lost. To deny this is to deny him his agency and his humanity in his very last act.
Letting the world move you is dangerous when your world is built like Omelas, perched on top of intentional suffering. Compassion for the world, for nature, for others, and for yourself means that you disturb the balance. Your weighty self shifts things as you step in to help others, making it easier for people to see behind the curtain. Once you learn about the suffering at the core of the world—and I mean really learn, have it lodged in your soul so deeply that every time your heart beats it hurts—you have only one choice to make: abandon the system and the cruelty that makes your world run, or choose it.
This is the choice Bushnell has asked us to make. Do we finally acknowledge that this system is untenable? Or do we close our eyes to the agony it creates?
Those mocking or denying Bushnell’s self-immolation have already allowed their fear to consume them. In attempting to shred his reputation and cast aspersions on his motives, they reveal that they are unable to recognize the best parts of ourselves—courage, honor, self-sacrifice, and compassion. It is impossible for them. To acknowledge the conviction and agony of this person is to realize that their own lives are a lie, built on pain and empty of meaning.
More than that, you’ve got to actually spend your time doing this stuff on the off chance that the algorithm picks it up and people care about what you have to say. You’ve got to spend your time doing this even though it’s corny and cringe and your friends from high school or college will probably laugh as you “try to become an influencer.” You’ve got to do it even when you feel like you have absolutely nothing to say, because the algorithm demands you post anyway. You have to do it even if you’re from a culture where doing any self-promotion is looked upon as inherently negative, or if you’re a woman for whom bragging carries an even greater social stigma than it already does. You’ve got to do it even though the coolest thing you can do is not have to.
You’ve got to offer your content to the hellish, overstuffed, harassment-laden, uber-competitive attention economy because otherwise no one will know who you are. In a recent interview with the Guardian, the author Naomi Klein said the biggest change in the world since No Logo, her 1999 book on consumerism and inescapable branding, came out was that “neoliberalism has created so much precarity that the commodification of the self is now seen as the only route to any kind of economic security. Plus social media has given us the tools to market ourselves nonstop.”
Oh hell yes. An article that supports my half-joke that a corporate app's demand for constant self-promo is technically classist.