Curiosity Or The Lack Thereof

From the collection of Shelley and his circle, The Enchanted Cat, 1811

I once held all the conventional liberal views, looked down on who I was supposed to look down on, and waited for improvement from the imperium. But curiosity was my undoing.

Conventionally, you are supposed to support diversity, equity, and inclusion within Empire, but I made the mistake of asking inclusion in what? If DEI means gay people dropping bombs, brown people lying about it, and Black people rapping at the Superbowl while the jets fly above, count me out. But you're not supposed to ask these questions, you're supposed to just clap for ‘representation’ in the reprehensible. Recently, I saw brown girls happy that a South Asian was in the Victoria's Secret fashion show, not knowing (or caring) that Jeffrey Epstein only really had one client, Les Wexner, the owner of Victoria's Secret. But hey, representation. Too many people who look like me are still eager to become colonisers, clambering up the imperial ladder, following the only rule of the biased world order: always be kicking down. I was on the ladder once, but I guess I made the mistake of looking down. Curiosity got the better of me, and now I'm conventionally toxic.

Convivially, I used to hate who I was supposed to hate, uttering all the pious platitudes about Democracy™, Human Rights©, and Freedom®, practising the same secular evangelism as the colonial days. A lot of people will claim to be opposed to Empire's evils, while still condemning Empire's enemies as more evil, thus making themselves completely loyal weasels. (The typical liberals in the "loyal opposition"-Ed). I used to be biased and downright disrespectful towards China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and anyone else who shared the ideology of independence, based simply on what White Empire told me about them. But then I made the mistake of taking Empire's condemnations as reading recommendations, and I began reading these people directly. I discovered that these were culturally rich, rational, civilizations who largely just wanted to be left alone. Everything I'd been told was wrong, and as the Empire began to openly commit genocide, the battle lines were drawn. And I knew which side I was on. Curiosity led me right where casual conviviality led me wrong.

Conversationally, I used to stay within the lines, that America should do better, not that America itself was wrong. This was the rational, serious position, that America did bad, but the American idea was good and just needed more appealing to. So I used to appeal to America's conscience, not knowing that it had none, as Kwame Ture told us already, if I'd been paying attention. It embarrasses me how late curiosity dawned on me, when people had been saying the obvious all along. But alas, I thought Rage Against The Machine was just songs. My later curiosity about the obvious evils America was committing led me to reread history, which I saw was full of omissions and outright falsehoods.

Convention, conviviality, conversation. Those were the three Cs of what was membership in the polite KKK. Kill them slowly and out of the way, then do a land acknowledgement over their graves. Once I saw the three Cs, I couldn't unsee them and became impolite company. But do we really owe politeness to those killing us softly? I now have more contempt for liberals than conservatives, because the latter at least kill us loudly and proudly.

What led me right was not education or any special intelligence but simple curiosity. Reading the people they condemn today, and reading the people they tried to write out of history. Looking beyond the news to peruse a book or two about the subject, and digging up statements from people never invited. I feel there was nothing special in this, though it took me years to overcome my education and what I thought was superior intelligence. It was just a propaganda and a superiority complex, revealed upon the slightest examination. But I still find this basic curiosity lacking within the Empire itself.

I was recently in Oxford, for example, and the conventional belief is still that Ukraine good, Russia bad. They are served in the canteen by Slavic women driven north by the conflict, while the military base nearby drives Slavic men to their deaths, but nobody sees the corruption and complicity in front of them. It's just the same old good vs. evil teledrama, which has been proven false over and over again, for centuries, but they still believe it. These people really don't see what's right in front of them and what's behind them is a palimpsest. Over and over again, all the places they claim to help, they corrupt, and all the people they claim to support just become their slaves to be DEI'd slowly and on White people's terms. This could be understood by reading anything about the wild corruption in and of Ukraine, or by listening to anything Vladimir Putin says, but the latter is demonised and the former are lionised and nobody looks any deeper than the obvious propaganda on the cover of The Economist. And these are supposedly the smartest people in the Empire. But they, in general, have little curiosity and both accept and perpetuate conventional wisdom, which is monstrous.

In the same way, the convivial position is to support the Palestinian people and condemn their Resistance movements. As the saying goes, those who are with our corpses and not our rockets are hypocrites and not of us. This is the position across the Empire, indeed, the only legally allowed one. Sympathy with Palestinians as victims, but condemnation if they ever defend themselves. It's a logically incoherent position which falls apart upon the slightest inspection, but few seem to do that. People condemn Hamas without reading anything from or about Hamas, and casually deride Islam without reading the Quran. Nor does anyone question why their government, which is committing genocide, is in any position to judge who is a terrorist or not. People just accept these blatant contradictions to be convivial, continue to look down on those deemed savages to feel superior, and fundamentally just wish for quiet colonialism which gives them the benefits but doesn't embarrass them. Curiosity runs no risk of killing these cats at all, they've got the cream and they're just sleeping through everything.

Conversationally, of course, all of these insights make me impolite company. I try to keep my mouth shut, but if I open it, I question things on such a fundamental level that it's awkward. The starting point of any conversation in or with the West is that the West is best, or at least improving, whereas the point we're at now is that Western Civilisation is irredeemable and needs exploding. We're literally in different worlds now, me and the people I grew up with. Barack Obama was the brief hope that what's wrong with America can be fixed by what's right with America, but when he turned into just another bomber, that hope was revealed as just more dope dealing. An opiate for the masses that too many liberals are still jonesing for.

I see the No Kings protests in America and think, that's not your problem. America would have been better with a king; those places (like Canada) abolished slavery earlier. The genocide and slavery coming out of their system now is because the system was built on genocide and slavery from the beginning! There is no redeeming American democracy; kings are not your problem. These people really don't see that their system was rotten rule by property owners from the beginning and that it hasn't gotten better with more DEI varnishing. They appeal back to some past to save them when that past was even more genocide and slavery and oppression. There's no there there. America cannot evolve, it simply needs to be disemboweled. The best thing these protestors could do is what's recommended for us in the Dirty South. Overthrow your governments and greet us as liberators.

So how did I get here? Unpledging allegiance to the flag I grew up pledging allegiance to? It wasn't great intelligence, nor great morality, but simply a deep sense of curiosity that led me to read beyond what I was told. To read books beyond the news, to try and understand condemned people's views, and to not be another rube in the Cable Colosseum, throwing thumbs up or thumbs down like I knew something, and like my views were important. People just believe whatever they're told about places they read no further about, hate whoever they're told to hate without hearing them out, and appeal to the conscience of an Empire that's entirely without. But if you interrogate any of the conventional, convivial, conversational claims you're surrounded by, you'll find they're all false. It doesn't take much. Just a little curiosity and, in my case, nearly a decade.