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When Donald Trump again warms the throne in Washington on Martin Luther King Day, each of the three evils that King worked to abolish will get a major boost: racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.

Racism

While Trumplickers post-election propose recruiting abroad certain highly educated potential immigrants (and defunding and further destroying U.S. education — including by writing racism — not to mention critical thinking — out of history books while shaping them in a fundamentally racist vision), they’re also pushing for a military campaign to seize and deport the wrong kind of immigrants and refugees, and threatening any cities that dare to protect their residents. While Democratic emperors eagerly fuel genocide, they don’t campaign for office on racism. So, there will be attention paid to this one. But consider the next two interlocking evils as well.

The story of the Israeli war on Gaza can be epitomized in the story of the Israeli war on Beit Lahia, a small Palestinian town in the northern part of the Strip.  

 When Israel launched its ground operations in Gaza, Beit Lahia was already largely destroyed due to many days of relentless Israeli bombardment which killed thousands. 

 Still, the border Gaza town resisted, leading to a hermetic Israeli siege, which was never lifted, even when the Israeli military redeployed out of much of northern Gaza in January 2024. 

 Beit Lahia is largely an isolated town, a short distance away from the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel. It is surrounded mostly by agricultural areas that make it nearly impossible to defend. 

 Yet, a year of grisly Israeli war and genocide in Gaza did not end the fighting there. To the contrary, 2024 has ended where it started, with intense fighting on all fronts in Gaza, with Beit Lahia, a town that was supposedly 'conquered' earlier, still leading the fight. 

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The first installment (“I’m just a consumer”) closed with two admonitions. One said we should value people instead of tossing them aside as “mere hands,” and the other is confident we can cast aside propaganda that justifies inequity by the age old trick of blaming the victim. This installment scrutinizes a couple of those victim-blaming urban legends that twist our outlook to see our colleagues as disposable implements.

Like that previous piece, this one springs from reflections on chapters 15 and 16 of Beyond Capital by István Mészáros. I encourage you to read them for yourself to make up your own mind.

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