We Are The Only Real Humans

You’re not supposed to admit this, but we’re all friends here, so let’s start by acknowledging that we, in the West, are the only real humans.

We who split the atom and travelled to the moon, we who invented the computer and trained it to replace us, we who are richer and freer and “higher IQ” than anybody in the history of the world.

We weren’t just born in lands of opportunity by sheer dumb luck. We aren’t standing on the shoulders (and the backs) of slaves and revolutionaries and hardworking strangers. No, you and I deserve personal credit for all the wonderful things the West has produced.

But not, to be clear, for any of the bad things.

We aren’t responsible for the suffering and inequality caused by colonialism, or the turmoil caused by arbitrarily drawing borders in the Global South.

We shouldn’t be criticised for imposing global sanctions that are responsible for tens of millions of deaths over the past 50 years.

We bear no responsibility for supporting Saddam Hussein’s 1980 invasion of Iran (which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iranians), or overthrowing the democratically elected Iranian government in 1953 so we could control Iran’s oil (which led to the current autocratic regime), and we certainly don’t deserve criticism for unconditionally supporting the only real humans in the Middle East as they slaughter tens of thousands of “human animals” in Gaza and force hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians from their homes in Southern Lebanon.

If some of the little people suffer as a result of those actions, they have nobody to blame but themselves.

Because only we, the real humans, are entitled to control over our resources and elections. Only we have the right to seek justice when invaders destroy our countries and kill our children.

Only we, the only humans in history to use a nuclear weapon (in partnership with the only humans to have nuclear weapons but lie about it), can be trusted to have nuclear weapons.

So if we get a “feeling” that one of the shithole countries is developing them, even if we’ve spent the past nine months insisting that we “obliterated” their nuclear facilities, even if Benjamin Netanyahu admits he’s been “yearning” to find a president dumb enough to join him in a war with Iran, and even if Netanyahu has spent the past thirty-four years wolf-crying that Iran is “three-to-five years away” from building a nuclear bomb, we’ll rain down “death and destruction from the sky.”

And if those “crazy bastards” respond, if they try to hold us accountable or fight back or, heaven forbid, emigrate to our countries to escape the chaos we’ve created in theirs, well, I guess their “whole civilisation will die.”

Because what else are we supposed to do?

Are we supposed to listen to the International Atomic Energy Agency and our own Director of National Intelligence when they tell us that Iran isn’t building a nuclear weapon? Are we supposed to rejoin the JCPOA deal that successfully restricted Iran’s nuclear program until Trump pulled out of it? Are we at least supposed to treat war with the dignity and restraint it deserves instead of tweeting memes and genocidal threats from the highest office in the world?

Don’t be ridiculous.

Real humans get to start wars without an exit strategy or an entry strategy, or anything except the blind, arrogant confidence that our enemies will surrender to us.

Real humans get to boast about “punching the enemy when they’re down,” and pray for “overwhelming violence,” and invoke genocidal tales from our holy books, and nobody will mistake us for religious extremists.

Real humans get to blow up entire villages and use chemical weapons against civilians and launch missile strikes on schools filled with little girls, and nobody will even think of calling us terrorists.

Because without us, who is going to reopen the strait that only closed when we attacked? Who will bomb the Iranian people to save them from persecution? Who will defeat the extremist Iranian regime by giving them an even more extreme leader?

Sometimes the good guys have to step up and make the world a better place.

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We’re encouraged, in the West, to engage in a kind of narcissistic ignorance.

To assume, without ever bothering to put ourselves in their place or skim the occasional history book, that our enemies hate us for no reason.

To consider the lives of the “lesser humans,” only insofar as they affect gas prices or the levels of immigration we have to endure.

To dismiss anyone who attempts genuine introspection or empathy or moral consistency as a traitor or a terrorist sympathiser or some other intellectually lazy bullsh*t.

Yes, there are bad people in the world. Yes, wars—and the dead innocents that come with them—are sometimes unavoidable. But they’re not supposed to be fought based on lies and greed and the fact that our “ally” thinks it can murder its way to safety.

In the immortal words of Rick Steves, “Sometimes you have to kill people. But it should hurt.”

But killing doesn’t hurt people like Trump and Netanyahu.

Because they, who have accumulated billions of dollars through corruption and lies and ripping off the little people, they who grab women by the pussy and share “wonderful secrets” on Epstein’s island, they who claim they have a God-given right to steal other people’s land and murder their families, believe they are the only real humans.

And when the people who suffer as a result of their actions come here looking for revenge, they’ll find nobody to blame but us.

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