Comments Elsewhere

I sincerely want to learn about as many major government atrocities as I can. I don’t want to miss anything big. And I am always looking to learn about more. Yet I find that someone’s tendency to actually teach me something I haven’t already learned is almost inversely proportional to how presumptuous and rude they are when describing it to me.

And so, in response to my writing about the Nazis, when someone says, “You never condemned Stalin for the Holodomor!” it turns out they’re wrong.

Or, when I’m describing international communism as perhaps the most destructive evil of the 20th century, someone will actually say, “You don’t know anything about Leopold!” Which is presumptuous and false. He murdered millions, brutally. I know.

Or they might say: “But the US carpet bombed Vietnam and Cambodia!” Yes. I’ve written more about those atrocities than most people who aren’t specialists on the topic. And when I did, I found out from a critic that I never read anything about Pol Pot’s Killing Fields. But of course I have. And I agree that everyone should.

Or, in response to my writing about the bombing of Hirsohima and Nagasaki, someone says, “You forgot about the Rape of Nanking.” It turns out I never forgot about it. But when I do talk about it, I notice some people think that Japan’s atrocities aren’t worth discussing at all—because the U.S. was imperialist too.

In response to my condemnation of Obama’s drone bombing, someone will often say, “You never complained about Bush’s lying about WMD in Iraq!” But it turns out, actually, I wrote dozens of articles touching on the topic. And back when I did so, people protested that I never called out Clinton for Waco, which of course I did—many times. And when I attacked Clinton for Waco, sometimes liberals would push back, and say how come I’m such a rightwinger, how come I never wrote about the Philadelphia police bombing the MOVE house in 1985. Actually, I’ve written about that too.

Scrutinizing American foreign policy in general leaves me open to the criticism that I know or care nothing about Russia’s human rights abuses, or the backwards totalitarianism of many Islamist regimes. And yet if I talk about those, all of a sudden I’m turning a blind eye to U.S. atrocities in the war on terror!!

And I can’t help but be conscripted into the Civil War! If I criticize chattel slavery and the Confederacy, I get attacked for not writing at that very moment about Lincoln’s rape of Atlanta. If I condemn Sherman’s March to the Sea, it must be because I didn’t know the Confederacy invaded Pennsylvania and smashed civil liberties.

Don’t let me get started on the American Revolution!

If I bash the Catholic Church for the Crusades, it must be because I know nothing about violence by secular regimes. But if I write about that, it turns out I must not know about the Thirty Years War.

So I repeat: I have every interest in knowing, in some reasonable detail and with as accurate as possible an understanding, about all the horrible things so many governments have ever done to people. Some would say it’s been an unhealthy interest of mine for too long. There is so much to know, and it’s an unpleasant and yet important, bottomless topic. And I welcome anyone with even more reasons for me to hate humanity’s capacity to be downright inhumane. But if my experience is informative, the more aggressive you come at me, the more likely you are to tell me that 9/11 was a horrible event, or that the British bombed German civilians or that Germany bombed British civilians, or that Mao starved millions or that the US government’s wars have been based on lies.

I know, I know, I know. There is not enough time on earth to learn about all the atrocities. Please, share what you know. But don’t accost me for not writing about every single atrocity in every sentence I write, due to my alleged ignorance or dishonesty.