The ethical nexus between foreign and domestic wars
Or, Plans For The Next Two And A Half Months
Sooner or later, the question in any cause that you electively pick up ends up being, what exactly is this all headed towards? Where does this cash out into daily life for me, for anyone?
Consider the Ukraine war: it’s a place I’ve never been to, with people who speak a language I don’t understand, embroiled in a conflict between two countries both of whom I owe zero allegiance to.
It is also unquestionably a genocidal, elective war of aggression, it has resulted in a truly astonishing level of brutality and criminality, and its geopolitical consequences play out subtly, but directly, into our daily lives as Americans, and more directly into the lives of people around the world.
As I parse it out, I have limited obligations to my country, the United States, relative to that conflict; they mostly have to do with the geopolitical consequences of the conflict and just conduct of citizenship.
It would be “bad” by most people’s lights, for instance, to take the aggressor’s side in this conflict, to undermine the rule of law with regard to humanitarian and just-conduct-of-war obligations, or to further degrade the public discursive commons by spreading disinformation, or to engage in criminal activities against or with people in the region.
It would be somewhat “good” (or at least that’s the feedback that I get) to engage directly with the “sinews of war” that fund Russia’s military machine; increasingly, I think of it not as theft that funds war, but theft as war.
It would be better, and unquestionably good, to actually get outcomes from things, to point at a sanctions designation like my boy Bedunkevich and say “hey I had a part in that”.
So far so good.
It starts to get complicated, necessarily so in some places and unnecessarily in others, when you ask “when is it enough?” and “what else should I be working on?” And, more importantly, whatever way the war ends up, what difference is that going to make to me, and what I’ve chosen to become and work on?
It’s an odd position to be in, essentially being a community-subsidized activist; I’ve had some time to sort it out being on somewhat of a hiatus for the past few weeks.
How well I do is much more a function of how much noise I make than how much work I do, or how right I am about anything. So it’s a balance between self-promotion, obligation, and freedom of choice.
Self-promotion is a basic trap, I think; it gets you to a place where you start thinking about your ego and your appearance as commodities, which is a violation of separation in concerns in business as much as it is emotionally unhealthy. Both are necessary, but word is more privileged than deed in some spaces.
Self-promotion balances with obligation. I’d like to think, at least, that when people donate $5, $10, $25 a month on Patreon or on Substack, that they get some tangible feedback in terms of things I’ve done, not so much what I’ve said that they agree with or how I look; it’s not like I’m a thirst-trap model over here anyway.
In a state of absolute freedom of choice in causes to pursue and “bad guys” to go after, the causes I choose have direct interplay with how much in donations I receive, which is also an uneasy form of feedback I don’t have complete faith in - I don’t trust monetary feedback 100%, no more than I trust popular opinion 100%.
It gets more and more complicated when I factor in the interplay between Republicans’ stated intentions on Ukraine policy and what they might actually end up doing if they win the House; and how I weigh that against very serious domestic political concerns, like incipient fascism (AGAIN) this time leveraging widespread, Fox-News-legitimized transphobia and hatred of the other. And how much difference, exactly, I think I could make in any of that.
I think it’s good to get back to basics when things get complicated like this; you make a decision on as simplified a set of factors as you can derive, and then “hack” it knowing that you might be fuzzy on some of the reasons why, but you’re pretty sure it’s the right thing. The question of “what should I do relative to domestic and foreign non-linear conflicts encompassing politics, crime, disinformation and activism” can be hacked in this way to a much simpler one, which is, what is the right thing for me to do in times like these?
To me, it goes back to positionality; I’ve spoken of this. In situations with substantial ambiguity as to whether or not you are being manipulated and your reactions played to someone else’s benefit, the most advantageous thing to do is to reposition to obviate this form of attack and gain better vantage onto ongoing and potential future attacks.
Like, if you get elbowed really hard in a mosh pit and you’re not sure if it’s someone trying to pick a fight with you, or someone trying to get you to freak out and discredit yourself, or just an accident, the smart thing to do is not to go punch everyone in the mosh pit, nor is it to systematically go and question everyone in the mosh pit as to whether they hit you or not. The smart thing to do is to get out of the mosh pit.

The question is really, in my reckoning, where’s the right place for me to reposition right now, and how do I get there, and what do I have to get there with?
I have a few thoughts, not particularly serious ones, about trading the OSINT packages I’ve developed for access to a political campaign or another; I wouldn’t mind, say, being a sanctions policy advisor for a Democratic campaign somewhere, mainly because it would provide me access to make a difference. It’s too indirect a trade of data for outcomes for my taste in general, though.
The more basic thought I have is, go back to the grassroots. This process was interrupted slightly when I got banned from Facebook (thanks for that) but it still works.
I know how to go viral around an election. I know how to run an atelier community that turns raw memes and feedback into finished, polished graphical products that give people something and motivates them. It’s a fairly simple numbers game of “throw fifty things at the all and one sticks”; that ratio drops much, much lower when you find professionals to volunteer to give you feedback and you run a workflow process with some level of output quotas and accountability. And I have much, much better assets for investigating candidates than I used to.
There’s still wrap-up and presentation and awareness-raising to do around war work; I’m still not happy with how well-explained my pension system designation is, and I don’t think I’ve done a good job making the argument for sanctions as leverage in negotiations; indeed, I don’t think sanctions as a form of non-linear warfare is being explained adequately anywhere, and that’s to our detriment as a society. But these are very general questions that I can outsource the answers to, or that other people know (much, much) better than me; this is arguably my lawyers’ job more than mine.
I say, let’s get back to basics and get into the meme war game. I can’t outsource that, not while getting it done at the same level of quality and commitment that I’d apply to it.
Wherever I stand on November 9th, it’s going to be a better place for me if I can say that I didn’t stand by while a political inculcation machine ran rampant on my fellow citizens and got them to vote for utter folly masked as a legitimate political party.
It’s going to make a lot more sense when I can say that I didn’t ignore fascism in my own country before investigating and hunting it overseas.