Why I'm Still (Kind of) Rooting for China in the New Cold War

 Surfing through the news, it seems like every other motherfucker and his brother is flipping their proverbial wig over the supposedly literal threat China poses to the future of western civilization. Over on the center-right of what passes for the left in this country, we have our very own dear leader, Old Man Biden, hitting every summit from Geneva to the Country Kitchen Buffet, talking up his great power competition between the autocrats and the autocrats who pretend to be democracies and owe us money. Flip the channel farther to the right and you have neocon hose-bags foaming at the mouth because Biden isn't throwing enough battleships into somebody else's fucking ocean. Even America First true believers like Tucker Carlson have forfeited their trendy isolationist pose to call for total war against those sneaky batfuckers in the Chinese Communist Party. They're all so damn pissed off at each other that sometimes you can lose site of the fact that they're all scared shitless of the same evil empire and this time it's not an act.

There is a very twisted part of me that views this partisan circus with sick glee and shouts from the gallows, "Good! It's about fucking time you capitalist motherfuckers got shoved in your place by a boogeyman strong enough push back hard!" You see dearest motherfuckers, before Snarling Nicky embraced the evils of the free market and became the genderfuck anarchist muckraker you know and love to hate, I was a pissed off agoraphobic tankie, cutting pictures of Putin into hearts from the safety of my closet. By my early twenties, I had become so furious watching American regime after American regime mow down Third World countries like dandelions that I was willing to embrace any motherfucker who could actually put up a fight. I cheered and roared with laughter watching Russia punk out my imperial homeland from Georgia to Crimea. I welcomed the meteoric rise of BRICS and Eurasia with open arms. As far as I was concerned, anything was better than another genocidal American Century, and sometimes I'm still tempted to feel this way.

I now do my damnedest to resist such petty urges because I realize now how fucking stupid I had been. I had bought into the same shallow neocon comic book view of the globe. I just decided to root for the villains instead of the superheroes, but they're all fucking villains. Vladimir Putin isn't the second coming of Vladimir Lenin. He's just another neoliberal oligarch who just happens to be a little craftier on strategy than his drunken predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. And China isn't some shining beacon of hope in a dim world. In spite of their commie pose, they're just another gutter capitalist empire looking to make a buck off the back of the nearest prole within whipping distance. Yet even with this sobering foresight, I still can't help but to root for a Chinese victory in our new cold war. Only my reasons now are far more Machiavellian than Sputnik leftist.  

 A lot has been made of the fact that a number of prestigious think tanks have ran simulations showing China beating America in a head to head conflict. In spite of the fact that most of these studies have been heavily funded by arms corporations peddling new missile systems, I tend to believe them. China has the manpower, drunk on nationalism, and America has never won a ground war in Asia without their help. China also has a robust and growing economy that has many debt strapped time honored American institutions wrapped around its little dragon claw. But there is a catch here and it's a big one. 

While China has more men and boats, they're almost all localized along it's own shores and borders. America has a multinational military apparatus that spans the globe. China has 3 nuclear subs, we have 71. China has 2 active aircraft carriers, we have 11. China has somewhere around 90 ICBM's, we have over 400. China is believed to have about 400 nukes, we have about 4,530. America has nearly 800 bases in more than 70 countries, while China has just one in the African parking lot of Djibouti. America's defense budget more than doubles China's. And while I believe that it is precisely this kind Freudian firepower superiority mentality that has fucked America in backwaters like Vietnam and caused us to go all but broke, it's also what makes us too big to fail. A curse China doesn't share.  

To put it simply, China is just big enough to beat the American Empire without being big enough to replace the American Empire. Even China's touted Belt and Road Project is largely dependent on other world powers like India and the European Union to operate. A hypothetical Eurasian Century really would be multipolar by necessity rather than ideology. All of this would put decentralized stateless movements like mine at a great advantage. A post-American Century would be full of more imperial blind spots than China would know what to do with. Anarchists would be granted a window of decades, if not longer, to dismantle Chinese power before it could reach the current capabilities of the American Empire. Mind you, all of this is very much dependent on Uncle Sam not going crazy enough to go nuclear and kill us all, but the longer America is up and running, the more likely that is to happen anyway. 

With all this in mind, it bewilders me that more American anarchists are not committed anti-American anti-imperialists like me. It has actually become increasingly posh in anarchist circles to attack anti-imperialists like myself as being part of some silly red-brown alliance. There was a time when maybe you could make that argument about me, but my goals now are to take the biggest power I can get my hands on and dismantle it by any means necessary. We are not going to do this by picking fights with other radicals or fighting lesser tyrants in other peoples sandboxes like Rojava. We are going to do this by delegitimizing and destabilizing the greatest source of power on earth and today that is without a shadow of a doubt the United States of America. Tomorrow it might be China, but I say we boil that dragon when we get to it.

Peace, Love, & Empathy- Nicky/CH

Soundtrack; songs that influenced this post

*  Off the Record by My Morning Jacket

*  See No Evil by Television

*  Tactics by Japanese Breakfast

*  Ex-Lion Tamer by Wire

*  Don't Go Putting Wishes In My Head by Torres

*  China Girl by Iggy Pop

*  Hybrid Moments by the Misfits

*  In the Stone by the Goon Sax

52 Years After Stonewall: What I Still Want for My People

 Sometimes I can't help but feeling like the Ebenezer Scrooge of Pride Month, pissing on everybody's parade from my high horse of moral superiority. It's not that I'm not proud of my people. Quite the contrary. We survived a fucking plague while the government hoarded our meds and we launched a cultural revolution that shattered the antiquated gender binary once and for all. As a Queer Anarchist, my people are quite literally everything to me. But as an anti-assimilationist, I can't just sit by and watch as every aspect of my culture gets appropriated into some massive corporate machine just so we can enjoy the shallow victory of a handful of petty privileges peddled as rights- The right to be married in their courthouses. The right to indulge in their prison industrial complex with hate crimes legislation. The right to get blown to bits in their fucking army. No thank you.

But this does pose the interesting question of what do I actually want for my people and it's not an easy question to answer. In short, I want a lot. A lot more than any state system could ever possibly provide. On the 52nd anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, I want nothing less than a Queer revolution in the following ways.

I want Queer to be recognized as a race in the tribal sense of the word. A stateless nation of many colors defined by our shared resistance to White Anglo Saxon Protestant Puritanicalism. An anti-colonialist tribe, inspired by other movements of multiethnic resistance like the Black Power Movement, the Chicano Movement, and the American Indian Movement. I want my people to recognize that the Queer Movement only exists because we were purged from our former tribes and banished to the shadows by the same Conquistadors and priests who raped and pillaged the darker continents in the name of Manifest Destiny. Therefor the struggle of all colonized people must become our struggle as well.

With that being said, I also want this Queer Nation to become a tribe of many ethnicities. For far too long Queer has been synonymous with White and Queer people of color have been made to feel like they must choose between their ethnicity and their Queerness. Well I am a Celtic Queer person and my tribe is made of dual citizens. We must embrace Black Queer culture and Latinx Queer culture as part of our tradition just as we must embrace the European heathen cultures stripped from Queer people by Christianity, Whiteness, and globalization. Let our clan be the link in the chain that unites many sovereign peoples.

I want Queer people to confront the toxic legacy of colonial Christianity and embrace the pagan spirituality that once held our people up to places of deep veneration within the old tribes. I want us to embrace the veneration of Queer gods from across the globe. Gods like Hermaphroditus, Loki, Dionysus, Hapi and Bahuchara Mata. I say this as a devout Christian pantheist attempting to embrace the divine polytheistic Queerness of the higher power we all share. Heathenry is the root of all spirituality and I believe it to be the indigenous source of all Queer culture.

I want Queerness to be defined as a lifestyle of active rebellion against puritanical colonialist culture. This means that we must not only embrace homosexuals, bisexuals, and gender outlaws, but all those who live a life defined by sexual resistance, be they polygamist, polyamorous, sadomasochist, otherkin, infantilist, naturist, fetishist, or sex worker. May all those who peacefully and consensually transgress find shelter and strength together beneath the rainbow.

I want a Queer culture that rejects the empty promises of consumerism and capitalist culture. We must actively foster a culture defined by its resistance to corporate assimilation. We must reject the attempts by our enemies on Wall Street and in Hollywood to appropriate our culture and turn it into another banal shade of grey in the globalist monoculture. We have worked too damn hard to define ourselves boldly to allow all that we built to be Disneyfied, defanged, and castrated by the cis-hetero elites. Drag queens and bulldykes must never become members of the nuclear family. That dinner table isn't worth the radiation. We must remain a defiant counterculture, too feral to be tamed.

Lastly and most importantly, I want the word Queer to become synonymous with anarchism. This isn't about politics, it's about liberation. We are a people cast out of mainstream society who created a tribe of our own in its shadows. We were not born in government hospitals and raised in state schools. We were born on the bathroom floors of speakeasies and raised in the smoky alleyways where our tongues could be free enough from surveillance to discover each other's mouths. We were stateless heathen tribalists when we were forced into our closets by Roman guards and Catholic priests and to the tribal wilderness we must return. Our fight isn't simply a fight to fuck and love who our bodies desire and follow the gender identity of our souls. It is a fight for freedom, total freedom, against all tyrants. And this fight doesn't end with us excepting a Trojan horse of rights and privileges. It ends with the state that oppresses us and oppresses our brothers and sisters of all tribes in flames.

52 years ago, a dingey barroom full of drag queens and bulldaggers declared war on the straight world that invaded their autonomy. They won every battle with bricks and smeared lipstick. 52 years later, the war continues. It continues in courthouses that strip our children naked and define their medical needs as mutilation. It continues in schools where we are taught that our bodies are unnatural and that our love is immoral. It continues in prison yards where we are beaten and raped by men who throb beneath the color of authority. And it continues in the streets where we fight shoulder to shoulder with our Black and Brown siblings to win. We have gained too much ground to stop fighting now. Let every Pride parade end in another riot and let every riot end with the blue paladins of the state fleeing for their lives from our streets. The closet is on fire. The state is next.

Peace, Love, & Empathy- Nicky/CH 

Soundtrack; songs that influenced this post

*  My Body is Made of Crushed Little Stars by Mitski

*  Lonely Planet Boy by New York Dolls

*  I Fought the Law by Dead Kennedys

*  Life On Mars by David Bowie

*  Dig Me Out by Sleater-Kinney

*  Rock Star by Hole

*  Queen Bitch by David Bowie

*  Cop Car by Mitski

*  Walk On the Wild Side by Lou Reed

*  1969 by the Stooges

 

My Own Private Utopia

 Believe it or not, dearest motherfuckers, these can be depressing times for an upstart genderfuck anarchist like myself and not just because I have depression. On the 52nd Pride Month, this bastard nation seems to be divided up along partisan lines between mouth frothing open bigots who think people like me are out to castrate their children and do-gooder, virtue signaling, rainbow capitalists hocking sweatshop t-shirts with pink triangles on them and calling it progress. It's in maddening times like these that I like to escape to daydreams about distant utopias; imaginary futures where the world makes more sense and doesn't hurt so goddamn much to think about.

It's probably my hobby of utopian daydreaming that lead me to panarchy; a school of stateless thought that looks to a future of a diverse array of anarchist societies rather than preaching the virtues of a single monolithic vision for the future. Panarchy calls for the coexistence of an endless selection of competing utopias that can be based on quite literally anything so long as they remain completely voluntary in nature. You get to pick your government the way you would a church or a social club. So who do you wanna be? How do you wanna live? Do you want to be a Moorish Islamo-anarchist marauder in a pirate paradise on the high seas? Or a primitive communist agrarian, toiling off the grid on a rice paddy collective in the year zero. The possibilities are endless. But I'll tell you my two favorite utopian daydreams if you promise not to judge.

The first is one I've been toying with for years, long before I burst out of the closet shooting, but it's still one of my favorites. I call it the Emerald Belt Project. The basic idea is that once western civilization collapses, a population of outlaw pilgrims can recolonize some of the more abandoned cities of the Rustbelt and turn massive vacant factories and warehouses into colossal hydroponic indoor grow operations for cannabis and opium with the Great Lakes as a ready source of irrigation, all of which would be organized under the direct democracy of green syndicalism. We could produce enough dope to put both the Emerald Triangle and the Taliban out of business and we'd use the money to foster a true workers paradise of collective high rises, community gardens, and stateless welfare along with a civilian militia well armed and trained enough to take on even the hardiest of post-apocalyptic neo-Nazi marauders.

I feel like it's a pretty solid idea even if there are a few bugs to work out, but after I obliterated the closet and embraced my identity as a Queer heathen sadomasochist, I began dreaming of a very different utopia, a place designed for radical sex freaks like me. I call it the Red Light Republic and the idea is essentially the Castro reimagined by Marshall Sahlins. It would be a neon bathed tribe built around chosen families of consenting adults. Each family would operate by consensus and run their own theatre troupe in the form of bordellos, cabarets, bathhouses, and boutiques devoted to every known kink in the book. Disputes would be decided in weekly tribal gatherings presided over by elected tribal elders but decided by the community itself. Unreconcilable conflicts could be decided in ballroom style performance art competitions voted on by the entire community. Some people would join the Red Light Republic just long enough to get on their feet and start more conventional lives elsewhere while others would become lifelong citizens and respected elders of debauchery. It would be a tribal nation of peace loving libertines devoted to art and beauty in all its most transgressive forms.

I love both of these daydreams equally. Given the chance I would be hard pressed to choose between the Emerald Belt Project and the Red Light Republic, and the beautiful thing about panarchy is I might not even have to. Panarchist societies can exist totally free of borders or geographically fixed locations, creating a world of overlapping utopias. In a panarchist future it would be completely possible for six stateless governments to share the same apartment block. The Republic of New Africa could waltz down the hall to the Brotherhood of Mormon Fundamentalists and barrow a cup of sugar or an AK-47. It would be completely possible for my dream of the Red Light Republic to evolve out of the Emerald Belt Project as organically as it did in my own mind. Any group of people, no matter how small or marginal would always have the right to secede from the majority to explore their own vision of utopia. Creativity would finally reign supreme over stagnant dogma.

This is why utopias should always remain a valid concept in radical spheres of thought. As long as they remain as fluid and up for interpretation as panarchy itself, they remain a source of inspiration for people like me who can't conceive of belonging in the modern world. They encourage us to dream of a better world and debate the details until it can become a reality. So what do you say, dearest motherfuckers? Come dream with me. After all, even in this wretched world, dreaming is free.

Peace, Love, & Empathy- Nicky/CH

Soundtrack; songs that influenced this post

*  Dreaming by Blondie

*  Describe by Perfume Genius

*  Paprika by Japanese Breakfast

*  Shiny Happy People by REM

*  Home by David Byrne & Brian Eno

*  Slip Away by Perfume Genius

*  In Heaven by Japanese Breakfast

*  Light & Day by the Polyphonic Spree

They Shoot Trans Kids, Don't They?

 It's official dearest motherfuckers, those goddamn Jesus freaks have declared war on trans kids, my kids. As I gaze upon the legislative wreckage from the tsunami of hate laws that have washed over the Bible Belt and beyond, I can find no less histrionic conclusion to come too. In this year alone, over 100 anti-trans bills have been introduced in 33 states trying to regulate everything from children's sports to public restrooms. The very worst among these laws ban trans youth from access to hormone treatment that has been clinically proven to reduce the risk of suicide in a notoriously vulnerable population by double digit percentages. Arkansas and Tennessee have already passed these vile intrusions into youth rights and more are on the way. needless to say, I am sick with rage.

The damage of these laws can't be overestimated. Denying trans youth autonomy over their own biology is an assault against their very existence. Being born into the wrong body is hellish enough. Being forced to go through the puberty of any sex but your own is a feeling too hideous for words to describe. I barely survived it myself. Many trans kids don't. For these kids, puberty blockers and hormone therapy can literally save lives. I am not being hyperbolic when I say these laws will kill children and, as long as those children are deemed freaks like me, I am not convinced that the so called Christian Right gives a fuck.

These bastards actually have the nerve to call themselves conservative while they turn whole corners of the country into biological police states and hand the law a goddamn speculum. You think that the scariest words in the English language are 'I'm with the government and I'm here to help'? Try adding 'Spread your legs and let me assign you a gender.' These laws afford state governments with more power than your family physician, and this has nothing to do with localism or state's rights. All of these heinous bills are financed and authored nearly word for word by gigantic carpetbagging Rockefeller Republican think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, who just see this issue as another excuse to rile up rednecks into handing over their paychecks to swamp critters in the GOP. It's one big hustle at the expense of the easiest scapegoat on the farm.

These coastal conservative elites know they can take the heartland for all they've got and then some because they know these people have grown terrified of their own children. A recent Gallup poll has found that nearly 16% of Generation Z identifies as LGBTQ and there are indications that the number is only rising with younger generations. Assholes in the right wing media have attempted to paint this as a dangerous new trend, but cultural anthropology tells a very different story. Before Rome hijacked Christianity and took it for a heathen killing joy ride to Manifest Destiny, nearly every tribe from Siberia to California had space reserved for gender and/or sexual non-conformists to exist with pride and purpose. What we see today isn't a fad, it is a return to nature, to true conservatism, and our children are showing us the way.

So what do we do? What do I do? As a Queer anarchist, I have no faith in the Federal Government to fix this. The Equality Act sounds great on paper but these are the same scumbags who managed to turn Title IX into a transphobic weapon less than a year ago. I'm supposed to have faith in these central planners now just because Joe Biden wants my vote for the mid terms? I'm sorry but I gave up on that kind of institutional blind faith when I left the Catholic Church. So what now then? How the fuck do I save my kids and they are all my kids. My community is my kin and it burns me like fire to see my younger siblings twist in the wind like this. It makes me want to do unspeakable things to strangers with power tools but it doesn't make me want to grow the state that more often than not enslaves us.

If there is one thing that I've learned about manipulating the government for stateless purposes it's that, when in doubt, Balkanize. When they go big, you go small, and when they go small, you go smaller. Those breeders want to create sanctuary states for hate? Ok, then we find communities in those states that appose this gross overreach of local power and we create sanctuary cities, sanctuary counties, sanctuary towns and villages and communes and neighborhoods and schools until we have an archipelago of autonomous Queer spaces across the Bible Belt connected by sanctuary states, all of whom committed to protecting the rights of children to choose the gender that corresponds with their souls. Meanwhile, we sue the Christ out of those hatemongers and boycott and divest from their communities.

We have the numbers. Lets use them. This was ultimately what broke North Carolina's back in 2015 with their cockeyed bathroom apartheid laws. Lets do it again only lets get radical this time. Lets create communities too Queer for any government to ever bully again. It's pride month, for Christ's sake, and pride month began with a riot against a corrupt local government. I'm tired of begging the state for charity. Lets kick some fucking ass.

Peace, Love, & Empathy- Nicky/CH

Soundtrack; songs that influenced this post

*  The Things That You Say That You Do by Dressy Bessy

*  Dead Cowboy by Lightning Bolt

*  Dairy Queen by Pwr Bttm

*  School by Nirvana

*  John Wayne Was a Nazi by MDC

*  Androgynous by the Replacements

*  Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting by Elton John

*  Personality Crisis by New York Dolls

*  Without You by Perfume Genius

*  Like I Used To by Angel Olsen & Sharon Van Etten