A lot of empire sycophancy hides behind the fact that it's always permissible to retrospectively oppose US wars that already happened, but not the current one. It's permitted now to say the destruction of Vietnam and Iraq and Libya were mistakes, for example, but if you said it at the time people would treat you like a monster and call you all kinds of names.

And it's important to understand that this is still happening today. One day it will be permissible to say in mainstream circles that it was wrong for the US empire to deliberately provoke the war in Ukraine and keep it going as long as possible to bleed Russia, but it's taboo to say that now, because the empire hasn't yet accomplished all its goals in Ukraine.

They always act like the most recent interventionist disaster was the final one. They always act like the hawks may have been wrong all those other times but they're not wrong now. And then when they've killed everyone they wanted to kill and grabbed everything they wanted to grab and there's no possibility of losing anything they gained, it will suddenly become permissible to make the present disaster the final one while they assure us the next one is completely righteous.

Reading by Tim Foley.