“I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers!”
Well, ain’t that a poem?
I would imagine I won’t be the one breaking the news to all of you of the radical act of sacrificial suicide enacted by Aaron Bushnell. A 25-year old active duty air force soldier. (And if I am, welcome to another fucking day in humanity)
Me and Bushnell are the same age. We know nothing but endless war. I mentioned in a previous essay that one of my earliest human memories is mass murder of brown people on TV perpetuated by the empire that houses my body and not my spirit. Lifelong dissociation.
A lot of people are learning the phrase “moral clarity” through this act, and I don’t have a better, more recent example. The American Matrix is glitching at the idea of a man, a cop at that, feeling so overcome with whatever the feeling is that mass death brings that he sets himself ablaze. He put on the outside what anyone with an intact soul is feeling inside. As tens of thousands are used as lambs at the altar of the “market”, the most clear sacrifice themselves at the altar of humanity, of Life itself.
Mainstream media, as it does, is blaming an act that I can only describe as brave and necessary on “mental health”. That lofty, oft ill-defined, sanitized ideal. Who, in this world, is mentally well at this moment? Raise your hand, so I know where to aim. We need insanity more than we need air in this moment. I mean, the air is poisonous anyway.
I know Bushnell is not the only uniform-clad American who is feeling overcome with what I can only imagine is a stew of guilt, confusion, and responsibility; not only existing in the imperial core, but making the sacrifice of life that joining the military requires. I pray his sentiment spills over into his colleagues, the same way I did in 2020 screaming “KILL YOURSELVES” at NYPD officers just before I was almost trampled to death during the Breonna Taylor protests.
In a world sewn in chains, may we remember suicide is a route we have the right to take. We have a right to free ourselves by any means necessary.
Freedom to the souls of those brave enough to take their own lives in escape and with statement. Freedom to those who would rather give themselves to the ocean than bear a line of children damned to cutting sugarcane in the Caribbean, freedom to She who self-immolated in Atlanta (I pray we find her name soon), to Thich Quang Duc, Nhat Chi Mai1, and others who set themselves ablaze in during the American War in Vietnam in perfect peace, to Wynn Bruce, the scientist who set himself on fire to match the planet that he so loved to learn and share about, refusing to be silenced, even if it was his final act. There is peace in flames.
These acts have been gaining traction (in the West, at least) since the 60s and I don’t see them slowing down.
I see Westerners saying things like: “I wish they saved him, he should still be here!” and “he wasn’t insane, he was brave!” as if us insane aren’t the bravest, as if we don’t understand more than anyone STILL somehow performing sanity what is at stake and the fact that we, now more than ever, have nothing to lose but bullshit, but our chains. Suicide is not something to pity. It is the ultimate form of agency in a society with a ruling class dead-set on looping us all into its bloodlust, its dark magic, deciding this will be “normal”. Bloodlust is “sanity” on Planet Earth in 2024. I invite you to fully lose your mind with us. Let that soft animal burn something down, let that soft animal kill a cop, especially the one in your mind. Let that soft animal kill itself, if it so pleases. You do not have to be good.
It’s happening, the system is eating itself. Military are setting themselves on fire in the name of the oppressed. There is no coming back from this, and the establishment knows that. We know how our ruling class reacts in fear: gunfire and intimidation. They know this can’t last.
May we carry all of these bodies as torches inside of us, lighting the thick brush to some sort of liberation. May we remember that while water is for washing, fire is the ultimate purifier.
What I Read This Week:
The One Who Burns Herself For Peace — Cheyney Ryan
Zapatista Stories for Dreaming An-Other World — Subcomandante Marcos
I’m with you.
— Jupi
In a letter to the u.s. government, she writes:
I offer my body as a torch
to dissipate the dark
to waken love among men
to give peace to Vietnam
the one who burns herself for peace.
yo………….. how did u