By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Disclaimer: this is not an easy read, but it is not a topic we can ignore.
This has been a week when the threads of policy that have put this nation in extremis have woven themselves together to give us a glimpse of the dark fabric of the American psyche. As implied by the title, you probably know where I’m going with this, although video of four Marine snipers urinating on three dead Taliban fighters is just the latest stitch in a larger design. It’s a disturbing image that has caught even the Pentagon’s attention. YouTube will show you the original 34 second clip, posted anonymously, providing you sign in as over 18 years old. I’m not sure which you need to be an adult to see, the murdered or the desecration, but we might as well show it to the young ones, it’s so obviously adolescent. Besides, they see worse in their video games.
As the YouTube from Afghanistan went viral, a Marine Corps spokesman protested that the “actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our corps.” Well, you could have fooled me! The bodies of those slain are wearing traditional Afghani garb and are unarmed. Point of order: if you’re going to celebrate over the enemy dead, it always looks better if they’re armed to the teeth. But these are Marines we’re talking about, the ultimate fighting force. Bound by their band-of-brothers loyalty and their motto, Semper Fi, Marines have always done the down and dirty work for the American military. They’re trained to kill and call it good in service to their country.
Existing just beneath the thin veneer of civility, Marines have their own code of honor. As Marine General James Mattis put it to Iraqi tribal leaders he hoped to enlist in his cause against al Qaeda, “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.” Mattis is now the commander of U.S. Central Command, with responsibility for Iraq, Afghanistan and the region. A few years back, as a Lieutenant-General, he tried to explain away 24 civilian deaths in Haditha by pleading the fog of war and perils of counterinsurgency. It would have been easier but less politic to state the obvious: Marines shoot first and take names later, if at all.
I’m not trying to pick on the Marines. I was fathered by a John Wayne clone and I’m a loyal Leroy Jethro Gibbs fan. Every country has its own version of the Samurai, ruthless and tradition-bound — the Marines are ours. There are some acts the average citizen can barely entertain, much less commit. During World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt became her crippled husband’s wandering ambassador for troops and service personnel. Aware of the extreme dangers faced by our drafted military, most of them scared teens fresh off the farm, the First Lady spoke with unexpected candor when she said, “The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!”
Perhaps it’s all the fault of photographers in combat. Maybe these are the kinds of events, happening in every war zone, that civilians shouldn’t see. After all, it’s not just the Marines who have pushed the envelope over this last decade of warfare. The Army has its own crosses to bear, what with the Afghanistan “kill team” of the 5th Stryker brigade, 2nd Infantry division, that went after unarmed Afghans and cut off their fingers as trophies, posing with their collections of remains, including skulls. Unable to ignore such an incident, the military has reluctantly convicted 11 soldiers thus far for those deaths, and after years of occupation, the current desecration outrage has only caused the Afghans to shrug it off as expected behavior which they doubt will be found accountable. It will not, they say, interfere with current peace talks with the Taliban, and we have yet to see if there will be public demonstrations over what is, ostensibly, an international crime.
How did we get to this extreme? Early in the century, our military was hard-pressed to fill the manpower void caused by Dubby’s two wars. In order to get the numbers needed, the basic prerequisites for military service were lowered: waivers were issued to those with a criminal past, to high school dropouts and those who couldn’t pass the ASVAB aptitude test. By 2004, those with mental problems were being routinely sent off to war, by medical standards emotionally unfit to serve. Soldiers with PTSD were minimally treated and medicated, then sent back for additional deployment.
Such shortsighted decisions have come home to roost. One of our problems with returning soldiers continues to be the lip service given a 1998 mandate to conduct adequate pre- and post-deployment screening of troops. You’d think the mental health of those who have been taught to kill for their country, returning now with high percentages of PTSD and emotional problems, would be of interest to the general public. Evidently, few of us give it a second thought. Perhaps we should.
For instance, due to its egregious record, merged Army-Air Force base, Fort Lewis-McChord in Pierce, Washington, has been singled out as the most troubled military facility in the nation. According to Stars and Stripes magazine, not only are incidences of substance abuse and suicide stunningly high, but also it has had a particularly sadistic record of crime the last two years, including:
“…an Iraq veteran pleaded guilty to assault after being accused of water boarding his 7-year-old foster son in the bathtub. Another was accused of pouring lighter fluid over his wife and setting her on fire; one was charged with torturing his 4-year-old daughter for refusing to say her ABCs. A Stryker Brigade soldier was convicted of the kidnap, torture and rape or attempted rape of two women, one of whom he shocked with cables attached to a car battery; and an Iraq war sergeant was convicted of strangling his wife and hiding her body in a storage bin.”
Lewis-McChord was home base to the aforementioned Stryker Brigade, and also the deployment site of Benjamin Barnes, the young man who shot Park Ranger Margaret Anderson at Mt. Rainer State Park last week. Heavily armed and speeding through a tire check-point, Barnes headed for the crowded visitors center at the top of the mountain road. Barnes sprayed Anderson’s vehicle with bullets as she blocked his path, killing her but missing a companion Ranger who had joined her. Anderson, mother to two young toddlers, was credited with saving up to 125 lives. Barnes, who died from hypothermia after he left his vehicle, left behind an estranged wife and child. Just call them all fallout from Bush’s military folly.
Sadly, rogue soldiers no longer shock the world in 2012, but we didn’t need the pissing incident when all eyes were turned toward Guantanamo, the prison’s ten-year anniversary arriving despite Obama’s campaign promise to close it. Congress has imposed a series of hurdles that thwarted Obama’s intent, and early efforts to relocate Gitmo’s prisoners stateside fell flat when the public protested that they were simply petrified to have such loathsome creatures as the accused terrorists on American soil. Odd, I thought, since we used to pride ourselves on being the … pardon me … meanest motherfuckers in the valley. In addition, we’ve not only created the largest penal system in the world, but also successfully turned it into one of our last remaining for-profit growth industries.
We certainly had all the expertise and facilities necessary to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay had the Republicans not thrown a tizzy fit about relocation. With typical American cluelessness, we’re blinded to this continuing PR dilemma by nationalism, only showing interest in Gitmo when a guard or released and repratriated inmate comes forward with tales of abuse and cruelty. What the average U.S. citizen sees as a righteous necessity in the age of terrorism, the rest of the world eyes with skepticism and anger. Have our core values turned us into international bullies and warmongers? Abu Ghraib was the darker alter-ego of Gitmo, and many of us fear it was a training ground. None of us can say exactly what goes on there under the warm Cuban sun. Its continued presence is, and will remain, indefensible to those of us who cherish civil liberties.
Gitmo is a black hole of legality in which to stuff our mistakes. It’s become the international home of “indefinite detention,”now extended to combatant Americans, an infamous place to hold untried prisoners, their innocence increasingly at question even as they’ve been pronounced unreleasable. Every moment that they are held in limbo, justice itself falls prey to American convenience and contrivance. It is a reminder that our nation’s moral credibility is leaking away, and frankly, we haven’t got much left to spare.
If you read the blogs at Huffy, or listen to some of the television pundits, this “pissing contest” is no big deal, our enemies deserving this or worse. Digby,major domo over at Hullabaloo, has equated this attitude with our blanket acceptance of a cruel penal system that has now imprisoned one out of every hundred American citizens, and doesn’t think twice at state-sanctioned murder. Hullabaloo cross-poster David Atkins, of thereisnospoon blog, suggests that this severity runs even deeper in our national DNA, a legacy of the harsh Calvinism that birthed our republic. Seems to me the issues run deeper still, this desperate need for exceptionalism morphing with a psycho-sexual imbalance that keeps us focused on our extremities instead of our extremism. This is what we are afraid to look at, how the mirror would shatter if we told each other the truth about our lack of humanity.
It strikes me, yet again, that we suffer a kind of national adolescence: an inability to practice self-control, unable to keep our hands to ourselves, unwilling to consider as equal any tribe but our own. And at the base of all this mayhem is the consumptive orgy we call capitalism, constantly in search of something new to strip to the bone for profit.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” warned Dwight D. Eisenhower. Gone unsaid is that when each of these killing machines becomes mere merchandise which must find a buyer, those who manufacture them will also manufacture a place to use them. Iran is in the neo-con cross-hairs now, the Israelis are searching for provocation, and the Republican candidates are coming down hard on Obama’s Iran strategy, provocative in an election cycle. Will we sidestep our sadism and ego this time, or fall prey to our own nihilism?
In the unknowable year ahead, a year whose astrology hints of surprises and extremism, I think it’s clear that we can no longer tolerate this kind of suicidal behavior. We must find a way to heal this disassociation from our own humanity, this separation from what is heartfelt and compassionate. We not only kill our enemies, we make of them “things” that do not deserve basic dignity or respect. That is the zeitgeist that creates the ovens, that broadcasts hate radio and causes genocides. That is intolerable.
As 2012 dawns, it’s clear we’ve allowed the nation to be overrun by profiteers, lobbyists, mercenaries and politicians who can only be described as ruthless. The actual and projected violence tolerated and encouraged at the heart of our nation has, I fear, become a “core value” that we cannot allow to continue. In a year of extreme change, let’s start with that. Let’s proclaim 2012 the year of the adult, one in which we put away shallow, selfish and childish things. Look at the radical Republican candidates and tell me we could survive one of their presidencies. Isn’t it time to call a halt to so ruthless a game? Isn’t it finally time for liberty, justice and human dignity to reestablish themselves as our national values? Isn’t it — finally — time to grow up?
The Sabian Symbols are so elegant, be — and I can always count on you to bring them forward. They never fail to resonate with me, to pull the picture all together! Thanks. And Huffy, I did enjoy the YouTube clip you sent. I wasn’t familiar with Tom Lehrer. I’d suppose he was one of those remarkable early comics and political satirists that managed to give us hints of truth without ruffling too many feathers. There were just a handful, all brilliant — and courageous.
Rob, I agree that it’s heartbreaking to contemplate what’s become of us and I understand how easy it is to give in to gloom. It seems we have so far to go and for some of us, those like me who rode the First Wave in the 60s, it seems like we may not see what our hearts have dreamed. I have a friend (a retired union rep) who says he hopes he can be part of the revolution, even if he has to hit somebody with his walker! I’m encouraged that things are moving quickly — perhaps rebuilding and renewal will come to us in a similar fashion. I’m trusting that everything can turn just as quickly, as open hearts wrestle control from the lizard brains. I see signs every day.
The topic was dark this week but I want to thank you all for playing. We can’t run from the darkness, or turn from it — we’re here to be a candle, to bring the light. We’re here to be the change we want to see and even though that’s a real challenge, the Vision of that, forefront in our hearts and minds, is more important now than ever before. Hugs all around!
Jude,
Thanks for sharing the Bird tribes thoughts on healing. Yesterday, when the Moon exactly squared her nodes the Sabian Symbol was An Aristocratic Family Tree. Dane Rudhyar says “One returns to the roots in order to produce the flowering of personality, if this flower is to bring forth a living seed.”
The south node symbol was “Bridging Physical Space and Social Distinctions, Two Men Communicate Telepathically” and I believe the Internet, especially PW is bringing us closer and closer to that vision. Especially right now.
The north node Symbol is of “the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx”. Here Rudhyar says these symbols point to the greatness of a soul’s past achievements and the value of trying to re-evoke this past. He says it reveals “The Power of Spiritual Ancestry”.
It seemed fitting to point out these symbols and to look more closely at our own past, which I appreciate you doing for us.
be
Rebuttal appreciated, Judith; and I admit to cynicism in my first response. Too many dark nights of the soul echoing the collective darkness we’ve been moving through in recent times, I suppose.
You reference a book I still carry with me decades after I first read it. And I want to contextualize these trying individual and global passages as part of a greater Purification. Yet the building onslaught of so much breakdown, magnified by the increasingly inescapable awareness of its many manifestations, tests one’s ability to hold open the space of possibility, and a wider perspective of evolutionary purpose.
I know the only real change can come from within the heart. Yet as much and as keenly as I’ve followed the lead-up to this year over the past 25 years, I really don’t know if we–whatever “we” means–will pass this test. But I’ve stubbornly held on to this earthly thread, through trials and illness, sometimes out of sheer curiosity more than faith.
“Civilization does not occur among healthy people.” Having lived in both tribal and urban settings, I can understand that statement. I would also suggest that, depending on one’s definition of the word, true civilization only occurs among healthy people. But that’s semantics, tending toward abstraction. What isn’t abstraction is the very real dying of the old distorted world humankind hath wrought. As many years as I’ve touted a longing for this very transition, it’s also heartbreaking, and at moments fearful.
I don’t know if I’ll be present to witness the recognizable beginnings of a more heart-centered culture, or cultures, on Terra. I’d like to think so. Having bought this ticket long ago, I’ve held it close, waiting for the real show to begin. I hope it isn’t canceled: because I’d like to be on stage with others when the curtains finally rise.
Whowzer Judith!!!
Where oh where is transiting Mars hanging around in your chart? You spent enough time noting the wrongs of Bushie & Co. and now you are nearing full stride just in time for the Big Party of 2012. Keep it coming.
By the way my Dad actually looked much like John Wayne but I think Jethro Gibbs would have been much more fun!
Ok, dearhearts, let’s take this conversation up a notch. Yes, we can all agree that American’s have an ugly track record and some really potent karma. These shores were the scene of killing fields well before the white guys got here, violence was certainly exacerbated-all-to-hell after they got here, and still occurs today in neighborhood after neighborhood. Not only that, once we got a little international power, we exploited everything we could lay hands on, all in the name of American exceptionalism. If the Lords of Karma wanted to dance on our heads with hobnailed boots for a bloody past and violent present, it would be more than deserved.
In a tit/tat universe, we’d be fucked from the git-go and that’s true for all the world, all the nations and all the governments with rare exceptions. That is the human condition, that is the ego condition. That’s the deal. Our species has done very little to redeem itself. And if that’s all that was going on here, I’d be wringing my hands with you.
The channelers in the 90s said that in the Third Wave of spiritual renewal — now — we’d be seeing a lot of “crazy” because it takes awhile to integrate the Christ energy — love — and those who come to it late would struggle mightily, depending on those who went before them to help them ground themselves in the new vibration. We would see increased violence, desperation, cynicism and fear; all of that which we see today as part of the Turning, or what the Bird Tribes call the Purification.
Still, it’s not WHAT we see that matters, now — it’s HOW we see. And how we see this nation and her role in the unfoldment of consciousness is a critical part of what each of us offers this process.
From Return of the Bird Tribes by Ken Carey:
“Long before the Mayans made note of it, we set in motion the influences that would one day end the subconscious human condition. It was not difficult to calculate when the point of diminishing returns in the healing of the warrior tribes would be reached…
“Civilization does not occur among healthy people. In healthy, non-historical societies, people are not overly concerned with other people’s fantasies. They are certainly not manipulated through externally imposed descriptions of reality. In America, civilization was a step backwards. However, for the warrior tribes, civilization was a step in the right direction…
“We knew that these former colonists were creating the context for the great melting pot that America was soon to become. We knew that they were creating the political structure that would guide the interaction of strategic representatives of the four races during the last and must crucial centuries before the advent of the New Order of the Ages. We did not return to our more general pursuits until the new government “of the people, by the people and for the people” had been firmly established…
“The Great White Roots of Peace, as they were perceived by the five nations of that now-distant day, represented a deep and genuine understanding becoming firmly rooted in the consciousness of an historical people — an understanding that has never left America and never will, though is has become distorted during the recent five-century storm…
Rob, you tell me that, “Liberty, justice, and human dignity are national myths passed down through established lies; lies some here should know better than to perpetrate.”
Most respectfully, my dear … NO, they’re not — but what they’ve become is a distortion of what they were meant to be. Our notion of American exceptionalism comes from the vibrational signature of an initial experiment in human consciousness that is [still] occurring here; what we’ve made of that has become distorted as a kind of national superiority. That was never the intent of the American experiment.
And freedom, ADW? Seems to me that actual freedom comes with the acceptance of great responsibility; it is not license to do anything we want or to ignore those around us. Ron Paul’s version of freedom, for instance, is the ultimate blasphemy, disdainful of his neighbors and cold-blooded. Paul’s Libertarian streak is a mix of isolationism and Ayn Rand’ian bullshit. Me, I think there’s considerably more tyranny involved in loving, than in taking our freedom. To quote Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince: “And the fox said to the little prince: Men have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget. You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” To capture anothers’ heart, to allow our heart to be captured, that’s a Divine tyranny.
From my point of view, seeing what we’re looking at takes great skill and compassion. Not much is obvious and almost everything is backwards and inside out. Understanding what’s happening on this planet involves less brain activity than inner vision. IMHO, our future is not destined to be more of the same, except that now we’re on to ourselves, know our limitations and must scratch out some little spot of safety and community. As the individual finds healing, the collective heals — and as we are coming to a time of collective healing, we’re struggling to accomplish the inner work. That’s why here at Planet Waves we seek to “know our self.” That is a peace process that informs the collective and changes the outcome for the planet.
The future isn’t about what was or what is, it’s about letting go of distortion to recreate, I believe, what has been and can be again. But although we have the template, succeeding in this great shifting of consciousness must be about creating a future that is NEW — or at least it will be when we return to love. And what each of us brings to this great occasion is not based on what we see around us today, or what our brains tell us about tomorrow, but what our hearts can envision. Liberty, justice, human dignity? At the very least.
That’s the way I see it, and thanks to everyone here for sharing how they see it. We may not be on the very same page but we’re all on the same chapter. It’s important for us to validate that even while we are enfolded in darkness, each dark incident an assault against our collective humanity, it is not what we are, what we choose nor where we’re going.
Gary, what my Dad said to me was, “Children should be seen and not heard,” and, “I’ll give you something to cry about.” But there wasn’t any meanness in him, unlike Mandy’s Dad (and good on you, M, for dealing with him like an adult, bully’s almost always cave quickly when challenged.) My father was not introspective and didn’t think twice about his relationship dynamics like so many of those born before Pluto was discovered. We were locked together as his Saturn was smack on my Sun, but I think he was much like the others of his generation. Who knows who he might have been had he not gone to war, who knows who ANY of them might have been.
Oh, and pass/fail, kiddo — that’s what they say — with all the do-over’s you want … just not here!
Well you listen here little Missie– wonder if your Dad actually ever said that to you!
Judith,
I am beginning to wonder if this plane/planet Earth is just what it is. A place that has these repetitive themes you and the other commenter’s discuss. Maybe that is really what is always here. Just a place to land and for our Spirit to play in this game for fun, further education, whatever the Universe has advertised to the souls who come here. Maybe there is a really bad higher power who owns a disreputable travel firm who sold this as paradise to us rubes and this is what we got.
I have traveled extensively around the world and have visited many museums and am amazed by history as most are composed primarily of war artifacts and the bounty of the un/christened leaders with a little bit of art sprinkled in. Primarily it is about war and the changes of power. In the US we don’t have stories of conquerors and revolutions to restore our power,just a revolution from the King of England. However, most other countries have museums filled with the history of multiple changes of power from the oppressed to the oppressor. In that we are unique.
I read recently the the plague created the greatest redistribution of wealth in history. Not even Kings were immune. It was followed by the Renaissance. However, the themes of man, much like Shakespeare plays continue to resonate.
Maybe we each come to this plane to play out the themes but some of us get it. Your great voice in the matter, spoken so eloquently, is a siren call to those who came here for a higher education. Sure we can make a change internally and make that an option for others but the game will shift to and fro forever.
I am of the mind that there is a great shift this year, especially May/June that will move us towards the time of a Renaissance. Yes, even the good times/guys/girls get a cycle. Will it be plague, world war-we have always since first thought(Fear is always there) perceived ourselves at a possible point of extinction whether it be weather, plagues or man made catastrophes– that is the game changer?
Whatever it is- I look forward to it. I thank you as being that unique voice in a choir that caught my attention and at least allows me to graduate. Is a C- OK?
My dad was a member of the British Royal Air Force (we were from Ireland). When I was born we were stationed in Germany. My first memory of him is beating us all with his army belt while he was in his uniform, I was 4. My brother (then 7) was labelled schizophrenic at 13. Long story short, he was deported at 18 (from Canada), and committed suicide 5 years ago. Most Germans I meet (I’m still in Canada), when I mention where I was born and the circumstances, they all seem to be from the other side of the wall and they hate me immediately. Most Irish people I meet, when I tell them I’m from the North they hate me immediately as they are from the South. I know the effects of war. I was very happy to grow up in the land of the Peacekeepers, until our fearful leader slowly but surely stripped us of this honour (and we passive Canadians let him).
In my early teens I had pretty much concluded the state of affairs on this planet, deduced that the lunatics were definitely running the asylum and thought I was the only sane person here. I’m really fed up with watching the boys (ego), who can’t seem to get themselves past the point of puberty, play the game of capture the flag while we in the middle just suffer and die, and they continue the mindset of ‘the one with the most toys wins’ (people, land, resources).
I’ve noticed that two opposing forces can find peace either through a common wound or a common goal. We all have the wound, it is gaping. We need to get over it (I know it doesn’t help that November 11 is remember war, suffering and bloodshed day, instead of Remember Who You Are day. – poppy, with seeds that make opium – we should change the flower to a Lily and wear one on the 11th of every month this year).
I stood up to my dad growing up – kicked him out of my bed at 13, hauled him off my mother as he beat her, called the cops on him. It was a cathartic moment a couple of years ago when I realized that he was actually more afraid of me than I was of him. I think that this is very representative of the world today. The bullies are more afraid of us than we are of them (if we take our power). There is 9 of us for every 1 of them (sorry, don’t want to do the ‘us and them’ thing, I know it’s a direct link to using only 10% of our right brain, 90% of the left).
I’m really praying the Venus conjunction with Chiron begins this healing process on a mass level and Neptune in Pisces is the key to restore the balance for us all.
Jude, that was bad-ass!
I’ve been struggling with all the whack on this planet lately, and it’s nice to know someone else see’s all the BS… sorry for that..
Still love ya,
Jere
“Send the Marines”. It may be old, but this Tom Lehrer song says it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhZF66C1Dc
I’ve spoken of the contemporary myth of ‘rights’ on this blog before now and we can usefully extend that to ‘freedom’.
Freedom is the ultimate tyranny – one that has pretended that absence from constraint is better than constraint; in a way that exploits the selfish tendencies of humans..
Freedom… at what price and consequences for others?
Of course the English immigrants became the Pilgrim Fathers who pushed back the Western frontier (isn’t language useful?)
You know, expand and yet there is always more land to take; it is NEVER ending supply and it is birthright. That has been enshrined within the collective American psyche from the outset and is precisely why an out of control gun culture exists as its outgrowth.. to defend your inalienable, individual rights.
It’s always how it goes. We will protect what we have stolen whilst having simultaneous moral amnesia. The Romans and Vikings did the same by use of propagandist ‘peace’ and ‘parliament’.
We may have a downer with evangelical/biblical Christianity but Jesus had it right when suggesting the central problem is the heart of man – where essential defilement of everything finds an eternally reliable incubator.
All defilement we see is an outgrowth of that. Period.
And yet, although all nostalgia about some value-laden past is a part of the faulty mythology, it is unquestionably true that individual humans have been complicit in perpetrating and benefiting from these distorted values. We perhaps care more of late because it was at one time only the disenfranchised ‘underclasses’ who were getting screwed – whereas now the educated middle classes are seeing that the attentions are now shifting to them.
Still, adolescence is a highly conducive image. Our values are entrenched in centuries old oppressions that have cut-off all experiments into viable alternatives. We need to imagine differently, to excavate some ways of doing community that have failed to thrive in the mainstream. We cannot lament without some kind of sustaining vision for how we can change things. The problem with revolutions is that a greater tyranny usually rushes in to fill the void.
We need to examine not just the sanity of the values that have shaped us but honestly, how far we really want to change. How much am I attached to my values. Am I prepared to let them go?
Then, if we get a radical answer, we have to start building new communities, based upon different values than we have so far ever entertained on any realistic level.
Chomsky may desire the abolition of the Nation State (yep, I’m with you Noam) but I think we all know that the abolition of the Ego State has primacy, regardless of national allegiances and boundaries.
Somehow… I think mucho pain cometh first… Hopefully not on an apocalyptic scale.
A really good, thoughtful piece, as always, thanks. But I have to say I agree with Rob & mystes – this latest outrage is just more of the same, but with the added support of the mass media.
Would the situation have been better or worse if the pioneers had had the ‘power’ of YouTube, I wonder? Have you ever read some of the old newspaper reports of ‘killins’ in the Wild West? They’re just as salacious as what we get on the internet today. Only the medium has changed and the speed at which we get such stories and images has done nothing to shame us into a change for the better.
The reportage, the exposes, the endless debates exist not to bring clarity but to maintain public confusion and subvert personal response(ability) – a state that only plays to the advantage of those who wish to maintain this disgraceful status quo.
Our core values, or truths, which we supposedly held as self evident were never in alignment with the way we set about ‘claiming’ America for our own. In moments like this I think they are little more than a commercial for toilet bowl cleaner – the hard hard sell for an toxic, inferior product.
Rob44 — hearhear.
This karma isn’t so instant, but it is unfolding. Relentlessly. I think it could be argued that our principles are still the ‘mother’ of the mix. True, they grow out of a hothouse environment, yet those seemingly evanescent ‘ideals’ may be the point of this experiment.
Can we live the ‘myths’ (liberty, justice, human dignity) deeply enough to redeem the suffering that bought them for us? I think each person has to answer that for him/herself.
“As 2012 dawns, it’s clear we’ve allowed the nation to be overrun by profiteers, lobbyists, mercenaries and politicians who can only be described as ruthless. ”
The idea that the nation has been anything but this, long before its rise as a superpower, is erroneous, to put it lightly. We are no different in our aims or means than any superpower, and they’ve done just just as much bad as we have, and worse.
The only thing that might be different in this era is the wider ability to recognize the past and present for what they are. Liberty, justice, and human dignity are national myths passed down through established lies; lies some here should know better than to perpetrate.
This nation was founded on slavery and genocide. Isn’t it finally time to grow up and recognize that we exist because of a holocaust our forebears perpetrated? American pioneers pissed on a continent of dead bodies, from the day they set foot here.