The Conversation We Need on War

Tags

American Exceptionalism, History, Military, Veterans, War

This is not a post I wish to write for a lot of reasons. Mostly it has to do with the fact that I recognize that my opinions here are not in line with the average American and that I have loved ones and friends who will and have disagreed with me in part or in whole. I don’t wish to insult, cause pain, or infuriate those I care about, but important issues do not benefit from pretending they don’t exist.

This all started, or should I say restarted for me with an editorial I read in the NYTimes yesterday which I urge you to read carefully here. It refers to the fact that some veterans really don’t appreciate being thanked for their service and that opens a whole can of worms for me.

Because this promises to be long, and you deserve to understand from whence my opinions germinated, let me go back to the beginning.

War is not something new of course but is as old as human relationships. As we gathered into groups, we inevitably? found war as the way to solve issues between groups. I question the word inevitable since the jury is still out as to whether we are innately prone to solve our problems this way or not. Suffice it to say, we’ve taken the easy way out, the simplistic approach since we began to record our lives as “civilized”.

I am of that generation whose grandfathers were eligible to fight in the “war to end all wars” and our fathers fought in the conflagration known as WWII. Those were both “righteous” wars by all accounts, fought from a necessity we all accepted. My father was a WWII vet and so was my closest uncle. I assumed, without actual knowledge that all of my friends fathers were veterans too. I to this day don’t know which were and which weren’t.

The generation of my father did not talk much of war, it was indeed their overarching psyche not to. My father did not belong to veterans groups for the most part. But the country did take its responsibility to take care of its vets very seriously. The GI Bill followed quickly at the end of the war, and that was accompanied by a social security law that ensured a decent old age. Unions rose dramatically in the years following and with them came salaries that paid a living wage, and pensions to bolster that social security. Veterans once in positions of power made sure their health care needs were met with Medicare in the sixties.

These efforts, directed at least in large part to show our thanks to veterans was shared by most people and embraced. Republicans lagged behind in these efforts, but even they soon were loath to not support them as well. Such happens as the result of righteous wars.

This is what it meant to “support our troops” back then.

I grew up watching war movies, at least until about the age of 15 or so. I had no particular feelings about war other than that they were sometimes necessary and that that men did some scary stuff that I was glad not to do.

Vietnam was “my” war in that I came to adulthood during it. Quickly we came to realize that it had none of the clean lines of demarcation. From the beginning it was mired in questions. It would take years if not decades before we saw it clearly. America had been on the wrong side. Ho Chi Minh was in fact the hero, and America had been propping up a corrupt puppet government that as usual was supported for “doing our bidding.”

We would go on to do similar if less costly (to us) interventions in South America.

I ended up by the time I was nineteen or so supporting draft dodgers and draft card burners and marching on an occasion or two to stop this war. I read books about war, Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, and Aristophanes Lysistrata. Later I read Colonel David Hackworth’s About Face: The Odyssey of An American Warrior.

I was forever changed in my opinions regarding war. I see them today as but temporary fixes that contain the seeds of new wars, and that this posture is endless. I see them as the easy solution when we are not brave enough nor thoughtful enough to do better.

I don’t pretend to be a total pacifist for I recognize that unbridled naked aggression must be met with more than words. But at the same time I’m not sure what the standards should be for determining “just” war. I do believe it should be the last resort rather than the first. I recognize as well that no soldier can hide behind “orders” to justify his/her behavior in a war theatre and thus don’t buy the “war is hell, never question what they did.”

We live in a polarized time where some try to reserve patriotism to themselves. They do this by defining some rather strange things as patriotic. It ends up being words more than behavior in my opinion. Sarah Palin explained to us that people who don’t wear flag pins aren’t patriotic. That is surely an opinion I suppose, but hardly one I want to identify with.

Politicians all wear flag pins, and often spout the words “support our troops”. Plenty of people fly flags as if this is patriotism. If you know me you know I do not relate to any of this.

Borders seem artificial constructs of humans designed to preserve resources mostly. In my view, the future can only result in a remove of such artifices and the institution of policies that favor use of shrinking resources for the benefit of all humanity. World government must inevitably replace nation states.

Thus to me, reliance on archaic terms such as national pride and homeland and so forth serve only to point out our differences rather than seek our commonality. Supporting our troops, more the banner of the politician, ends up being nothing more than a call for a larger army with more armaments. I find it all decidedly unhelpful in a world that shrinks daily and becomes more intricate.

During my war crisis (Vietnam) we knew that most of the boys sent to fight the designated enemy were not there by choice. The draft is no more, at least not now, and so perforce I must admit that all soldiers are soldiers by choice today.  But they are far from being all the same.

Some are there through a genuine desire to “fight for our way of life and to avenge those who kill Americans.” I can appreciate their actual belief, however short-lived it may be, as heartfelt. One can, I suppose, thank them for their belief, however wrong it may be to some of us.

Some are there because life circumstances offers them little in terms of a future. Poor boys and girls find themselves with few options to a better life, and the service has always held out that carrot of education and training as a way out of poverty.

Some were raised in the tradition or not, but feel that all things being equal, this is a good career choice. And that of course is their right.

Others are there because the other option was jail.

I am told, but do not know, that in the midst of battle, soldiers fight not for country or “so that you don’t have to” but solely for each other, as the series Band of Brothers pointed out so well. Such emotions are no doubt noble and right to those who face death.

But since I am not of the persuasion that most wars are necessary, and certainly not these wars of late, I find myself in some quandary about what this thanks is for. Why should I thank the one who deliberately chose to do this thing that I do not agree with? For in the end, wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq arguably have made life here in the US more dangerous rather than less so. Simply the number who hate us has grown exponentially.

There is a movie I believe called What if They Gave a War and Nobody Came? It became a popular slogan during Vietnam. One must ask, what if? It might be that the government would re-institute the draft, but Vietnam proved how powerful a populace can be when it sets its mind against the will of a warmongering government. So is it not legitimate for me to argue that you have no right  to expect my thanks for doing what I deem ultimately doing more harm than good, both to my country and to untold other human beings?

Why should I thank you for doing what you chose to do for your own interests (which I may or may not sympathise with) and which harms what I perceive as legitimate goals of this country?

And who are you to complain of me? The ones who will most vociferously are those who wave flags, wear pins, and speak of supporting our troops. You are also the same ones who support your local congressperson in voting no for food stamps, improvements in the VA and veterans benefits and unemployment benefits. Yet, significant percentages of veterans need food stamps, and they comprise something like twenty-five percent of our homeless. The VA is unable to adequately care for the tens of thousands who return wounded or who like my husband retain injuries not obvious to the casual observer. Yet you do not “support” them in these tangible ways.

So please save your criticism and look in the mirror at your own failings. As the writer of the NYTimes editorial said, you can’t get off the hook for you utter lack of being involved in war by such a simple trite means. Face the fact that unless you or yours was an actual soldier, you haven’t suffered one second for all this killing, and you haven’t thought about it either, other than to issue forth your platitudes.

Some of us bewail this killing, and the victims are not only Americans but Afghanis and Iraqis just for starters. The list gets longer as we have to also bear some responsibility for the killing done by Middle Eastern peoples to each other because of our meddling throughout the region. And we sit in our homes and schools and places of work and dine on steak and watch football, and all the other niceties of life in America while millions suffer for what is being done in our name and in the name of those we support.

We have reaped the whirlwind and now face a group of men and women who have no fear of dying to bring about an ideology they believe in no matter how insane it actually is. And if we don’t come to some equally compelling ideology to counteract it, we will find ourselves ill-equipped to save humanity from itself.

It is clear what the war hawks are selling. It’s what they have sold since the days of Thermopylae.  The question is will we ever see beyond the spear, the catapult, the tank, the bomb and the sniper?

I’m not asking you to agree with me. I’m asking you to dialogue. This is the human conversation that needs to be  held. I am offering no solutions because I don’t have them. But I do believe that we owe it to our children and their children to make the attempt.

All I can do is promise a veteran this: I will honor every dead man and woman killed by war. I will vote for every improvement in VA services and benefits. I will do my best to find real solutions to hunger and housing, and will vote AND PAY TAXES to support public assistance to all in need. I will vote in elections to support peaceful solutions over war. And I honestly truly am deeply sad for your suffering whether it is apparent to all or hidden in the recesses of your mind. I will be a voice for the voiceless. I will seek to help make all boats rise.

We are better than this. We have to be.

 

 

 

 

Violence and Pacifism, An Either Or Proposition?

Tags

morality, torture, War

Let’s be clear. I have no answers here. I have questions and beliefs, and that is all. I’m not suggesting what we should do, other than have this conversation, no matter how unpleasant and uncomfortable it makes us.

Anyone who suggests there are easy answers, or who whats to “leave it to the experts” and sweep it under the rug of “not my pay grade” be damned. You can’t avoid your complicity by refusing to be a part of the issue.

The discussion of war/pacifism, torture, rules of war, and so on, have confronted the human mind since the beginning of human interactions. While a certain defense of one’s personal integrity seems genetically normal, beyond that, we argue through the ages about how much is too much, when, and how?

As I said, there are no easy answers. It is for instance easy for me to come down on the side of pacifism, since it is my natural proclivity to choose life over harm to every and all creatures. Yet as a carnivores, I am immediately confronted with my hypocrisy, though I can respond quickly with “well exactly what do you propose to do with pigs and cattle, turn them out to fend for themselves as easy prey for predator animals?” Not your problem?

The world consists of very few individuals who will willingly stand still in the face of a direct lethal attack, and say, “do what you must,  I will not lift a hand to defend myself.” And by doing so, do you contribute to the violence of another?

Both these are acts of violence whether you accept them or not. A strict pacifist can neither consume meat nor defend themselves against attack.

Trying to cut them out of the mix, and then say, well all else, I come down on the side of no violence is just as fraught with exceptions. One can, and I do, argue that I will not kill 2 to save 10, but figure that fate must be allowed to play out as it will. But turn that figure into killing 10 to save 10 million, and you see the dilemma. Now it looks quite a bit different. Surely Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified on such grounds.

The Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strike proved a disaster and surely violates in principle and act, the idea of “just war” theory. The Bush Doctrine might prove workable in the hands of a bright, moral being, but proved horrific in the hands of a stupid man egged on by arguably evil men at his side.

Just war “sounds” right, and surely has the imprimatur of the Catholic Church, but is it really just? How about all that talk of “rules of war”? Does not tidying up the killing to MOSTLY the perpetrators just prolong what would otherwise be so horrendous as to cause cessation? Do we appease the warmongers by pursuing military targets and not civilian? Was not some of the reasoning behind the US entry into WWII the magnitude of the killing? Was it not motivated in part by the inhumanity of the German war machine with its blitzkriegs, and the indiscriminate unfairness of the Japanese “surprise?”  Would it all have been better if they had followed the “rules?”

It is not as ugly to push buttons from Colorado to kill convoys in Yemen, where yes, we allow for “collateral” damage? Would it not be better to force humans to face up to the bodies they produce? Was not part of the argument about pilots the nicety of not having to see the mangled flesh they produced by their bombs?

Torture has been in the human playbook for as long at least as recorded history. We burned and drew, quartered, and stocked, long before waterboarding came along. Technology brought us advances which brought electrodes, cattle prods, chain saws, drills, and a host of other household items to the torture table. We justify all this of course by the need for intelligence.

We do the unthinkable because it is necessary to protect the greater good, so we tell ourselves. Our television screens are full nowadays of “heroes” who regularly break, stab, beat, human bodies in the quest for the information necessary to “save lives” and protect our way of life.

What way of life are we protecting in the end? The life that condones and is willing to survive as a result of such human acts?

Where is the line? And who calls it? Is Jack Bauer the one you want to decide? Or a feckless Congress who measures everything by political leverage and opportunism, all too often limited to their own personal professional lives? Do you want to throw the dice on an individual you vote for when the entire game is now rigged by the rich and powerful whose interests are almost never going to be yours and who live by the credo, that the birds do not consider the interests of the ants they eat?

Are we any better than they when we do what they do in the name of stopping them? Do we want to be better than they? Do we care beyond our own hides in the end? If not, then we need to stop flooding the world with our proclamations that we are moral and they  are not. We need to stop accusing them of violations when we are committing them at an even faster pace.

There is a reason we armed the Taliban against the Russians and then proclaimed them our enemy after 9-11. There is a similar reason interred the Japanese during WWII. We arm the bad guys all over South America because they agree to our long-term goals, while their peoples writhe in agony from the tortures they employ. We enlist countries with “softer” rules to be our locations where we can avoid our rules of law, and mistreat humans in the name of saving democracy.

I say all this and then I sit with my head in my hands because I don’t know where to come down on the oft used scenario: you have in custody the man who knows where the hydrogen bomb has been planted in NYC. You have six hours to find it. If it goes off, millions will die, and the country may well fall. Well? torture him or not?

Perhaps the scenario is unfair, perhaps using the worst-case scenario is unnecessary and unfair. But once you allow for it, then how about Springfield? Or Kalamazoo? How small does the scale have to get before we say, too far?

Does justice demand something else? Does it demand an all or nothing? Or does it ask us to submit to a conclusion unpalatable but possibly real? As long as humans care about living, we have to admit we are natural killing machines, and do it as efficiently as possible with as little collateral damage (innocent death) as possible?

Is there a philosophy that can cut through all this and make it a simple argument that cannot be denied?

I surely wish for one, but so far, I have not found it.

I remain sickened. I know what I would stop, but I can’t give you a logical play it out to the end answer that works for all things in all times.

If you can, please tell me.

But damn don’t avoid the issue, for we all are complicit whether you like it or not.

War

Tags

editorial, gun issues, War

It’s been a year since Sandy Hook. It’s been a frustrating year for the most part for those of us who see the proliferation of guns in our society as so obviously insane that it begs the question that we are still having these conversations at all.

I’m not going to bore you with statistics. If you want to see what has transpired in terms of our response to the horror of Sandy Hook and Aurora and all the hundreds of children and adults who have died from gun violence, go here. It ain’t pretty. More loosening of gun regulations, the NRA with more money, fewer people having guns but more guns in a growing minority of very frightening and frightened people.

No, today I want to talk about war. After all, much of the argument around guns stems from our ideas of war doesn’t it? Was not the 2nd Amendment formulated so that states could call up their citizens in the face of invaders of one nature or another? How that all got bollixed into some personal freedom to carry a high-powered rifle to shopping malls is beyond my comprehension, but that’s not the issue either today.

It’s war itself.

War is the admission that we have progressed not so very far from the plains of Africa and the caves of France. We are still a species who settles disputes or responds to fear with weaponry and killing. Some suggest it’s in our genes, others that it is learned behavior, a product of our environment. As I have said many a time, no war ever ended war, though the motto of one, WWI was just that: the war to end all wars. It was but twenty years later that the greatest war of all occurred. So how did that work for ya?

My views about war are and were shaped by three things mainly: a book, a book, and a TV show. Sorry right-wingers, my passivity is not the product of elite liberal universities. No my opinion, my dedication to peace was formulated from reading the Bible, a book by Norman Mailer called The Naked and the Dead, and Star Trek, episode 23, A Taste of Armageddon.

As to the Bible, who can not be moved to ponder the following:

“But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. . .(MT 5:39-40)

This is Jesus, and while there are some interpretations that suggest that Jesus was in fact making it impossible for the aggressor to accomplish the second strike, the import of the words are clear. Returning force to force is not the answer. Regardless of how we might come down on the issue of faith or religion, surely Jesus and His teachings are worthy of emulation. If they are, then war is unthinkable, nothing more than returning force for force on a massive scale.

Mailer wrote The Naked and the Dead about his experiences in the Philippines during WWII. He wrote it in 1948. Say what you will, it paints a picture of war in decidedly unheroic, unglamorous terms. In a word, war is truly hell. It is dehumanizing, fear is palpable, death is only a shot away. Death surrounds and envelopes the characters. It’s unbearably hot and humid, it stinks, it’s lonely and it’s boring, and death stalks. It is shudderingly realistic. It would make NO one run down and sign up.

The Star Trek episode involved a planet that has suffered from war with another planet within its system for years, so many years that they were both in dire straits. If the war did not end, both planets would be utterly destroyed. So they hit upon a solution. They agree to a computer simulation of war actions. The computer assesses the “battle” and assigns casualties. A lottery system calls up the victims on each planet to report to “disintegration” chambers to voluntarily suicide. They have been doing this for years too, while their infrastructure is undamaged and life goes on.

Kirk and company put an end to the computer and the resultant real damage brings chaos and terror. Forced to confront the realities of war, Kirk hopes that they will rush to the peace table. The lesson is all too real: remove the overt ugliness of war, and war will go on forever.

Last week was another anniversary of Pearl Harbor, a so-called infamous day, because the Japanese made a sneak attack while diplomats were engaged in discussions in Washington on how to avoid war between them. This was viewed as a violation of the “rules of war”.

Things have not changed much. It is considered a violation of the “rules of war” to bomb civilians. It is considered the same to use certain types of weapons, such as chemical or biological ones.

I have to wonder at such limitations in general. For I truly get the logic of war being so God-blessed awful, so ugly, so painful, and so damaging that we will do nearly ANYTHING to avoid it or stop it. My husband tells me that I am a student of Sun Tzu:

Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live.

I take that to mean, that if you put the utter fear of death into your enemy ,  he will race to the peace table. My husband tells me that there must be rules of war, otherwise there is not path to peace. He may well be right.

I prefer to make war so ugly that no one considers it a viable option. I am a pacifist.

Left to my own devices, I would allow people the possession of paint guns to stalk and “shoot”  game. I would allow people to go to shooting ranges to shoot targets. I would allow no other weapon ownership.

I am a pacifist.

I would declare gun manufacturers and shops to be “eminent domain”, paying them a fair price for their companies and giving them free education in another line of work.

I am a pacifist.

You are free to disagree, but you will follow my rules in my kingdom. And they say that Obama is a socialist! HA!

Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/suntzu402344.html#3qejOVy3lD5FFvIg.99

Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/suntzu402344.html#3qejOVy3lD5FFvIg.99

Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/suntzu402344.html#3qejOVy3lD5FFvIg.99

Items to Make You Queen of the Watercooler Next Week

Tags

brain, dinosaurs, education, evolution, GOP, humans, life, meaning, philosophers, physics, quantum mechanics, teabaggers, War, what you should read, words

See that’s me. I mean, imagine a woman instead of a man, and that’s me. I’m spend hours reading just so that you don’t have to. I mean you can if you want to of course. God forbid that fine education goes to waste, but I have burned up the Intertubes in an effort to find all the news that you missed.

And I read it all. And some of it was crap upon further inspection, and so I ditched it. And the rest, well you gotta know this stuff. Especially if you want all your friends and aunt Tilde to think you are just a real smart ass. (meant in the kindest way of course)

So, let’s get to it, in no particular order.

Paul Krugman has a fine op-ed in the NYTimes detailing the crazy party, AKA, the GOP. What he says is very true. The GOP argument for deliberately toying with the very health of our economy goes something like this: I have put a gun to your head and demanded your money or your life. If you refuse to give me your money, it’s your fault that you’re dead. I gave you the option to live after all!

On the other hand, this may all go to prove that one can actually get admitted to Harvard and get through it with flying colors and still be utterly and profoundly stupid. Ted Cruz may be set to be one of the most spectacular blazing super nova that sputtered out in record time in the history of horses asses, err, super novae.

¶

If it is true that humans have an individualized predisposition to violence, is it equally true that humans in community have a predisposition to violence in the form of war? It seems many assume this to be true. But evolutionary biologist, David P. Barash argues that this may in fact not be true. The latter may be only a capacity rather than an adaptation. Want to learn more? If you don’t think it matters, think again. We base our defense systems on assumptions of what other groups are likely to do. If we assume all people are driven to war to achieve ends, we build a different defense system than if we do not. And we’ve sure got the tax bills to reflect that.

¶

I know that most of you are just thrilled every time you get a chance to read about quantum mechanics, I mean what self-respecting grease monkey or grocery check out lady  isn’t obsessed with the working of the universe at the extra-tiny scale? Ever heard of an aplituhedron? I bet not. It all means that all the complicated mathematical twists and turns are eliminated as well as the super computer to do the computations. Now little Bobby can explain the most complicated sub-particle interaction with nothing more than a pencil and paper again!

If you are going, uhh, okay so what? Well, you all know that physicists have been since the beginning of time, trying to join the big universe with the small universe (macro and micro forces?) and it has just never fit well, and well, the don’t call it the elegant universe for nothing. Everybody who knows this stuff figured the answer would eventually be simple. This might be it. I’m not a physicist as you might have guessed by now.

I mean this is simply delicious early fall reading. Get to it.  🙂

¶

Now I know you will love this one. There is a new book out there that you probably will want to get. I can imagine about half a dozen of you will be on Amazon in moments. It’s called Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing, by Melissa Mohr. Colin Burrows review of the book is worth the reading. Now read it your grouthead gnat snapper!

Steven Pinker from Harvard has written a book that details how we are becoming less violent as societies over time. He also argues that the world would be better led by science than by the humanities. Some beg to differ. A great essay from The Berlin Review of Books, and Gloria Origgi, A Reply to Steven Picker’s Scientific Manifesto.

¶

Love words? Lots of words? Okay.

The American Scholar has a fun essay called Is There a Word for That? Words are being made up all the time, but you knew that. Want to know who created some words we now take for granted? Who is responsible for katydid? Or neologize ? Or Anglophobia? Blurb? Gerrymander? Bromide? Oh I bet I got your attention now.

Similarly, if you have ever remembered the quote but not the quoter, and the more you looked the harder it got? Who Really Sad That? You would be surprised at how often we get the attribution wrong. Amaze your friends by correcting their quotes!

“Whoever is not a socialist when he is 20 has no heart; whoever is not a conservative when he is 30 has no brain.” Usually attributed to Churchill. Actually? Nobody knows.

Enter the fine world of WAS–Wrongly Attributed Statements.

¶

I betcha thought that the human mind created the gear, that round thingie that has “teeth” and meshes with other objects similarly constructed? That together makes things turn and other things go up and down and maybe side to side? You would be wrong. Scientists have found a gear in nature for the very first time. And YOU are some of the first non-specialists to know that, so don’t you feel so very proud?

A cute little guy called a planthopper (he has a very important scientific name you need not memorize) has a couple of gears in his back legs that mesh together and then when he calls on them to, spin backward sending him off on a leap across the earth that looks pretty fun. I’m sure it made sense to him too in terms of escaping predators or getting up as high as he wanted to feed. It’s called evolution folks. There is a little embedded video so you can watch him go!

¶

Must a life be meaningful in order to be happy? Do we prefer meaningfulness over happiness if we can’t have both? They are not the same by the way. Happiness in part is getting what you want or need in life. Meaningfulness can have zero to do with this. Similarly happy people report that health is essential, yet health has nothing to do with meaningful lives. Happiness is apparent in the now, while meaningfulness tends to be a future assessment. This is a long article but one that raises lots of questions to think about. Well worth your time.

¶

Nautilus brings us the ever-beloved essay on dinosaurs. The discovery and explanation of our bird predecessors have had a varied history as scientists working from small numbers of bones, continually revised their thinking of these creatures over time. As is usual, it is the unsung tiny dinosaurs that have done the most to correct our understanding over time of what these cuties looked like and how they lived. For the kid in all of us, this article will satisfy. I still wish there had been Brontosaurus, they were so neat!

¶

With the advent of all the cute devices we have now from phones to tablets to readers to computers, all with calendars and reminders of one sort or another, there is less and less reason to have to memorize things. Nobody has to write down a phone number or address. The call is registered, switch it to contacts and it’s saved forever. Enter an address in your Google maps app, and you don’t need to record that address again. And maybe, just maybe that’s a good thing. Memorization may be a much over-rated thing. Curious? Read on.

¶

How many late night gab fests have lingered long into the night over the ever-present question– Why was Spinoza excommunicated anyway? I mean this guy was ostracized with a big O, like in members of the congregation being order to be no closer that four cubits to the man. That’s some serious excommunication! Worse, payment of a fine served to dissolve most bans. Spinoza’s was life long. Spinoza himself never spoke of the harem, most of his works and fame came long after it. What is as interesting as why is by whom: Jews who had escaped forced Catholicism in Spain and Portugal and once free in Amsterdam, practiced a form of Judaism that was anything but normative. All in all, quite fascinating.

Happy reading everyone, and to all a good day!

War–What is it Good For? Just Ask Fox

Tags

Humor, satire, War

Lest you be whistling a happy tune as you prepare for the big present day followed by another binge food extravaganza, well stop that.

We are a country at war.

We like war.

If we don’t have real wars, we make some up.

It makes us feel securely tied to reality to know that we have amassed our troops and are marching to fight the enemy. Them, us,–we like that ying yangy thing. If there is peace popping out somewhere, well stomp it down with a war!

There is no better place to find your fair share of hate mongering animosity than at Fox, that station of the nation with room for one more war if you can’t find one that suits you.

We got your war on Christmas and we make that a very religiousy one. See, there really isn’t a war on Christmas at all. Everybody gets to buy their tree and their trimmings and spend more than they should on crap nobody much needs but likes to have for show and tell–“he went to Jareds!” which means he LOVES me. See how that goes? Nobody is stopping anybody from doing that.

But those who claim exclusive rights to being really really Christian, which kinda means they like the words but not the actions of being a real one, well they want God spread all over everything, so it doesn’t look so dang Pagan to them, which it was before the Christian followers usurped the day for themselves. Got that? so you can put a crèche in your yard or on your mantle, but it doesn’t count unless it’s at the County courthouse, so that PROVES the government is all Christian and not *gasp* something else, or non-committal, or even *shhh* atheistically inclined.

After the holidays, we pack that baby away and don’t bring it out again until next year.

We got your war on drugs. This war has been going on for decades now.

This war has stopped nobody from buying drugs or selling drugs.

It provides a job for a whole bunch of cops and attorneys and judges and court personnel, to say nothing of prisons. It gives most of them their reason for being.

Fox thought that it would be a good idea to announce a war on men. It seemed to fall right in line with the fact that the GOP (grey old POOPS) who are mostly white men, got a really bad kick in the prostate in November. So why not just make men across the board the victims? And non-other than Phyllis Schafley’s niece decided she could (on behalf of white dudes) carry the banner of wicked women and their jaunty breasts who had beaten down the delicate sensibilities of the male animal.

That was more of a laugh than a fact, but Fox don’t ever care no nothin’ about no facts. Never has and never will. It makes a good story and everybody knows that those radical women are really just lezzies anyway. The double-wide boys really like this kind of victim status and their big hair wives and girly friends do too. I’ll drink to that!

Now, if you want are ready for that, you are probably ready to buy that there is a war on Christianity itself. Not just old Christmas time Christianity, but the whole enchilada as we say here in New Mexico. Ya see, it is not nearly enough to be by far the majority in the country. The mean old minority (mostly atheists) keeps secularizing the country against its collective will.

Again, nobody is being stopped from going to church, or teaching your kids that God hates homosexuals and feminists. Nobody is stopping your from standing on the corner and shouting that hell and damnation are coming your way unless you repent. Nobody is bothering you at all if you are Christian, but because after all, part of being Christian is the right and god-given duty to shove your version of it down every throat you come across, you feel rejected when nobody wants to be like you want them to be. Got that?

So, you see HOLLYWOOD and LEFTISTS, and all that entails (which is socialism, fascism, or communism–your choice), is to blame because they don’t live as SOME Christians feel life should be lived.

There is then the war on terror. Which is a heck of a thing, since I have yet to see a rifle take out an idea at 200 yards. Terror being an IDEA rather than a person (unless you are the above stated Christian of a certain type, then Terror is anything Muslim).

We fight the war on terror mostly with drones, instead of with shovels and bulldozers. We don’t engage in IDEA sharing, we threaten annihilation to those who we perceive believe the wrong things.

The war on terror will continue for the foreseeable future. We will never win it, because that would mean we wouldn’t have any place to spend our money which is now devoted to military hardware, and of course the necessary spy business.

The is a war on poverty, but everybody gave up on that a long time ago. In fact the religious right smugly reminds us that Jesus said that a little bit of poverty is the norm, and we should let good Christians prove they are good Christians by allowing the poor to be “helped” now and again by these good Christians. But poverty should never be taken care of by the government because that is cheating, and unfair. And after all, survival goes to the fittest! but not the point that I came from no monkey. Now, that is tooo far.

There is a war of class, which is perpetrated by the leftist commies in this country who want to take everything I have so they can have it instead. They are just lazy. One side wants to end this war by making everyone have an equal chance at success and guaranteeing a minimum standard for every human. The other side wants to fight in this war to preserve their right to be declared “better than you at least.”

There is a war against women, which isn’t really a war at all according to Fox, but only the natural caring loving nurturing need of men to care for their women folk who are a bit too soft in the head to care for themselves. They are prone to sleepin’ around if not controlled, and a man needs to know that his kids are well, HIS. So we gotta control women when they aren’t in eye-shot.

There is a war on marriage, which everyone knows is soo damn successful that everyone is doing it multiple times. And everyone knows that if more people do it, in the wrong combinations of genders, then, well heck, it’s a worthless thing. You do understand THAT surely.

There are lots more wars, but I’m in need of some R & R about now, before I return to the front lines.

Related articles

• Charlie Brown, the War on Christmas, and what it means for the culture-at-large (genomega1.wordpress.com)
• Kimberley Guilfoyle Says Christianity Is Under Attack! (newshounds.us)

Step Back a Moment

Tags

conservativism, Election 2012, Islamophobia, Military, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, science, War

Hold on there dude, this is not a diatribe against men.

Just making a subtle point in a loud way. (Can you do that?)

We are wont, as people of the moment, to define all events given the world as it is, and as it seems to us reasonable, given our own knowledge and experiences. Which is nothing more than saying, we judge events from the facts which are most immediately at hand.

We don’t take the long view. Unless we are well versed in say, HISTORY, we often think that what we are experiencing is brand new and of first impression. And if we are versed in pseudo-history, we get even more confused.

However, after this many eons of human existence, there is really little that is new. Most is simply recycled problems from times past, cast in new garments.

So when we look about us and think that conservatives are the most idiotic of creatures ever to naturally occur by the arbitrary meeting of egg and sperm, well we are probably really really wrong.

There is a really excellent article at The Chronicle about this whole phenomenon. What is conservatism? What it seeks to protect on the surface is far from what drives it underneath. It is driven by fear that the “natural order” will be forever upturned. And this touches in the end, the most basic and personal of relationships.

It is an article well worth your time.

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.

What this suggests, is that the conservative cannot enjoy the familiar and seek the unknown. Rather the unknown is a threat to the familiar, and must be opposed. Oddly enough, the opposition might well entail a type of radicalism that would be quite familiar to the left. If, the article argues, the OWS movement has real staying power, it might just force the conservatives of the day to that radicalism which does in the end, lead to real creative energy.

¶

Oh goodie! *bounce* *bounce* The LeHaye’s (Tim writes all those Left Behind books that tell who will and will not be going to hell very soon) have decided to endorse the Newtster. And I can just hear God heaving a great sigh of relief. Or was he passing wind?

¶

Obama wishes to consolidate a some government agencies. But our dearly beloved little guy Ricky P, well he wants to just shut ’em all down. Remember when he forgot which three he would abolish? Those being Commerce, Education and Energy? Well now he changed them to Commerce, Energy and Interior. Or he got confused again. Does anyone care? As Juanita would say, bless his heart.

¶

Mittens handlers are crying foul about Ricky’s and Newt’s lambasting their plastic doll over his Bain exploits. “Doin’ the Democrats work for ’em” they squawk. Hey guys, you been doing my work for me for months. What’s new? I can write these posts in well under two hours, and that’s just trying the find the MOST outrageous crap you guys spew.

¶

Walking it back just a bit.

About the video of Marines and the Afghan dead.

The Contrarian reminded me of one salient fact I had not considered.

How do you train a human being to degrade another human being enough to kill them, and still be enough human to honor the dead?

This is not an excuse, nor do I find what was done any less reprehensible. But we ask humans to do inhuman things. There are unintended consequences to that you may be sure. Just look at our suicide and homeless rates among veterans if you have any doubt.

¶

I confess to remaining mostly dumbfounded by why regular old working types who for whatever reason think that tying their lunch pail to the GOP wagon will bring them the good life, are stonehead deaf when it comes to things that really shouldn’t impact their wallets.

I speak of science, and why the average TeaNutz®ian rusted iron anvil for a brain, Bud-guzzling, balogna-shoveling, NASCAR cheering, ass-crack showin’, gut-protruding, trailer-trash parkin’, person also disses climate change, basic economic theory, real history, and virtually anything else that smacks of empirical rationality. Evolution excepted. Evolutionary pushback seems utterly tied to one’s religious theories, the more literal one responds to the written sacred texts, the more adamant one is that evolution is a satanically offered hoax.

Well, those who study these things suggest that the response is largely visceral, and has little to do with logic, but rather is something that is the result of psychological forces that we are not particularly aware of. In other words, we are just wired that way.

That’s not particularly comforting is it?

¶

Well, it’s off to leftovers and of course listening to my beloved talk non-stop about THE game, to be played sometime this weekend.

Sigh. I carry a heavy burden.

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Honoring All Who Serve

Tags

America, the human condition, Veterans Day, War

It is not who we are but what we have become.

I shall remain firmly convinced of that, for to conclude that we are violent by nature, by DNA, by proclivity, is to have no hope. We are doomed.

Looking upon the picture featured today, gives us a historical perspective of war in this country. But truly, we can, without any trouble at all, look deep into the past, and see a pattern of war that has existed nearly as far back as we have recorded our collective lives.

Thucydides wrote of the Peloponnesian Wars, and Caesar wrote of the Wars with Gaul. Numberous others have written of our World Wars, our Wars of Roses, and our Revolutions. We have our “remember the Maine” and “remember the Alamo”. We have iconic photos of raising flags over distant lands, and of naked children running down roads burned by napalm.

We have seen the crematoria and the mounds of human bones. We have seen people hacked and beaten, and fired up. We have seen the horrors on our television screens, and we have thought that we “knew” war.

We have not of course. We have not breathed it in, have not suffered the stench of rot, have not see the maggots and last vestiges of  life turned ghost. We have not had to pick up and bury. We have not felt the raw sharp pain of utter terror. We have no gathered our friend, no longer recognizable, to our breast and cried in some surreal moment when our minds disconnect and we cannot make our brains function.

But they have. Those that serve us by keeping all this horror at bay for us. They allow us to worry about what to fix for dinner, and whether these pair of shoes is a good match for the new skirt, or whether we should invest in a new coffeepot. They dig in the dirt, and erase the signs of death and inhumanity while we flip through channels and choose the movie fare for the evening.

They are in uniform sometimes, and sometimes not. They act out of patriotism, or out of raw need to help create a better life for themselves or their families. They suspend their lives, offering up months and years to be used as fodder in the great war machines, declared or otherwise. They point weapons at other humans and  in their minds create the scenario that makes it correct for them, at that moment to pull a trigger, ending the life of another human.

We see some of this carnage as honorable, and some as not. It depends in large part on which side of the street you are standing. For each side, in our side-less slaughter sees itself as some moral keeper of the right. Whether led by ideology or theology, we all, warrior and spectator, develop explanations for why this must be.

And of course, there is no explanation worthy of human beings. We are taking the easy way out, which makes it all the more a crime that we continue. We kill out of fear, naked and ugly. We accuse others of greed, whether it be monetary or simple power. But in the end, it comes down to fear, as most of our negative anxieties do. We kill because it is simply the fastest way to end the fear that plagues us. It is a temporary solution, but at least it is one. And by the time that all of it has fallen apart again, it will be the next generation who will bear the new burden.

It has gone on so long, so very long that we know no other way. Would that some alien race would step in and take away our weapons of war and force us to face the truth. We will perish together or survive together. Together is the operative word here.

 We are a species that is communal in nature. That is our nature. We are not lone carnivores, coming together only for quick and frantic mating rituals to perpetuate our race. We cannot survive alone, physically or emotionally. We are in this together.

We have a planet, that does not have arbitrary lines of demarcation. There are no borders other than the human constructs we create to separate ourselves from ourselves. Resources are strewn across the landscape of the planet in an arbitrary yet functional basis dependent upon climate and pure luck. Nobody “owns” it simply by standing upon it. Attempts to do so, lead to fear on someone else’s part, and then to violence to protect or secure one’s well-being.

This has all been said before.

I do honor those who have given “the last full measure” yet, I cannot help but cry out in dismay that we never seem to get on with it. We are like a needle caught in a scratch on an old vinyl record–unable to free ourselves from ourselves as the needle cannot jump forward and continue the melody.

Remember all who suffer from violence this day, but especially those who offer themselves to protect you, to give you a better life. The mechanism is shit, but the motive is pure. Honor the motive.

**Please remember that our veterans have higher unemployment, are a larger percentage of our homeless, suffer more from alcoholism and drug abuse, and have more psychiatric problems that are warranted by their actual numbers. We need to help our men and women who have been damaged by war–that is all of them.

Amen.

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• The Art of War: Honoring the Fallen for a Lifetime (lightbox.time.com)
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