Worrisome Trepidation:
Maybe I spend too much time, of late, mulling over ethical behavior and ethical politics. It would have been better had I spent this much time mulling away at an earlier age. Maybe I kind of always have, but it takes time for me to process input and reach conclusions. Plus, youth is characterized too often by personal progress and blind patriotism. Americans were always the good guys and our leaders always morally above reproach. If our government said we had to invade Vietnam to save freedom for the world and protect America from harm, it was good enough for me (but not good enough for me not to seek a deferment from the draft). I and Barry Goldwater thought more bombing was the answer, more will power to stay the course, etc.
Now that I am older and useless in terms of being part of any solution, I realize how relative all this bullshit is. And finally I can do the math. If killing 2000 Americans in the World Trade Center bombings (what Al Queda would call an act of war) is a tragedy, then jailing for more than a decade 450,000 young poor people for selling us our recreational drugs is, if I can do the math, a tragedy 225 times as great. If Hussein killing up to 20,000 of his own people over a ten year period is an unacceptable atrocity, then a Sudanese government which is about to genocidally kill 1.5 million in the next three months, is an atrocity 8 times as great.
For the richest country on the earth to have 39.9 million people in poverty---a population greater than that of this country just 150 years ago, then to me this is a stunning indictment of our priorities and values.
And I am finally tired of this insidious campaign to always paint Americans as somehow the ethical superior of other groups, whether it be one class of people in htis country against another, or one religious group compared to another, or one nation against another. Bush always likes, as only Bush can do with such inane simplicity, to target an atrocity committed by others and boast, "This is not what America is about, we don't kill innocent people", etc. When the religious right sing a hymn they can feel their moral superiority raising their righteousness to new levels; no logical thought process is required or desired. I understand all this because I have been there, but we would be far better off to accept the premise that human nature is human nature, that the fight for justice must take precedence over selfish individualistic or patriotic greed. It is not clear at all to me that the Al Queda bombing the 'world Trade Centers and killing innocents,in an attempt to get our military bases out of their countries, is much different than our wiping out entire Indian villages because we wanted their land, or wiping out entire Vietnam villages because we suspected they sympathized with our enemies, or creating urban ghettoes across our land in an attempt to save the rest of us from the personal responsibility to control our own use of drugs. It hardly takes a genius to understand why the rest of the world is increasingly and very rapidly viewing Americans as arrogant self serving intolerant terrorists in our own right, and in our own peculiar ways. The same pride Bush instills in his followers, not unlike the pride Hitler instilled in his followers, is frightening other nations across the globe. Where they ask, is the American they once knew?
The same crowd that goes apoplectic over abortion or allowing people to control their own dying process, or thinks putting to death a human 'vegetable' is murder, thinks little, if at all, about real live fully conscious PERSONS who will be genocidally killed by the millions, or live PERSONS by the millions in abject poverty not too far from their doorsteps, or real LIVE CONSCIOUS KIDS receiving but one third of tax monies for their education compared to the education of their own kids, or find no problem with their own kid getting a fine for using a drug while the kid who sold it to him, as the only means to put money in his pocket, goes to jail for more than a decade, or finds anything wrong with other kids or adults having no health insurance. When this crowd begins to worry about REAL PERSONS, not living cells with the potential to be a person, or living cells that will never again be a person, then maybe they can argue they have their priorities right. Then everybody's kid is precious, not just their own kids; when every couple in love are precious, not just their own choice of a lover; when the religious beliefs of all are protected, not their own religious beliefs made the law of the land; when this crowd expands their feelings of warmth and affection past their own family unit, then, and only then, does family values have a meaning inclusive of all humanity----all variants of family units---not just their own particular family unit. It puzzles me how some of the finest and best among us (in their own personal lives) can end up so oblivious to the richness of diversity and the pressing needs of others. I have news for them, I doubt God is blessing American right now. More likely HE/SHE is pissed off.
