Violence At Every Level:
Over 150 years ago this country was mired with the issue of slavery, and although most every other civilized country had outlawed slavery, it took one of the bloodiest Civil Wars in History for us to shake the issue. Today we are mired in an equally insidious and pervasive issue---the use of violence to solve conflicts, mostly to protect U.S. corporate control of economic interests at home and abroad. It is interesting to note much of the logic against slavery applies to this current obsession with violence as a means to resolve conflict.
Back then opponents of slavery made part of their case against slavery this way: "Slavery degraded everyone and everything it touched" They talked about "the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both the slave and the slave holders" "It turned capable and intelligent slaves into thoughtless ciphers, but it also turned humane and decent whites into cruel and bitter overlords. Slavery made ignorance a virtue and literacy a crime. It degraded Christianity, transforming believers into sinners and churches into temples of Satan. It degraded the law by unleashing lawlessness on the plantations, where rape was not a crime and murder went unpunished. Everything slavery came into contact with became brutal and uncivilized.... Slavery framed our civil and criminal code....nominated our Presidents, judges, and diplomatic agents...shaped our morality". At the time Frederick Douglass wrote: " The best friend of a nation is he who most faithfully rebukes her for her sins----and her worst enemy, who, under the specious and popular garb of patriotism, seeks to excuse, palliate, and defend these sins".
The same logic could be applied to our current obsession with violence as a way to solve conflict. Violence degrades everyone and everything it touches. There is a brutalizing effect of violence upon both the recipients and the attackers. It turns capable and intelligent opponents into thoughtless terrorists, but it also turns humane and decent citizens of our own country, or our own soldiers into cruel and bitter blind patriots. The use of violence degrades Christianity and all major religions, transforming believers into sinners and churches into temples of Satan. Violence degrades the law by unleashing lawlessness across our land and the land of our victims, where rape of foreign citizens is not a crime and murder of innocent civilians go unpunished. Everything violence comes into contact with becomes brutal and uncivilized, including the torture of prisoners. Violence now overwhelms our civil and criminal codes---it helps nominate our Presidents, judges, and diplomatic agents, it shapes our morality. The best friend of our nation today is he/she who most faithfully rebukes this penchant to use violence to solve conflict---and our country's worst enemy is he who, under the specious and popular garb of patriotism seeks to excuse,palliate, and defend this use of violence, violence often justified by lies and distortions such as calling the violence an army of freedom fighters.
Violence at the highest level, perpetuated by Presidents and Congressman and Clergy, removes the restraint of citizens to denounce violence as a means to solve their own conflicts and anger. No civilized society, mired in violence, can survive as a free nation. No nation can long get away with attacking sovereign nations or establishing military bases to prop up 'puppet' regimes, or selling weapons to governments who are oppressing their own people. When global polls indicate that the United States is seen now as the biggest terrorist nation on earth by the most people, it seems time to re-evaluate our values and priorities and methodologies---and wonder whether it is even now too late to change. "Yes we can" is by no means a certainty.
There is no level of our society or, increasingly, any country on the earth, which is escaping the insidious pervasive violence. We are now mired in it up to our neck. In just the past few days we read of a Canadian bus passenger who kills, for no apparent reason, a bus passenger by stabbing him to death, cutting off his head, and eating some of his flesh; a husband is sentenced to life imprisonment for attacking his wife and storing her in a storage locker where, half frozen, she starves to death; an American citizen is stabbed to death by a Chinese citizen at the Olympics---but no big deal, after all, the murder rate in Chicago alone is up 18% this year and rarely a weekend passes where the number of murders in Chicago alone is not in the teens; a man in Florida is arrested with an arsenal of weapons for threatening to assassinate Obama; an American Amusement Park opens an attraction in which people can put in their money and watch simulated water boarding; the number of deaths in Afghanistan reaches record levels; nations ponder what to do with millions of Iraqi refugees driven out of Iraq from the level of violence and threats of violence; the police break into a Mayor's home in Maryland, tie up the owners of the house for hours and shoot their two labrador retrievers because they suspect the owners received a package of marijuana in the mail---and amazingly the police Chief refuses to admit any wrongdoing, simply saying he regrets the error (the owners were not guilty); and Russia invades a sovereign country to 'protect its own interests' while Bush protests that the Russians have no right to invade a sovereign country with such overwhelming weapons of mass destruction----yeah OK President Bush---you have such credibility on such matters as invading sovereign countries using overwhelming military power. As the above illustrates, the violence is growing at every level of society and everywhere. Monkey see, monkey do.
Even more sobering is the realization that all these weapons of mass destruction, piled higher and higher in more and more places across the globe, have less and less ability to achieve any purported goals. With modern methods of communication, individual groups, small or large, have the ability now to wage effective war against the most powerful of enemies with home made bombs, land mines, endless sniper attacks, and thus the most powerful countries in the world can do little but hunker down, circle their wagons, and designate 'green zones'---from which they make desperate forays out into neighborhoods already bombed back into the stone age. One thing is for sure---violence begets violence. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. The more sophisticated and complex a society the more vulnerable it now is to this growing rampage of violence. For various reasons the number of have-nots across the globe is spiraling upwards, and this alone fosters the increase of 'terrorism' (the use of primitive weapons to achieve the kind of death to opponents and their supporters which smart bombs, missiles, and other weapons of mass destruction do to their opponents and supporters of their opponents).
The choice is to alter the manner in which conflicts and injustices are handled, or attempt military surges to overpower opponents. Military surges, at best, produce temporary reductions in violence as the 'terrorists' abandon one area, regroup, use the lull to retool and fine tune future attacks. The band plays on and only those who think might makes right think surging up the military attacks will bring any peaceful resolution. Of course, in the last analysis the God created process of evolution moves onward and upward---as it has done now for millions of years. As this process continues to evolve it is not just the physical changes which are of note, but qualities such as laughter, increased intelligence, memory, ethics, appreciation of the arts, etc. Mental abilities have even reached the point where the process of evolution can now be, in theory, to some degree, managed by the human species. But, at best, this is the earliest stage in that capability, and human ignorance coupled with uncontrolled human greed/intolerance---as expressed by all this violence---will leave it up once again to Mother Nature to come to bat and clear the bases. I guess religion itself has advanced some in this process, but not really much. We still create a God in our own image Who thinks like us, supports our own prejudices, and is willing to alter His own evolutionary laws in order to answer our prayers. The trouble is, there is no evidence for this. We still create, in our minds, via religious indoctrination, scenarios where God is portrayed as a bumbling idiotic bully. I mean really, I should pray for God to intercede and make my good life even better and my wealth piled higher while God ignores the plight of the millions mired in poverty and danger? It does seem people pray for them too, if nothing more than during routine rituals. And we create these unreal rituals whereby, for example, we have clergy declare that a marriage put together by God no man can put asunder. Well, I guess God is batting around 50% now with marriages in this country. We create a God who supposedly will listen to our prayers to save ourselves or a loved one from cancer and expect he might do so while at the same time allow natives of Darfur or Rwanda get hacked to death by the millions. The whole notion that God will only interfere with His laws of evolution if we ask him to do so through prayer is simply absurd---like God might do the humane and just thing only if we pray for him to do so. I once had a student who told me he was getting an A on a test because he prayed to God that he get an A. I responded that there was a problem, that I had prayed to God that he get an F. Then there is the corny soap opera claiming that Jesus died on a cross to save us from our sins. The very notion that any of my sins or anyone else's sins can be forgiven if someone else be murdered is pretty preposterous, let alone the victim be the Son of God. None of this sarcasm here is meant to discredit or cast doubt on the existence of God but to elevate God past the level of human crafted inherited fables.
Some will dismiss all this attack on the current level of violence as simply a denial of reality, an inability to understand that this kind of violence is simply part of life, something to get used to, just live with it and encapsulate it as some kind of good vs evil, peace through strength, and God Bless America. God Bless America for what? Killing 2.1 Vietnamese? Invading Iraq? Producing more military weaponry than all the other countries of the world combined? For having more military bases scattered around the globe than any other country in the world? For engineering regime changes the past 100 years in 14 different sovereign countries? For leaving 40 million citizens in our own country without medical insurance? For selling zillions of guns to all kind of people in our own country and the rest of the world? You can't say you are against violence and then hand guns to anyone wanting one.
Violence is not inherent to human nature as an unavoidable plan of action to resolve conflicts. Switzerland has a long history of resolving conflicts peacefully and following the wise advice of George Washington to avoid foreign entanglements. There is not much blood on the hands of the Swiss. I was raised at a time when children didn't fear going to school or playing outside. Drive by shooting were unheard of. The need for metal detectors in schools non existent. Hitch hiking was safe. Back then, sending troops into sovereign countries to level cities back to the stone age and murdering foreign citizens by the millions at least produced riots in the streets and on the campuses and at political conventions. What has changed from then to now has been the elevation of the use of violence to solve conflict as an acceptable enterprise. Few Americans fear reaping what we sow. Whether Obama is naive, experienced enough, smart enough, sincere enough, right or wrong on any specific nuance on any issue is, from the big picture---irrelevant. To keep on conducting foreign or domestic issues with the same mentality is logical absurdity. And yet we are told the election will be close. Bush and the Republican Party insist everything is basically sound, all sorts of victories close at hand or just around the corner, that the kind of morality they practice (if I can use the term morality loosely) comes directly from the well of born again Christianity directly from God with God's blessings. Amazing! From the standpoint of history it is not amazing but to be expected, and has been the fate of all civilized empires. These empires have always collapsed from too much domestic accumulation of wealth in the hands of the already affluent, and the financial burden of trying to sustain foreign control over an overextended empire of one sort or another.
Having done well from the start as to the consequences of our invading Iraq, I will once again try my luck as to predicting how it all will come down in the next few years. The terroristic attacks of the various groups in Iraq on each other and the United States will continue. For those still left in Iraq violence is now a way of life. The Americans will be forced out in the near future based on the illusion of decreased levels of violence and the need to send American troops to other hot spots. The Iraq war is creating a backlog on other military adventures. Our military industrial complex is firmly entrenched and is actually our most thriving economic industry so wars, if necessary, will commence across the globe. Our voluntary professional soldiers will do what they signed up to do---make war. Our own deaths, due to our vast array of military weapons of mass destruction, will always be far less, way far less, then those in the countries we invade.
The Shiites will run Iraq, and if the violence stops, it will be a la Hussein type control, and we will call it peace. Iraq will pass the United States in terms of the number of its citizens in jail per 100,000 population and Iraq become number one in that category. All sides will have a lasting hatred of the U.S. The Shiites will hate us for delaying their getting absolute control over their country, the Sunni will hate us for leaving them at the mercy of the Shiites, and the Kurds will hate us for the same reason. Once out we will not go back because we will be mired in violence in other areas of the globe. Violence across the globe will keep on escalating as other countries or dissident groups in other countries sense now that we can only fight wars on so many fronts at once. The Cold War, again, thanks to the Bush mentality, is now a hot war, and frees Russia to follow the lead of the U.S. and start imposing their own will on other countries where they feel a need to protect their own interests, just as we now do.
At this point I become uncertain. The economic strain on the U.S. to continue to wage all this violence across the globe will produce a third world work force in the U.S. and allow other countries, whose concentration will stay on their own economic development, education, health care, and the environment, to keep reducing the value of the dollar abroad. The interest on the debt amassed to support vast military ventures will be so high as to make it virtually impossible to meet the needs of increasing numbers of impoverished American citizens. If this happens, terrorism will become homegrown with domestic targets.
Many dissident groups across the globe, seeking to overthrow their own governments, many such governments propped up by American military assistance and military bases in their country, will sense the U.S. is becoming boxed in, not able to fight too many wars at once on too many fronts. With no uniformed enemy armies to aim at, or military complexes to level, the United Sates Goliath will become wildly frustrated by the incessant 'sling shot terrorism'---the use of home made crude weapons to attack Americans and American buildings or installations almost at will. At some point we will have to decide whether to kill foreign citizens by the millions upon millions indiscriminately or retreat from our military ventures and divert our financial resources to domestic issues.
Whether Obama can get elected and actually change the mentality of resolving conflicts across the globe is a long shot. There is common ground. Most citizens of the world want peace. Most leaders of most countries prefer to avoid being targets of terrorism themselves, and may well be willing to change priorities, focus on the problems fueling the violence---like overpopulation, religious intolerance, environmental destruction, extreme imbalances in the distribution of wealth, etc. It is the U.S. which so far resists this kind of alteration of priorities. Violence and terrorism do not occur in a vacuum. This is a personal nuance of my own faith, but I think God may, on rare occasion, interfere with his own evolutionary process. Lincoln may have been an example. I would like to think Barack might be another example. And upon this hope is about all I can depend on to stop this madness of violence to solve conflict. All our marbles at this point are on military might and violence to resolve conflicts. I personally hate this kind of game plan. In one sense this makes me a poor team player, to some unpatriotic. To buck our current priorities and game plan is the only way I can feel patriotic. To support politicians who at least want to change priorities and the mentality of our approach to solving problems is my own way of supporting my country. And with a global economy, global environmental problems, and global overpopulation---whether we like it or not----my country becomes 'my world', which is the only sane realization. No country can go it alone, and if the many common global problems cannot be addressed as non political or military solutions, and first priorities for all countries, then there is no hope, and any audacity of hope becomes 'no we can't'. In the long run perhaps it doesn't matter, and for anyone my age it may really not. Evolution has been around for millions of years. All kinds of catastrophic events have occurred and the process always survives. Often, while in the still of nature surrounded by the beauty, complexity, and brilliance of this God created evolutionary process, I sense all is well and as it should BE, whatever that BE really is, and I just feel thankful and lucky to be part of all this for a 'little gleam of Time between two eternities'. I never feel more alive and part of the process of evolution than when out in nature, alone, away from human engineered conflicts, greed, and intolerance. What I have, now into my terminational years, is many good memories---and the memories, coupled with good health----is really the reward and the sustenance for contentment. All else is bullshit, useless clamor, a fool's preoccupation. I sense there are 5 rules to happiness: First, don't sweat the small stuff. Second, in the end it is all small stuff. Third, as you age you forget things. But don't worry about it---forget it. Fourth, find delight in simple things, enough is as good as a feast. Finally, avoid those addicted to being 'clever'. You can't go anywhere without meeting 'clever' people. They are a public nuisance. It is better to be kind than clever.
