Hypocrisy is not an Exclusive Right
9/26/2004
I've been blog-browsing on various political journals this morning.
One thing I tend to stumble on in these posts are endless black/white arguments. They are based on the either/or scenario - either you are the way we want you to be, or there is cause for violence and war. This perception of the universe as black or white makes it easier for people to betray their own beliefs, to segregate, and to hate people they do not even know. To believe that there is a justifiable reason to kill thousands of innocent people, one must put up some walls so that certain Truths can be 'concealed.' However, concealed Truths fester and swell in the mind, and eventually they must be dealt with.
Either/or drives both sides of a conflict to the battle line. There is no caution, no sense of obligation or responsibility to create peace, no desire that violence be a 'last ditch effort' to solve a problem. In the land of the free, violence is rarely the last choice in any situation. Just watch COPS, or any other prime-time TV show. We fetishize violence and build complex stories around these acts in order to portray them as justified. In Iraq, violence is in their backyards and in their homes. The difference is that our violence is mostly 2-dimentional, mental, and subliminal, while theirs is familiar, 3-dimensional, and happening right now.
The idea of either/or is the endless failure of logic behind the bombing blitz, the death, destruction and chaos in Iraq, in our government, in our lives. It is the same mental trickery that drives witch hunts, crusades, and waves of paranoia and fear, and it's easier to catch than the common cold. Eventually, either/or is the human impulse that we must transcend. Otherwise, we will annihilate ourselves and all life on earth for nothing.
Every action of this tyrant has become a reason for war in the minds of many americans. Citizen Frank points out another luxury item of the tyrant, a swimming pool, and it only serves to support his continued reason to fight this hypocricy and reinforce the American ideals. But, at the same time, America also has starving, poverty-stricken, suffering people, and yet our churches are expensive palaces of prefab luxury. Our christmas lights consume millions of dollars worth of electricity. We are less than 5% of the global population, yet we consume more than 1/4 of the world's energy supply. Hypocrisy is available by the truckload in any major supermarket. Our newspapers change their facts to fit their agendas every day. Nothing is truly reported; everything is sensationalized (Nothing is true; Everything is permitted). Politicians are paid more by corporations than by the american people, and their interests are altered by the pursuit of wealth.
Many people believe that - because Saddam was such a terrible man - the entire country of Iraq and over 12,000 Iraqi lives should be punished for their failure to demand better leadership. They pay the price for his tyranny. We are, in effect, telling the rest of the world this: if WE (the US) don't like your leaders, it is your responsibility to overthrow them, or else suffer the might of our bombs and our installed governments. At the same time, we want to be left alone as citizens. We don't want our neighbors telling us how to live, what to eat, watch, drink, how to train our children.
What we demand from others is not what we say that we want for ourselves, and this is the ultimate hypocrisy. More extreme, I would imagine, than another swimming pool for Saddam Hussein. We punish the people of other countries for not dealing with the sins of their leaders, yet in America, Dissent is considered to be UN-AMERICAN.
It is easier to cast the stone, perhaps, than to realize that we also carry our sins around with us. Even I am a hypocrite. I desire peace, but at the same time I entertain ideas of violence. I watch television shows, revenge movies, and kung fu action flicks, and I enjoy them immensely. However, these are real people we are bombing in Iraq, not actors on the screen. The ultimate ideal in Martial Arts is to know what to do in a conflict, and choose to do nothing. The state of Peace is easier to achieve when one can truly understand the outcome of violent acts. The battle is never without - it is always within. And only when it is necessary does the warrior use martial arts to embrace their 'opponent'.
I know that peace is a harder path, but once it is begun, it would be much more sustainable than constant war, and people would be on equal terms instead of caught up in class systems and games of one-upmanship.
Perhaps someone should send out free copies of the teachings of Christ to our christian leaders? Perhaps we should send out the teachings of Ghandi, and MLK Jr, and many other saints and leaders that have pointed the way? It would be cheaper than making bombs and dropping them on people, and people might actually learn something. I would willingly pay more taxes to send out literature of peace than weapons of war.
In reality, there is no battle line. In reality, we are all one people. It is in the minds of the citizens that battle lines exist. Minds can be changed with much less bloodshed than the borders of a country.
Is there any question that we are one people? When we are pricked, do we not bleed? If we blow up the planet, what will be left of to say that we are better than those lives we obliterated? And all for nothing.
posted by novachild @ Sunday, September 26, 2004,
2 Comments:
-
At 8:13 PM,
Frank Myers said...
-
I think the blogoverse is heading toward discussion that is not one sided and hypocritical. It seems it so easy to find blogs that present one side of the argument and blogs that present the other side. Perhaps what you have to do is read a selection of both and make up your own mind.
I try to present a balanced site that supports the war. I post stuff that is critical and a lot more stuff that is supportive. Remember though, until next summer I am serving in uniform therefore I am restrained in what I can say. When I finish I have a lot more I want to say, but can't now.
Everyone says they abhor hypocricy and one-sided content, then the sites that are the most one-sided are the most popular. Like Rush on the radio...
The best way to balance a site's view is to post on it. So come join our conversation. MOre of my comentators are anti-war.
www.CitizenFrank.com -
At 9:21 PM,
novachild said...
-
Hey Frank! Thanks for the slightly more civil tongue than I might have hinted at in your direction. And thanks for the insight; I look forward to the wider breadth of views from your journal when you become 'more free' to speak your mind!
And if you haven't read my latest post, I admitted to being somewhat addicted to your blog. Thanks for the perspective; while I don't always agree with you, you do provide substance to cyberspace in a time when most content is so many wasted pixels.
