The Easy Way
When Blackwater opened fire unprovoked on civilians several weeks ago the first casualties were a family gunned down in their car before having an incendiary rocket launched into the vehicle. The fire was so intense the mother traveling with her 3 year old son was fused to her infant. Shortly afterwards, a ten year old boy panicked in the gunfire and jumped out of his minibus only to be shot in the head. When his mother ran out after her son she was killed as well. Blackwater in their official response to the incident stated that those killed were, "armed insurgents and our personnel acted lawfully and appropriately in a war zone protecting American lives"
When soldiers raped a 14 year old girl and murdered her family in Mahmoudiya, they planned the incident for a week, observing the family and changing into civilian clothes and abandoning their posts to carry out their plan. They shot her family, including her 5 year old sister, than set fire to the teenager after gang raping her in an attempt to hide their crime.
Some of you may remember as well the video I posted from the Hometown Baghdad wherein the kids describe seeing a man on their way home from school who had been shot in the head. His brains, or at least some of them were on the sidewalk, but the man was still alive and weeping, no doubt aware of exactly what had happened to him and what was going to happen.
These are the faces of death in Iraq, not evildoers with bombs strapped to their chests trying to kill us for our freedom. The image of war is not one of heroism, of soldiers leaping over trenches to shoot the bad guys and protect America. It's not one of the moral American troops bringing freedom to the oppressed. The face of the war is an old woman picking the flesh of her children off the floor and putting it in garbage bags after a bomb was dropped on her shoddy home in Afghanistan.
I'm so sick of talking to people who have no concept of what is actually going on right now. People who dismiss legitimate questions and observations about what happened on 9/11 as conspiracy theories which require no serious thought. Those who will sit and wait for the primaries to be over so they can vote for whatever Republican or Democrat is nominated depending on their respective delusions as if the problems in the world we have created were so easily fixed as to simply be a matter of picking one of two choices. Those whose entire political knowledge is based on one fabricated non issue such as gay marriage. I've had far more homosexual friends than most, but if you're more concerned about some silly piece of documentation validating your relationship than you are about the atrocities we're committing on people across the board regardless of their sexual preference than you deserve far worse.
What really kills me, what drives me to the edge of insanity and makes me want to scream at the futility of it all are those who do care about something, who show their capacity to empathize and understand, but who are so focused on one individual aspect they dismiss everything else as inconsequential. Livejournal is riddled with these narrow minded fucks, people who create political communities focused on one narrow area, than become livid if anyone tries to talk about something not within their limited perspective. This is a problem not just on Livejournal, but in the internet community in general, people flocking to the narrowest, most specific political arena they can find that agrees with their views and never expanding beyond that. No one is introduced to new ideas, and if they are there's no need to take them seriously since they're always surrounded by plenty of people who share their exact opinions and assertions.
The world and it's problems are not just about Dominionism, Theocracy, Corporatism, or Race, though these are all aspects. It's not just a matter of individual responsibility, nor is it just a case of systemic flaws and corruption. There is no one cause, no one problem, and certainly no one solution. Just as everything that is wrong is the result of many different factors working together, the solution to these problems must also be the coming together of many different factors and ideas. If we don't open our minds to everything around us and accept that we must be knowledgeable about as many perspectives as possible and willing to accept these perspectives and find the answers present within each one than we will never be able to stop the atrocities inflicted on innocent people around the world in the name of greed and power.
Regardless of what you think you know about our Country, the world, economics, war, the middle east, our foreign policy and so on, accept that you do not know everything, and there's a very real possibility you know next to nothing. Educate yourself. Find out what the Free Market is in it's ideological form, and what it is in actual practice. Research what a central bank does, and why it's important or nefarious depending on your point of view. Find out why so many people say 9/11 was self inflicted wound. Watch documentaries and research the war to find out what's really going on, and what the Iraqi people think about us saving them from themselves.
It's a pain in the ass I know. Most of us simply don't have the time, and even if we did, these are not always easy issues to understand. Despite the often present complexity however, it is still invariably true that the more you learn and the more you try, the easier it will become and the more sense you will be able to make of things. It is not a short path or an easy path, but it is the morally responsible path.
When we settle, when we decide we know what we need to know, when we think we have it all figured out and can just coast from that point, we are doing a great disservice to ourselves and the world. If there's one thing I've found to be invariably true in my life it is that the easy way is almost always the wrong way.
When soldiers raped a 14 year old girl and murdered her family in Mahmoudiya, they planned the incident for a week, observing the family and changing into civilian clothes and abandoning their posts to carry out their plan. They shot her family, including her 5 year old sister, than set fire to the teenager after gang raping her in an attempt to hide their crime.
Some of you may remember as well the video I posted from the Hometown Baghdad wherein the kids describe seeing a man on their way home from school who had been shot in the head. His brains, or at least some of them were on the sidewalk, but the man was still alive and weeping, no doubt aware of exactly what had happened to him and what was going to happen.
These are the faces of death in Iraq, not evildoers with bombs strapped to their chests trying to kill us for our freedom. The image of war is not one of heroism, of soldiers leaping over trenches to shoot the bad guys and protect America. It's not one of the moral American troops bringing freedom to the oppressed. The face of the war is an old woman picking the flesh of her children off the floor and putting it in garbage bags after a bomb was dropped on her shoddy home in Afghanistan.
I'm so sick of talking to people who have no concept of what is actually going on right now. People who dismiss legitimate questions and observations about what happened on 9/11 as conspiracy theories which require no serious thought. Those who will sit and wait for the primaries to be over so they can vote for whatever Republican or Democrat is nominated depending on their respective delusions as if the problems in the world we have created were so easily fixed as to simply be a matter of picking one of two choices. Those whose entire political knowledge is based on one fabricated non issue such as gay marriage. I've had far more homosexual friends than most, but if you're more concerned about some silly piece of documentation validating your relationship than you are about the atrocities we're committing on people across the board regardless of their sexual preference than you deserve far worse.
What really kills me, what drives me to the edge of insanity and makes me want to scream at the futility of it all are those who do care about something, who show their capacity to empathize and understand, but who are so focused on one individual aspect they dismiss everything else as inconsequential. Livejournal is riddled with these narrow minded fucks, people who create political communities focused on one narrow area, than become livid if anyone tries to talk about something not within their limited perspective. This is a problem not just on Livejournal, but in the internet community in general, people flocking to the narrowest, most specific political arena they can find that agrees with their views and never expanding beyond that. No one is introduced to new ideas, and if they are there's no need to take them seriously since they're always surrounded by plenty of people who share their exact opinions and assertions.
The world and it's problems are not just about Dominionism, Theocracy, Corporatism, or Race, though these are all aspects. It's not just a matter of individual responsibility, nor is it just a case of systemic flaws and corruption. There is no one cause, no one problem, and certainly no one solution. Just as everything that is wrong is the result of many different factors working together, the solution to these problems must also be the coming together of many different factors and ideas. If we don't open our minds to everything around us and accept that we must be knowledgeable about as many perspectives as possible and willing to accept these perspectives and find the answers present within each one than we will never be able to stop the atrocities inflicted on innocent people around the world in the name of greed and power.
Regardless of what you think you know about our Country, the world, economics, war, the middle east, our foreign policy and so on, accept that you do not know everything, and there's a very real possibility you know next to nothing. Educate yourself. Find out what the Free Market is in it's ideological form, and what it is in actual practice. Research what a central bank does, and why it's important or nefarious depending on your point of view. Find out why so many people say 9/11 was self inflicted wound. Watch documentaries and research the war to find out what's really going on, and what the Iraqi people think about us saving them from themselves.
It's a pain in the ass I know. Most of us simply don't have the time, and even if we did, these are not always easy issues to understand. Despite the often present complexity however, it is still invariably true that the more you learn and the more you try, the easier it will become and the more sense you will be able to make of things. It is not a short path or an easy path, but it is the morally responsible path.
When we settle, when we decide we know what we need to know, when we think we have it all figured out and can just coast from that point, we are doing a great disservice to ourselves and the world. If there's one thing I've found to be invariably true in my life it is that the easy way is almost always the wrong way.