A new standard for infamy
Mar. 17th, 2003 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
substituteI am a Christian, and an American. What are we, today?
We have "taken the gloves off". We permit torture, and break laws: ours, and others. We act alone, disdaining the community of nations. We kill those who offend or defy us, for pride. We say "we're tough and strong; we'll do as we please". It's time, we say, to turn from our soft, weak, forgiving past and be a real Empire. Let's have penal colonies, and midnight beatings, and murder our enemies in unapologetic style, like Rome or Great Britain in their heyday.
We are cowards. We shrink from any battle where we'll be hurt. We soar high above our enemies, dropping explosives on them, or firing missiles from a thousand miles away. We talk about an "air war" without splatters of mud or human lasagna offending us. We hire mercenaries to kill for us. Any amount of death is acceptable, if it's not our boys.
We are religious. We say: God is on our side. We command Him by bumpersticker and billboard to bless us. We say: Our God is the ruler of the Universe, and he decrees our wealth and power. We condemn our enemies as unbelievers, heretics, fanatics, fools, and devils. God, we say, has given us our bombs and our planes and our ships and our money, and we use it to carry out His will, as holy emperors of the Earth.
And when the sky cracks open and He comes to judge, what will He say of us? What could He say to such a gang of cowardly bullies, who torture and burn and lay waste to Eden all in His name?
WHAT WILL HE SAY?
We have "taken the gloves off". We permit torture, and break laws: ours, and others. We act alone, disdaining the community of nations. We kill those who offend or defy us, for pride. We say "we're tough and strong; we'll do as we please". It's time, we say, to turn from our soft, weak, forgiving past and be a real Empire. Let's have penal colonies, and midnight beatings, and murder our enemies in unapologetic style, like Rome or Great Britain in their heyday.
We are cowards. We shrink from any battle where we'll be hurt. We soar high above our enemies, dropping explosives on them, or firing missiles from a thousand miles away. We talk about an "air war" without splatters of mud or human lasagna offending us. We hire mercenaries to kill for us. Any amount of death is acceptable, if it's not our boys.
We are religious. We say: God is on our side. We command Him by bumpersticker and billboard to bless us. We say: Our God is the ruler of the Universe, and he decrees our wealth and power. We condemn our enemies as unbelievers, heretics, fanatics, fools, and devils. God, we say, has given us our bombs and our planes and our ships and our money, and we use it to carry out His will, as holy emperors of the Earth.
And when the sky cracks open and He comes to judge, what will He say of us? What could He say to such a gang of cowardly bullies, who torture and burn and lay waste to Eden all in His name?
WHAT WILL HE SAY?
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-17 11:18 pm (UTC)suffice to say, it would be an interesting turn of events if, for once, we could point our high powered perception upon ourselves and see our nation for what it really is: self-important, gluttonous, superficial, and stagnant.
we steal the resources of other nations while either burning our own to keep prices down or stockpiling them for use in the future, after we've depleted everyone elses.
we complain about gasoline prices which are a fraction of what anyone else in the world pays.
we refuse to pay a living wage, to our own people and to people in foreign lands, in the hopes of saving a few dollars and dropping our bottom line.
we penalize mothers for having children, people for being hurt, crazy people for being crazy. how do we do this? we refuse to take care of them. instead, we build more boxes to put bad people in, most of whom are guilty of committing crimes in which no one was harmed other than themselves.
we tax legal, "harmless" drugs in order to enforce the illegality of controlled, harmful ones.
a nation of immigrants, we refuse entrance to other immigrants, desperately selfish of saving the pitiful benefits we give to our citizens for them and them alone.
if a nation has nuclear weapons, then we are diplomatic. otherwise, we utilize every gun in our arsenal, every potential state secret and skeleton to our advantage, stopping at nothing to keep them quiet, quelled, and firmly rooted under our thumb.
anyone who thinks getting rid of Bush Jr would solve this is ridiculously optimistic. he is merely a symptom of the problem that besets us.
Americanitis: n. ah-mehr-eh-kan-i-tis the delusional belief that ones own interests are more important than those of any others because of location of birth and slavish adherence to parchment documents and a bird with no hair on it's head.
after all of this bullshit we're witnessing right now, that disease better be listed in the new version of the DSM