"News that's not known, or not known enough."
Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Which numbers deserve our attention?
Do the math. 125 x 52 = 6,500 per year! No matter how much you suppose such a figure is inaccurate, or has been exaggerated, it still dwarfs official military killed in action numbers, even if you add the thousand plus number of mercenaries killed but not yet counted. So it stands to reason that we have been snookered into looking at the wrong numbers, as usual. Then there is the tip of the iceberg issue to consider. Suicide is just the most dramatic and severe symptom of the ocean of suffering inflicted on the population of the US by these senseless wars. Uncounted numbers of failed lives and disrupted families spread out below the pointed prominence of suicide. We can also be assured that countless episodes of irrational violence are being inflicted by mentally disturbed veterans on their families and communities, many of whom are becoming police and correction officers. This is an injury to the society that will continue to bear fruit for generations. Compassionate people recognize that our suffering here at home is dwarfed by the unbelievable suffering that these wars have inflicted on the people of the Middle East. Their suffering, as well as our own, will echo down through generation after generation. All this because the current power elite of the US, and its allies, fear that their dominant positions will be eroded by the unavoidable shift away from petroleum as supplies dwindle in the face of the petroleum based industrial development of the less developed world and oil depletion. So instead of taking rational measures to deal with these threats by, for instance, investing in alternative sources of energy and simple conservation measures, our oil-bound elite has decided to protect their investment in obsolete technology through war making while simultaneously starving the country of needed funds for housing, education and infrastructure. These wars are the most extravagantly irrational human behavior to ever happen and even pose a threat to the survival of the human species itself. The insane elite authoring these senseless wars have also embarked on wars at home to suppress rational dissent. The inmates have truly taken over the asylum. I will be reading the book, but I doubt if I will be informed much beyond my current level, as I have been reading intensively in this area for a while. I ask myself, what is the purpose of being a physician in a society that is being systematically poisoned by a political hierarchy that is completely depraved? Mass murder for corporate profit? Or just psychopathic mass murder? In this context the prescription required is not a medical one. It is a political one. Analogous to the approach to a patient who's addictions are about to kill them unless they make radical changes in the way they think about their life, we can say that the West (it is not just a US problem) is on a suicidal path unless it undertakes radical economic and educational reforms. Just because the prognosis is beyond grave is no reason to abandon hope and thus abandon the patient. In light of the radical nature of the sorts of problems elucidated by Pollan and others, the current focus on status quo devoted electoral politics is just a sick joke we are playing on ourselves and our descendants, if, in fact, we end up having any descendants. Personally, I would like to see a general strike against management class insanity. Social justice activist found bound, gagged and drowned in Texas How many social justice advocates dying under these circumstances does it take to quell dissent from those committed to justice? I guess we will be finding out.
Not nobody paying attention, but enough somebodies so that the consensual reality that steers public opinion is unaffected by factoids that contradict the mass of myth that passes for common sense. Our society is one that is structured around the idea that suppressing critical judgement in the general population For a militaristic society, ours is not to reason why nor notice things that disturb our carefully managed prejudices. Crimes such as the one described in this case, whether or not authority is involved (it happened in Texas, after all) serves the purposes of the militarist by stoking deep anxieties and fears and maintaining the immature state of consciousness that is needed for proper regimentation. Another way I often put this is that happy people make rotten soldiers for sending on conquests. It is hard to beat Orwell's 1984 for describing how this system works.
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