Events in the US during the past month have brought many issues into clear focus. I have summarized some onservations I and others made as the Bush administration led the US to the great implosion, dominating world news in Oct 2008. The "superpower" is no longer super nor even powerful.
See my Blog Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Prototype America: War versus the Truth
A View From Outside the Cauldron
In the USA, there is a constant and vigorous debate. The most militarized nation in the world is prepared to meet many different kinds of attack. The USA, with real and imaginary enemies, is a great experiment in how a democratic nation handles threats from within and without. In the best, case the American constitution champions human rights and individual freedom. However, militarism is by nature anti-democratic.
All over the planet, you can choose between democracy and military dictatorship. The trick to preserving democracy seems to be the maintenance of a citizen-accountable political leadership and a subservient military that is prevented from acting inside the country, except to defend the country from external attack and to train.
The Bush version of democracy and civil rights is paradoxically fascist – a militaristic attitude that would suppress dissent and would punish all who disagree with him in the name of patriotism and national security.
When Islamic militants from Saudi Arabia attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, September 11 2001, fear, anger and confusion was the initial and understandable emotional response. Soon, however, government regulators, police and military the entire country into a state of siege. The attack response deprived citizens of ordinary rights and talk of “war” inflamed anger and excused a deluge of paranoid speculation and irrational thinking.
Fortunately, the US is a country of diverse interests, beliefs and capacities. The least intelligent responses are dominant in the early stages of crisis, but are followed more intelligent and better-informed discourse. Within 48 hours it was known that 19 Arab men, 15 from Saudi Arabia but none from Iraq, hijacked 4 commercial airplanes and crashed three of them into three targets, committing suicide in, from their point-of-view, a just cause - a holy war against Americans who have directly and indirectly threatened and killed people of the Islamic faith.
This was a limited and specific attack, planned several years in advance that caused damage and loss of life in New York but did not threaten the rest of country and would not be repeated for some time, if ever. The hijackers were not overtly fanatical but appeared to be ordinary people who spent up to five years living and going to school in the USA.
American leaders appeared to lack insight into the deep and ancient origins of the attack and spoke only of their revenge, using military action. They suspended citizens’ privileges and moved the country close to a state of military occupation. President Bush declared “war on terrorism”. He ignored the simple fact that the attackers were from Saudi Arabia and pursued an old family feud instead by attacking Iraq. The average America appeared to be gullible to government propaganda and accepted Iraq as the scapegoat chosen as the sacrificial victim. The gullible Americans who supported this lethal enterprise have paid dearly in money, lost American lives,and lost credibility in most countries on planet earth. They have incurred a Karmic debt that will take many generations to settle.
None of these slogans used by the US administration bear much relationship to the truth, but humans operate from slogans and mindlessly pursue death and destruction, believing somehow that they are on the right track. Despite the very obvious limitations of leaders and institutions, Americans, in their public persona, have difficult admitting they have made mistakes in the past and have destroyed other people’s property and lives in acts that others considered to be “American terrorism”.
The principle is that humans deny error and project blame. Human history informs us that national states would rather go to war than apologize. Each nation believes it lives up to the high standard that it imposes on others. Human conflict always involves disagreement about who is to blame and no final agreement can be achieved. Humans fight over territory, resources and status. Each party to a conflict makes claims and has arguments that favor their side. They kill each other. The arguments and claims vary but the conflict is always the same.
You could suggest that the only way out is a transcendence of arguments and claims. The more you support someone’s claims and arguments the further you are from any solution. There is no obvious and no easy path to transcendence. At least we know there is little merit and no salvation in competing arguments and claims. You have to leave these behind and have a look around with a clear mind. Maybe there is something you can do; maybe not.
The mechanism of great evil is that members of every group have loyalty to the group and believe, sometimes fanatically, in the claims of the group. One of the routine claims is that a common enemy must be constrained, punished and, if necessary, killed. Just as individuals have difficulty perceiving their own behavior, members of groups cannot perceive the evil they are helping to create. The worst atrocities can be committed against other groups with complete justification in the form of us and them arguments. Justification always follows a simple logic: “We are good. They are bad. Therefore, everything we do to eliminate their bad is justified.”
The moral sense of Karma includes cycles of causation that more or less follow a path of reward and punishment. With or without lawful processes, the karma of revenge and retribution continues to play a determining role in every society. The innate form of natural justice is an eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth. Revenge is natural and to be effective must match the wrong that was committed. Human conflict has a tendency to persevere and escalate. This is a law of Karma.
At the end of 2005, Bush is characterized in a New York Times editorial as
"...an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him."
By 2007 the cost of Bush’s war in Iraq was becoming clearer. Bush’s war in Iraq was based on lies and an obvious belligerence that alarmed most of the world community. War means we decided that is was necessary, permissible, inevitable that we destroy property and kill people with little or no regard for law, justices or human rights. The cost of the war was funded by loans to the US government from internal sources such as government pension plans and from foreign investors who bought US treasury bills. The cost to Iraqi citizens is not included in US accounting.
David Leonhardt, for example, writing in the NY times Jan 2007, estimated the cost to US taxpayers was $1.2 trillion and suggested that most of the problems in the US could be solved with the same amount of money with lots of cash left over to tackle world problems such as poverty, malnutrition, and infectious disease. He stated: “ In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so. These estimates probably would have turned out to be too optimistic even if the war had gone well. But the deteriorating situation in Iraq has caused the initial predictions to be off the mark by a scale that is difficult to fathom. “
By Oct 2008, well, everyone knows what happened to the US economy.
Please see: Surviving Human Nature by Stephen Gislason
See my Blog Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Prototype America: War versus the Truth
A View From Outside the Cauldron
In the USA, there is a constant and vigorous debate. The most militarized nation in the world is prepared to meet many different kinds of attack. The USA, with real and imaginary enemies, is a great experiment in how a democratic nation handles threats from within and without. In the best, case the American constitution champions human rights and individual freedom. However, militarism is by nature anti-democratic.
All over the planet, you can choose between democracy and military dictatorship. The trick to preserving democracy seems to be the maintenance of a citizen-accountable political leadership and a subservient military that is prevented from acting inside the country, except to defend the country from external attack and to train.
The Bush version of democracy and civil rights is paradoxically fascist – a militaristic attitude that would suppress dissent and would punish all who disagree with him in the name of patriotism and national security.
When Islamic militants from Saudi Arabia attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, September 11 2001, fear, anger and confusion was the initial and understandable emotional response. Soon, however, government regulators, police and military the entire country into a state of siege. The attack response deprived citizens of ordinary rights and talk of “war” inflamed anger and excused a deluge of paranoid speculation and irrational thinking.
Fortunately, the US is a country of diverse interests, beliefs and capacities. The least intelligent responses are dominant in the early stages of crisis, but are followed more intelligent and better-informed discourse. Within 48 hours it was known that 19 Arab men, 15 from Saudi Arabia but none from Iraq, hijacked 4 commercial airplanes and crashed three of them into three targets, committing suicide in, from their point-of-view, a just cause - a holy war against Americans who have directly and indirectly threatened and killed people of the Islamic faith.
This was a limited and specific attack, planned several years in advance that caused damage and loss of life in New York but did not threaten the rest of country and would not be repeated for some time, if ever. The hijackers were not overtly fanatical but appeared to be ordinary people who spent up to five years living and going to school in the USA.
American leaders appeared to lack insight into the deep and ancient origins of the attack and spoke only of their revenge, using military action. They suspended citizens’ privileges and moved the country close to a state of military occupation. President Bush declared “war on terrorism”. He ignored the simple fact that the attackers were from Saudi Arabia and pursued an old family feud instead by attacking Iraq. The average America appeared to be gullible to government propaganda and accepted Iraq as the scapegoat chosen as the sacrificial victim. The gullible Americans who supported this lethal enterprise have paid dearly in money, lost American lives,and lost credibility in most countries on planet earth. They have incurred a Karmic debt that will take many generations to settle.
None of these slogans used by the US administration bear much relationship to the truth, but humans operate from slogans and mindlessly pursue death and destruction, believing somehow that they are on the right track. Despite the very obvious limitations of leaders and institutions, Americans, in their public persona, have difficult admitting they have made mistakes in the past and have destroyed other people’s property and lives in acts that others considered to be “American terrorism”.
The principle is that humans deny error and project blame. Human history informs us that national states would rather go to war than apologize. Each nation believes it lives up to the high standard that it imposes on others. Human conflict always involves disagreement about who is to blame and no final agreement can be achieved. Humans fight over territory, resources and status. Each party to a conflict makes claims and has arguments that favor their side. They kill each other. The arguments and claims vary but the conflict is always the same.
You could suggest that the only way out is a transcendence of arguments and claims. The more you support someone’s claims and arguments the further you are from any solution. There is no obvious and no easy path to transcendence. At least we know there is little merit and no salvation in competing arguments and claims. You have to leave these behind and have a look around with a clear mind. Maybe there is something you can do; maybe not.
The mechanism of great evil is that members of every group have loyalty to the group and believe, sometimes fanatically, in the claims of the group. One of the routine claims is that a common enemy must be constrained, punished and, if necessary, killed. Just as individuals have difficulty perceiving their own behavior, members of groups cannot perceive the evil they are helping to create. The worst atrocities can be committed against other groups with complete justification in the form of us and them arguments. Justification always follows a simple logic: “We are good. They are bad. Therefore, everything we do to eliminate their bad is justified.”
The moral sense of Karma includes cycles of causation that more or less follow a path of reward and punishment. With or without lawful processes, the karma of revenge and retribution continues to play a determining role in every society. The innate form of natural justice is an eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth. Revenge is natural and to be effective must match the wrong that was committed. Human conflict has a tendency to persevere and escalate. This is a law of Karma.
At the end of 2005, Bush is characterized in a New York Times editorial as
"...an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him."
By 2007 the cost of Bush’s war in Iraq was becoming clearer. Bush’s war in Iraq was based on lies and an obvious belligerence that alarmed most of the world community. War means we decided that is was necessary, permissible, inevitable that we destroy property and kill people with little or no regard for law, justices or human rights. The cost of the war was funded by loans to the US government from internal sources such as government pension plans and from foreign investors who bought US treasury bills. The cost to Iraqi citizens is not included in US accounting.
David Leonhardt, for example, writing in the NY times Jan 2007, estimated the cost to US taxpayers was $1.2 trillion and suggested that most of the problems in the US could be solved with the same amount of money with lots of cash left over to tackle world problems such as poverty, malnutrition, and infectious disease. He stated: “ In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so. These estimates probably would have turned out to be too optimistic even if the war had gone well. But the deteriorating situation in Iraq has caused the initial predictions to be off the mark by a scale that is difficult to fathom. “
By Oct 2008, well, everyone knows what happened to the US economy.
Please see: Surviving Human Nature by Stephen Gislason