I had a prolonged discussion with a friend who still wants to make excuses for Obama's expansion of wars that the Bush administration started; wars that were the reason why many Obama voters went to the polls wearing peace signs and expecting "change".
That's what is said by each administration, and they use it as an excuse.
It's called "politics" and that's the game that they play with our dollars and our lives.
But I'd say that excuse doesn't fly when it's innocent people getting incinerated, maimed, and displaced by the millions.
No argument there. And that wasn't my point.
Another empty excuse - the same one that the conservatives were using to back Bush in Iraq. Step back from the left / right mirage and see the real problem. In addition, America is the biggest arms dealer in the world, by far. Most conflicts would remain small without American funds and arms.
It sounds like you're saying, "if we can't send medical supplies and food, let's keep sending bullets and bombs". It sounds like a plea to keep up the facade of "doing something".
When humanitarian aid is directed by politics, it causes more conflict and harm than good. Private charities are not directed by power politics. They aren't perfect, but they don't magnify a small local conflict into a disaster that displaces millions and kills and maims hundreds of thousands.
Then how is this different in Afghanistan and Iraq? There will always be local conflicts and criminal gangs as long as government is there providing motivation. Most terrorists and warlords get recruits because of some perceived imbalance of government favors. The bigger picture is the fact that small governments create small conflicts, and then the big governments from Europe and US, etc., come in with their "aid" and magnify the problems by 1000% or more.
The difference is in words, not action.
Bush smirks while he bombs the crap out of innocents, and Obama furrows his brow while he bombs the crap out of innocents.
Window dressing does not change what is right and wrong.
Obama only keeps warmongering because HE CAN.
Because of people who defend him and buy his excuses.
Obama was elected because the popular perception was that he was the peace candidate.
And now, anyone who tries to hold Obama's feet to the fire gets the "well, he's a lot better than Bush" justification.
On what planet would that be called "compassionate"?
Building true change involves discarding the existing paradigm.
Hearts and minds need to change, and they will change.
The evolution of mankind shows that we are in the process of learning to discard the notion that one human can own another human, that women are subservient creatures, that the weak and powerless are irrelevant pawns in the pursuit of money and power, that children can ground into the dirt because they are "owned" by parents, that we need popes to guide our moral decisions, that we need kings and princes to guide our commerce, that ends can justify means, ... these things are not perfectly realized, but, in general, they have lost the backing of intellectuals and pundits. And this relates to the fact that - once the human pool of intelligence (we call it "culture") corrects a mistake in thinking, there can be no "Unlearning" of the truth.
We know the world is round, not because everyone did the calculations to prove it, but because human culture knows this. We know that diet matters to health, not just from our own experience, but because our culture has learned that fact. In the same way, human culture is learning that the biggest exploiter of the weak is what we call "government".
Mankind will learn to discard coercive government, and there will be no going back. This idea is being pushed forward by radical thinkers, not by those making excuses for the present paradigm. We must and we will throw out the whole distraction that is the Left / Right debate. And the next step will be to throw out politics altogether. Without politics, there can be no wars that kill thousands and displace millions. You can't have war without taxation.
That is a myth; Cold Turkey withdrawal is what people do every day to quit their cigarette addiction, cocaine addiction, heroine addiction.
And the truth is that we can stop any addiction cold turkey, and that also applies to any government program, including war.
Medical professionals like to scaremonger against quitting narcotics cold turkey, because they wouldn't make any money off that. Likewise, the politicians, the military-industrial establishment, and the statist intellectuals warn against stopping a war cold-turkey, because they would lose billions of dollars.
When government failure becomes obvious, individuals rush in to help. And free individuals can always help more quickly and more efficiently than any politically-hamstrung government program. Katrina is a good example. Too bad the government makes outlaws of anyone or any group that tries to supplant their botched-up government assistance programs.
Arguing on the side of government beneficence is arguing that committees can do better than individuals. Most of the good things that happen in this world happen because of individual intelligence, creativity, and morality. Committees are good at finding excuses for bypassing intelligence, creativity, and morality. Committees are more worried about appearances, and that's what Obama is worried about primarily. He talks a good talk, to keep up the political theater.
I said that war is good for Obama's political friends and big corporate donors.
The economy is a mess because the guns of government try to control all the details of trading, banking, industry and so on.
Guns are not a good way to organize society, and that includes the economy. My point exactly.
Gladly. But I will lump you in with the statists. And, if you see government as a solution to problems that government got us into in the first place, why linger over labels of "leftest", "rightist", and "centrist"?
My point is that all this arguing among left, right, and center about where to aim the government guns is a huge distraction over the real debate that matters: should we organize our social life according to the dictates of power and privilege or according to freedom of association and human rights?
(Note that politicians always make a big fancy show of being all about freedom and human rights. And then, after they destroy thousands of lives, they cry out that their "intentions were good", or that they "inherited a mess" from the previous political leader. I'm interested in examining actions, not words.)
Then don't look for excuses to support war.
The "inherited a mess" excuse is classic.
They've been using that one for thousands of years, and it is nothing but words.
Obama has managed to destroy the peace movement with his talk, much to the delight of the military industrial complex and the billionaires who feed at the Pentagon trough.
As long as you hesitate to advocate cold turkey withdrawal, you are playing into the hands of the warmongers.
It's this type of thinking that stops good things from happening. "We can't simply end slavery willy nilly, it would wreck the economy".
The excuse is classic. Of course I sound utopian, because everyone is taught that discarding government programs and relying on "people" is utopian. This argument forgets that the government is simply a big group of "people".
2 plus 2 is not 5. It's not authoritarian to say that. You forget that I don't believe in relative morality. Your argument in support of keeping war going for the sake of "compassion" is worse than saying 2 plus 2 is 5, It's more like saying 2 plus 2 equals "green". If killing is wrong for the thug on the corner, it can't be right for someone with a uniform and medals on his chest.
Morality is very simple and easily defined. It doesn't change because you make some elaborate argument and excuses. If it is indeed wrong for one human to kill another human who has not threatened anyone, then it's wrong for any human to kill another who has not threatened anyone. Of course, we will occasionally need a court (non-government, of course) to define whether someone was truly threatened or not, but the conclusion will be obvious when we have some evidence presented to us.
There is no evidence that extending the occupation of one country by another is some kind of moral good. Show me evidence to the contrary. An occupation always involves bloodshed and imprisonment, not to mention the fact that it is involuntarily funded by taxpayers back in the fatherland. (or is it "motherland"?)
You don't need to meet someone to judge them. Just look at their actions. Don't listen to their words - a good idea when judging politicians. Jefferson spoke great elaborate words human freedom, while he owned, tortured (of course they called it "discipline"), and had sex with his slaves back at Monticello. There are arguments raised that "he lived in a different time period", but the fact is that many people in that time period got along fine without owning slaves.
Funny, but not funny. Sorry to pick apart something said in jest, but, ... People have been taught that you must "find god" to pursue a definition of moral behavior. But that's another roadblock put up by priests and politicians. There is definable right and definable wrong. Morality can be scientifically and intellectually defined without gods or governments. That's part of the evolution of human knowledge that our culture is going through (painfully, like childbirth).
There certainly is never a conclusion to the pursuit of truth and right. We can never have 100% certainty. But we CAN have enough certainty to act. We CAN have enough certainty to say "this is right". We might only have 95% certainty, but if we waited to take action before 100% certainty, we would die in our beds. What we can be certain of is the method of searching for truth and right. That method is called empirical reasoning or, more grandiosely, The Scientific Method.
Quite simply, and I don't presume to teach you anything; we construct theories and then test them with evidence. We throw out our made-up answers if there is no evidence for them. But, we don't wait to boldly state our theory until we are 100% certain, or until we have verified every prediction that our theory entails. We act on our principles.
There is no "lock on Truth and Right", but there is action based on principle. I am for acting, not constantly hesitating in stating my convictions because there may be unanswered elaborate lifeboat scenarios where my moral principles fall apart. Moral principles are tools for living in society in everyday scenarios. There is nothing made-up or magic about morality. It's a science, a branch of philosophy that most philosophers have garbled with elaborate and confusing rubbish, all in the name of defending the horrors of church and state.
My point exactly, Making excuses for leaders is not conducive to changing anyone's patterns of behavior.
"There has never been an idea in human history that has retarded progress more than the idea that the way something was being done at any given time was the best way that it could be done."
No comments:
Post a Comment