Friday, March 15, 2013

A Nation of Porno Fiends

Trey Smith

The pornography of America's global killing spree is intolerable, and, by the by, I am sick of hearing about drones. A child killed by a Hellfire missile that was fired from a drone is exactly, precisely as dead as a child killed by a Hellfire missile fired from an Apache attack helicopter, precisely as dead as a child killed by a smart bomb, precisely as dead as a child killed by a sniper, precisely as dead as a child killed by a land mine, or by a cruise missile, or by any of the myriad other ways instant death is dealt by this hyper-weaponized nation of ours.

Exactly, precisely as God damned dead, and the blood is on our hands regardless of the means used to do the killing. The issue is not the drones. The issue is our hard, black hearts, and the grim fact that the debate in this country right now is not about whether the killing is wrong, but about the most morally acceptable way of going about that killing. Drones are bad, but snipers are better, because you don't hear the buzzing sound in the sky before your lights go out forever. Or something.
~ from Waking From My Moral Coma by William Rivers Pitt ~
I'm encouraged that SOMEONE ELSE recognizes this problem. As readers should know, this is an issue I have been harping on for some time. America has become a killing machine with no conscience and, as citizens of this country, the blood is on all of our hands.

A lot of the blame should be placed at the feet of our leaders. They are the ones in the position to call the shots. They are the ones who often make arbitrary decisions about who will die to further US hegemony and corporate interests.

But that doesn't absolve the American public from blame. For one thing, we put these yahoos in office. We elect them. We give them free rein. Even worse, if opinion polls are to be believed, we cheer them on. We applaud when they rain down death on the guilty and the innocent alike. And we rarely bat an eyelash.

I find it so ironic that this predominantly Christian nation -- one that worships the ultimate figure of peace -- is so bloodthirsty and vengeful. Preachers and ministers rail from their pulpits and in public media about the supreme importance of morality in our personal lives and yet, at the same time, acquiesce to abject immorality in our collective lives as a society. They will scream that killing an unborn child is the epitome of evil and yet they have no qualms about our slaughtering of born children who, through no fault of their own, live in countries that we don't happen to like at any given moment.

Killing for the sake of killing is wrong. Killing to advance a political agenda is heinous. It doesn't matter who is doing the killing and it doesn't matter who is doing the dying. It is still as wrong as wrong can be. If we sit by and allow it to occur without protesting it, then we, as a nation, are truly morally bankrupt.

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