https://tomdispatch.com/a-parable-of-all-american-violence/
"Many analysts have pointed to the culture of lies and self-deceit that
characterized these years. American leaders, political and military, lost their
own moral grounding and were dishonest with the citizenry they theoretically
represented. But we citizens also share in that culpability. Andrew Bacevich
recently asked why the American people didn’t hold their leaders to a more
stringent accounting of the wars of the last 20 years. Why were Americans so
willing to go along with the unremitting violence of those conflicts year after
year, despite failure after failure? What he called the “Indispensable Nation
Syndrome” was, he suggested, at least partially to blame — a belief in American
exceptionalism, in our unique power to know what’s best for the world and grasp
what the future holds in ways other nations and people couldn’t.
In the post-9/11 period, such a conviction mixed lethally with a deepening
commitment to violence as the indispensable way to preserve what was best about
this country, while fending off imagined threats of every sort. Americans came
to believe ever more deeply, ever more thoughtlessly, in violence as a tool
that could be successfully used however this country’s leaders saw fit.
The unending violence of our war culture became a kind of security blanket,
money in the bank. Few protested the outlandish Pentagon budgets overwhelmingly
approved by Congress each year, even as defeats in distant lands multiplied.
Violence would protect us; it would save us. We couldn’t stockpile enough of
it, or the weapons that made it possible, or use it more liberally around the
globe — and increasingly at home as well. Such a deep, if remarkably
unexamined, belief in the efficacy of violence also served to legitimate our
wars, even as it helped conceal their true beneficiaries, the corporate weapons
producers, those titans of the military-congressional-industrial complex.
As it happens, however, violence isn’t a simple tool or clothing you can simply
take off and set aside once you’ve finished the job. Just listen to morally
injured military service members to understand how deep and lasting violence
turns out to be — and how much harder it is to control than people imagine.
Once you’ve wrapped your country in its banner, there’s no way to keep its
barbs from piercing your own skin, its poison from dripping into your soul."
Via
libramoon@pluspora.com.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
