Hypocrisy and violence

Eight year-old California girl’s
lemonade stand shut down
for lack of a business license.

There are very few human universals as far as I know, but one of them seems pretty clearly to be hypocrisy. Hilary Clinton, our Secretary of State, is in Kenya, proclaiming, insisting, they must do something to prosecute war crimes. Doesn’t it make you wonder why she’s not in Washington D.C. insisting on the same thing? It appears that only other countries have war criminals, we here at home do not. I think this is hypocrisy of the worst kind. Similarly, the United Nations has apparently said if Kenya does not do something about their war crimes, they (the UN) will intervene and do something, like presumably bringing those accused to the Hague. Why are they not saying the same thing to the U.S.? We clearly have war criminals. They are well known. They have even boasted of their crimes. But, again, it seems the U.S. is exempt from having to deal with the war criminals in their midst. I think this is the most shocking thing about the Obama administration, their failure to deal with this obvious problem. Do you really think other countries are unaware of our hypocrisy? I guess if you are powerful enough you can do whatever you wish, a sad commentary on the human condition, especially after so many thousands of years of history.

I have been thinking about violence, especially as it manifests itself in the United States. I have often complained about movies being so violent, blowing up things and shooting and killings of all kinds. It is a rare movie nowadays that does not feature violence. But what occurs to me is not merely that the movies have become increasingly violent, but where does our apparently obsessive concern with violence come from. I know, of course, that most all societies have violence in some form, even if only once in a while. But most societies I know about are not so completely immersed in violence as we are. In the early movies there was violence, of course, but mostly just the good guy versus the bad guy, cowboys and Indians, detectives and criminals, and not in the overwhelming doses we experience today, almost endless violence that we appear to worship: boxing, wrestling, hockey, and football seem to preoccupy us much more than baseball (which seems to be fading), soccer (which so far cannot compete with our football), basketball (I believe also fading a bit), and so on. More importantly there is also our endless warring and militarism. It seems we just cannot do without a “war” somewhere, even if it means we have to go out of our way to not mind our own business. Now we have torture, and unfortunately it appears that a large number of Americans think torture is okay. We think nothing of killing people by the scores, the hundreds, even the thousands and hundreds of thousands. Collateral damage means nothing. Are all other people as bloodthirsty as we are? I don’t think so, at least not everyone. Iran, strangely enough, is an interesting case in point. Iran has not attacked anyone in over 200 years. There are other countries that have lived in peace for very long periods of time. We can’t say that. There are a few societies, small scale societies, in which violence, while not perhaps entirely unknown, is so rare as to be so aberrant the perpetrator is forced to leave, or, in even rarer cases is put to death by the entire outraged community. People in these small societies live for years in relative harmony and peace. Having lived for quite some time in the New Guinea Highlands, with people regarded as very warlike, I assure you they were nowhere near as concerned with violence as we are. Indeed, they were pleased that under the Australian administration they had given up the worst of their violence and no longer had to live in constant fear. So what is wrong with us? I am loathe to believe genetics plays any significant role in this. It must be cultural. I think maybe it feeds on itself in a rather complicated way. I’m pretty sure our motion pictures and television have at least something to do with it. Attempts to study violence in the U.S. have not been very successful. This has much to do with the sensitivity of racial and class differences. This is a huge topic that I believe desperately needs attention but as most Americans probably think we are perfectly normal (it’s the rest of the world that is off) and are probably in denial on this topic, there isn’t much chance of serious research in the near future (and in the distant future it may well be too late).

The 31 Republicans who voted against Sotomayor have come away from the vote with egg all over their faces. Not only have they alienated the Latino vote probably forever, their reasons for voting against her were simply pathetic excuses. One of them said he voted against her on “philosophical grounds,” but did not specify what those grounds were. Others voted against her because of what they “thought” she might do they might not like (on guns, or abortion, or racism, for example). John McCain, hypocritical as always, said something to the effect that “an interesting life story does not qualify one for an appointment on the Supreme Court.” Interesting in that, first of all, she is the most highly qualified candidate for the court in the past 100 years. Even more interesting is that McCain’s life story was his main qualification to run for President. All in all, their excuses for voting against her almost certainly come down to racism, sexism, and anti-Obama –ism.

LKBIQ:
Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence.
Jim Morrison

TILT:
It is estimated that at one time there were 60 million beaver in North America.