discussion at ann's

Ann El Khoury, over at Reclaiming Space, aka peoplesgeography, made a post about the Mr. Fish balloon cartoon I posted a few days ago, and then I said something that sparked her up some more, and then, and then, and you know how the comments threads sometimes start to go. So just a little while ago I responded to a trace of the soldiers as hired killers attitude that has bothered me so much in the anti-war movement. So this is part of one of my comments.

Thanks for so much attention to my fried bewilderment. It is indisputable that education is key. Somehow the original mandatory education of our citizenry has turned into a knotted form of optional. The only way they were going to go for having a country where The People were so empowered was if the people had the first part of a clue. Enforced education and a free press were early-on acknowledged to be vital to the success of our nation. They are both effectively cardboard facades nowadays… and both have come under attack at every turn in the class wars.

While I can absolutely concur that willful ignorance is poison, the way it’s being discussed here one would think most of its sufferers had any part of a clue there is an option. This is way so not unique to Americans. It is the bane of all humankind. Add in the purposeful measures to hypnotize them, and the ever-increasing consumption of attention by mere survival for the biggest percentage of our populace, and, well, accusing them of willful ignorance is just too harsh… a fairly arrogant stance when you think about it. I heartily agree that even the stupidest human is far more capable of intelligent action and judgment than we almost ever show, but…. There are a great many people who simply do not fathom that the government actually acts on behalf of plutocrats, who have been raised in the carefully orchestrated mythos of service to one’s country… and their motives are beautiful. Even as the motives of those who propounded the myths to begin with and perpetuate them cynically are outright evil, the service men and women, by an overwhelming majority have enlisted in either the cause of freedom or the explicit understanding that they will be fed, clothed, housed, educated, employed — not destitute — or both. Some wake up to the evil underpinning and get out however they can, but most are too invested to be able to face that realization should it begin to dawn on them. Many will repent of it when they are free, but many will go to their graves unable to address such a thing. THIS IS NORMAL HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY. It’s used against us by filthy, filthy power-mad psychopaths few have the lucidity to recognize as such.

There is a fairly strong strain in the anti-war movement of blaming the soldiers for being hired killers. This guarantees the failure of the movement. Period. Full stop. It is way too facile, no matter how much more deeply the thinkers are thinking when they use it. Not deeply enough. Willful ignorance. No. If the people are to regain charge, or gain it to begin with, those who can see clearly enough to start leading others absolutely MUST rethink this position.

It’s divisive. Uniting with the greatest number of ideologies is mandatory to success. It’s insensitive, and it is insensitivity to others we supposedly deplore. No. It will never do. I have seen dirt-ignorant rednecks jump in to save the day, completely selflessly, in all manner of crises, too many times to take that mental track. Plus, it completely ignores the fact that a functioning military, like it or not, and I so seriously do not, is mandatory in this world, even with saints in the White House.

I've really had it with people resorting to comforting themselves, thinking well of themselves, patting themselves on the back, this way to relieve their frustration with the world, the predicaments we're in. It's really just congratulating oneself for being lucky enough to understand one thing or another more clearly than those you cannot seem to stop fighting long enough to accomplish something transcendent when you accuse people of willful ignorance, accuse them of being hired killers too willfully ignorant to realize it and so R-E-S-P-O-N-S-I-B-L-E. So many of us continually bemoan the stupid oafs passing for our fellow citizens and then take refuge from the stultification of good sense this way. Not good enough. Actually, worse than that. Counterproductive. Inflammatory. Senseless. Stop it.