he vast majority of people in the world did not want America to invade Iraq – and even the majority of people in America did not want the invasion, or if they did it was only because of propaganda.
Yet still, the invasion occurred – even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the September attacks, had no contacts with Al Qaeda, and did not possess weapons of mass destruction.
What does this say about the true nature of the society that we live in? If our leaders are capable of ordering a blockade that results in the deaths of half a million Iraqis, what does that say about their capacity for ethical action?
What does that say about their capacity for empathy? What does that say about their moral values?
What are we avoiding when we do not ask these questions?
Furthermore, if our leaders perform these unspeakably evil actions and then profess “bewilderment” when their victims strike back, then clearly our leaders fully understand the ethics of “virtuous self-defence.”
Thus they cannot be mad – or at least, not morally mad.
If they are not morally mad, but perform evil actions, then they are truly evil.
And these are the people that we give our children to, to become “educated.”
In a democracy, if the leaders are evil, it is either because the people are evil, or because it is not really a democracy.
If we live in a true democracy, and the majority of people elect evil sociopaths as their leaders, then clearly the majority of people are evil.
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If the majority of people are evil, and their leaders are also evil, then the attacks of September become understandable – it is just one Mafia gang attacking another in retaliation for a previous attack. There is no honor, no reasonable self-righteousness – it is just one more dirty murder following another dirty murder.
In this case, retaliation becomes impossible to justify in moral terms – and so the cycle is broken.
If, however, the people are not evil, but their leaders are evil – as surely they are – then clearly the leaders do not represent the will of the people, and thus society cannot be called a “democracy.”
If the majority of the people are good, but the leaders are evil, then clearly it is immoral to have any sort of allegiance to this corrupt and exploitive gang of political thugs.
If we saw innocent bystanders being gunned down in a drive-by gangland shooting, would we rush to the defence of the shooters?
If this type of murder occurs in a neighbourhood – dozens of people being cut down in gangland shootouts – we would tend to get angry at the gang that provoked the retaliation, not flock to their support, grab weapons and continue to escalate the war.
In other words, we would identify with the victims, not with the
perpetrators.
However, in the case of the September attacks, the average American did not identify with the victims but rather with the leaders.
Again, why?
MORALITY AND VICTIMHOOD
To start, let’s trace what happens when the average American begins to apply objective moral judgments to the actions of those involved in Christian/Muslim/Jewish violence.
Clearly, ordering the death of another is immoral. Equally clearly, in terms of ordering the deaths of other religious groups, the Christians
Muslim attacks on America in the 19th century even though America was
far freer in many ways in those days.
The Christian attacks on the Muslim world continued throughout the 20th century through the creation of Iraq by the British out of the ashes
of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, and escalating in the American arming of Iraq against Iran in the 1980s, followed by the sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s.
Thus in terms of “who started it,” clearly it was the Christians – initially the British, and to a smaller degree the French, and most recently the Americans.
Since ordering the deaths of other people is evil, then clearly this evil was first committed by the Western Christian leaders.
Since Westerners pride themselves on their “democratic institutions” – particularly as opposed to the dictatorial Islamic theocracies – clearly the Western citizens of those democracies have a far greater capacity to control the actions of their leaders, relative to the average Muslim. Since in a democracy the actions of the leaders must represent the will of the people, if those leaders perform evil actions, then the people are to some degree at least responsible for that evil.
If I give a gun to a murderer knowing that he is about to kill someone, cheer him on when he does kill that person, and then give him more bullets right afterwards, then clearly I am complicit in his crimes.
Now, if the attacks of September 2001 were evil – as doubtless they were – but we apply an objective moral standard, then clearly our own leaders are far more evil than the leaders of the attackers, since they have been responsible for hundreds of times more murders than the attackers. If our own leaders are evil, then we must attempt to prevent them from performing their evil actions.
If we live in a true democracy, then we should easily be able to prevent our leaders from performing evil actions.
In other words, the door to our cage should be unlocked.
Even after the manipulations and falsehoods of George W. Bush were fully exposed – even in the mainstream media – he still won the popular vote with a margin of several million.
Since he had started a war based on false information, why was he not voted out?
THE KNOWLEDGE WE AVOID
He was not voted out because the people did not want to see that the war would continue.
The average American does not want to find out that no matter who he puts in government, the evils of the state will continue.
The average American does not want to find out that his cell door is truly and irrevocably locked.
The average American – like all of us – knows deep in his heart that he has absolutely no control over his government.
Deep down, we all know that the rapes, murders, tortures, predations, corruptions, thefts and brutality committed in the name of “the state” will continue as long as “the state” does.
We can sooner alter the orbit of the moon with our minds than control the actions of our leaders.
It is not knowledge of evil that we are avoiding, but knowledge of our own subjugation – of our own helplessness, of our own enslavement. The moment that we actually emotionally understand, accept and truly
feel the nature of our enslavement, we will find ourselves compelled to action.
And it is that action that we fear – not because it involves violence or physical danger, but rather because we know it will trigger the undoing of our entire world as we know it.