Were that within the scope of my capabilities, that is. I would swan dive into an active volcano, I would bathe in Ebola, I would defy despots, stare into the sun, eat glass and throw myself onto the gears of the machine to bring these evil wars to an end. If only I could.
I'm just a Dirty Fuckin' Hippie and even I know better than to go around killing people, starting wars, bombing villages and “torturing folks.” One might think that we could expect our 'leaders' to at least rise to the level of Dirty Fuckin' Hippies.
But no, what we have instead is an entire nation's so-called leaders, and not just any nation but the most powerful nation in the world, clamoring shamelessly for more war, making shit up, lying through their teeth, arming all sides, decrying disasters of their own making and shaping the 'news' to suit themselves. Nothing less than WWIII will do!
There's a new boogeyman in town and he's a bad one!
And the cash registers go ka-ching, ka-ching!
They're gonna kill us all if we don't bomb 'em!
And the cash registers go ka-ching, ka-ching!
They're comin' for granny if we don't stop 'em!
And the cash registers go ka-ching, ka-ching!
Remember NATO? Inexplicably still with us. The Cold War? Working hard to bring it back. Vietnam? We just didn't drop enough fucking bombs. Peace? Don't be silly.
Beheadings are terrible things, but have you ever seen an entire village full of men, women and children vaporized in an instant? There have been many opportunities to witness such a thing. Many people walking the earth today have. Have you ever witnessed the wrath of the US military? Have you ever seen a 'double tap?' Have you seen the Chelsea Manning video? Do you remember Abu Ghraib? Do you have an honest and proportional sense of the horrors of our age?
Are you willing to look squarely at the misdeeds of our nation and admit that we might be part of the problem?
Are you aware that something like 70% of the knobs in this country (or so it is claimed) support our cold-blooded drone murder of random brown people for suspicion of being 'bad'? Or that we rarely have any idea of who we've killed? Or why?
(h/t joe shickspack)
Will we ever learn that our awesome weaponry radicalizes more people than it kills? That we can't bomb our way out of terrorism, that we can only bomb our way deeper in?
It's not that our 'leaders' don't understand that. It's that they don't want to admit it. They're not stupid, they're greedy, unburdened by morality and untroubled by conscience. There's money to be made killing each other. Peace is revenue-neutral (for the profiteers, not society, who would profit enormously - update from the comments: h/t peachcreek). That's why we can't have it. Only money matters to the assholes and idiots in charge. Dirty money is no exception - no matter how dirty. So they will continue to arm all sides and stir the pot while making up bogus excuses to bomb more villages, creating more angry people who we can then bomb for being angry. See General Dynamics? You needn't worry that your bombs might go to waste or that demand for your product might wane. We got your back.
War may bankrupt the nation but it enriches the profiteers.
And the cash registers go ka-ching, ka-ching!
We are a nation led by war criminals, war profiteers, thieves and torturers. Greed at the highest levels of society is destroying us. This country has gone insane.
If we, as a nation, are unable to rise to the level of Dirty Fuckin' Hippies, let us at least aspire to the level of bonobos.
I can't stomach another lie...or another war.
The willing suspension of disbelief is a literary device, not a national policy.
America, you're being played.
I tell you because I love you.
If we want there to be fewer 'terrorists' in the world, we should stop creating them. Al Qaeda? Our creation. ISIS/ISIL? Our creation. Khorasan? Our invention.
For all our hard work creating terrorist boogiemen, you are still more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist. Way, way more...especially if you are brown-skinned.
Americans in general are 8 to 9 times more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist and young black males are 21 times more likely to be killed by a cop than whites.
Young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater i, according to a ProPublica analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings.
The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.i7 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.
Young Black Men 21 Times Likelier To Be Shot Dead By Police Than Whites
So if we're all about righting wrongs, we've got our hands full right here at home.
And don't you believe the lie that we can't possibly stop the killing. We most certainly can. We can do whatever we want. That's the sad part.
All these wars are doing is sucking up all the oxygen, wasting our treasure and our youth while issues that truly threaten the human race go ignored because they have no military solutions and because there's no money left when we're done buying more missiles and bombs than anyone could ever need. We are like a giant dimwitted child with a hammer and all we can see are nails – while we blithely ignore those things that are actually going to kill us all. Hint: it's not terrorists.
glorifying war is a sin
If we were wise enough to stop stupidly wasting our money on murder and mayhem, we could provide free education and health care to all, repair our rotting infrastructure, solve homelessness and poverty, help anyone who needed it and attend to all the real problems, like catastrophic climate change, coming our way. A trillion dollars a year goes a long way when your not pouring it down a black hole.
Please watch this. It's the best video you'll see all day, World Beyond War:
People of conscience should oppose war with every fiber of their being - now and forever. Please lend your support to David Swanson and the good people at World Beyond War. This madness must end.