The Collapse Of Western Morality
We have what appears to be a new thrill: American soldiers using the cover of war to murder civilians. Recently American troops were arrested for murdering Afghan civilians for fun and collecting trophies such as fingers and skulls.
This revelation came on the heels of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s alleged leak of a US Army video of US soldiers in helicopters and their controllers thousands of miles away having fun with joy sticks murdering members of the press and Afghan civilians. Manning is cursed with a moral conscience that has been discarded by his government and his military, and Manning has been arrested for obeying the law and reporting a war crime to the American people.
US Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, of course, from Michigan, who is on the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, has called for Manning’s execution. According to US Rep. Rogers it is an act of treason to report an American war crime.
In other words, to obey the law constitutes "treason to America."
US Rep. Rogers said that America’s wars are being undermined by "a culture of disclosure" and that this "serious and growing problem" could only be stopped by the execution of Manning.
The US government, a font of imperial hubris, does not believe that any act it commits, no matter how vile, can possibly be a war crime.
If the crimes were limited to war and the theft of lands, perhaps we could say it is a case of jingoism sidetracking traditional morality, otherwise still in effect.
Alas, the collapse of morality is too widespread. Some sports teams now have a win-at-all-cost attitude that involves plans to injure the star players of the opposing teams. To avoid all these controversies, let’s go to Formula One racing where 200 mph speeds are routine.
Prior to 1988, 22 years ago, track deaths were due to driver error, car failure, and poorly designed tracks compromised with safety hazards. World Champion Jackie Stewart did much to improve the safety of tracks, both for drivers and spectators.
But in 1988 everything changed. Top driver Ayrton Senna nudged another top driver Alain Prost toward a pit wall at 190 mph. According to AutoWeek (August 30, 2010), nothing like this had been seen before."Officials did not punish Senna’s move that day in Portugal, and so a significant shift in racing began." What the great racing driver Stirling Moss called "dirty driving" became the norm.
Nigel Roebuck in AutoWeek reports that in 1996 World Champion Damon Hill said that Senna’s win-at-all-cost tactic "was responsible for fundamental change in the ethics of the sport." Drivers began using "terrorist tactics on the track." Damon Hill said that "the views that I’d gleaned from being around my dad [twice world champion Graham Hill] and people like him, I soon had to abandon," because you realized that no penalty was forthcoming against the guy who tried to kill you in order that he could win.
When asked about the ethics of modern Formula One racing, American World Champion Phil Hill said:"Doing that sort of stuff in my day was just unthinkable. For one thing, we believed certain tactics were unacceptable."
In today’s Western moral climate, driving another talented driver into the wall at 200 mph is just part of winning.
Michael Schumacher, born in January 1969, is a seven times World Champion, an unequaled record. On August 1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, AutoWeek Reports that Schumacher tried to drive his former Ferrari teammate, Rubens Barrichello, into the wall at 200 mph speeds.
Confronted with his attempted act of murder, Schumacher said: "This is Formula One. Everyone knows I don’t give presents."
Neither does the US government, nor state and local governments, nor the UK government, nor the EU.
The deformation of the police, which many Americans, in their untutored existence as naive believers in"law and order," still think are "on their side," has taken on new dimensions with the police militarized to fight "terrorists" and "domestic extremists."
The police have been off the leash since the civilian police boards were nixed by the conservatives. Kids as young as 6 years old have been handcuffed and carted off to jail for school infractions that may or may not have occurred. So have moms with a car full of children (see, for example, this video.).
Anyone who Googles videos of US police gratuitous brutality will call up tens of thousands of examples, and this is after laws that make filming police brutality a felony. A year or two ago such a search would call up hundreds of thousands of videos.
In one of the most recent of the numerous daily acts of gratuitous police abuse of citizens, an 84-year-old man had his neck broken because he objected to a night time towing of his car. The goon cop body-slammed the 84-year old and broke his neck. The Orlando, Florida, police department says that the old man was a "threat" to the well-armed, much younger police goon, because the old man clenched his fist.
Americans will be the first people sent straight to Hell while thinking that they are the salt of the earth.
The Americans have even devised a title for themselves to rival that of the Israelis’ self-designation as"God’s Chosen People." The Americans call themselves "the indispensable people."
3 comments:
Goes on in every war. Especially if the war lasts a long time. Train people to kill and they will
old john
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