The graphic on the right is the comic strip from Earth Day 1971, in which Pogo utters what is arguably his most well-known, and certainly most quoted line: "We have met the enemy and he is us.". Though made in the context of our own human destruction of our life environment, it is applicable to a much wider range of issues.
Let's face it folks: whether we like it or not, whether we want to admit it or not, we human beings are our own worst enemies and as well as every other living creature on this little planet of ours. We are apparently too short-sighted to realize how dangerous we are, to others, of course, but also to ourselves. If we weren't the dominant living species on the planet, I'm sure we'd be contained in some hazardous materials box on a rocket ship to nowhere in particular somewhere out there in space.
The latest reason good ol' Pogo sprang to mind has nothing to do with the environment, however. No, to be perfectly honest, the Parisian climate change fiasco at the end of last year was so much business as usual, so utterly ignorant of anything serious that poor ol' Pogo never made it into my head. It's too easy to ignore the environment and the climate. A couple of sunny days and everyone wants to go to the beach; let is snow unreasonably somewhere and the environmental blockheads will be making lame jokes that no one can even laugh at. I was so busy facepalming myself then that I almost charged myself with assault. Yeah, that's a different matter altogether.
No, I had to think of Pogo again because of the two key notions in his quip: "enemy" and "us". "We have met the enemy and he is us." I suppose the events of this past week also called forth the irony involved in the quotes source, which is, a many know, a parody of a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after his victory in the Battle of Lake Erie, stating, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours." In those days wars were wars and battles were battles and there was a certain clarity to life, I suppose. Things have changed quite a bit in the meantime, and these days we find ourselves inextricably caught in a hodge-podge of sticky, clammy, and utterly revolting ideas that breathe new life into Pogo's poignant words.
Imagine this: a seriously disturbed and obviously psychopathic individual, who is known to have frequented a nightclub teeming with alternative lifestyles, but whose family's cultural heritage we love to denigrate, and who is known to federal authorities for his bizarre behavior yet is classified more or less as "harmless" (but probably useful as well) and so can still legally acquire a semi-automatic, and appropriately designated, "assault rifle", and who was working as an armed security guard anyhow, goes to that nightclub and kills and wounds over 100 people before the police "take him out". And, to make the madness complete, Daesh wants to take credit. How bizarre is that? And just how bizzare is the aftermath "discussion", or is it simply a media frenzy, with no beginning, no middle, and Lord knows, no end?
The thing about reality is, you can't make this stuff up. Now every hollow talking-head, every no-nothing pundit, and every armchair expert with a social-media feed is telling us who did what to whom and why and for what reason, complete with Constitutional justifications, foregone conclusions, and not an ounce of common sense. Jaws are dropping, heads are shaking, fingers are pointing, tongues are wagging, bile is spewing, presumptive presidential candidates are tweeting, political nobodies are trying to capitalize, hysteria is rising, fear is being mongered, and the world is watching.
Let me make myself clear: this incident was a tragedy; it doesn't matter who was targeted, the attack was unwarranted and unnecessary; it was hateful, despicable, and cowardly; it was a senseless waste of life and cause of pain, not only for those directly involved, but for their friends, family, and all the rest of us. Our fellow human beings were needlessly and pathologically ravaged, and there is not a religious belief, allegedly sacred text, or misplaced ideology that justifies this in any way. The merest "yes, but" reveals you as the insensitive, cruel, and heartless idiot that you are. That's not harsh. It's just that simple.
But what we're seeing (again), of course, is the unabashed, shameful, disgusting, and reprehensible instrumentalization of others' tragedy for our own less-than-honorable ends. The terrorized see only the looming threat of radicalized Islam (even though the perpetrator probably didn't know any more about Islam than they do); the holier-than-thou religionists see only the righteous infliction of overdue punishment upon the iniquitous (though, thankfully, the majority of religious people don't); the deluded 2nd-Amendment worshippers see only Obama's black hand reaching for their guns; the NRA-lobbyists see untold possibilities for more influence; the purveyors of global terror see new opportunities for exploitation and further justifications; the paranoid see conspiracies, the candidates see votes; and the military-industrial complex sees dollar signs. Oh, how proud we must be.
And all this ranting, raving, accusing, weeping, moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth gets us no where, of course. We'll spend the rest of what little time's left to us fixing the blame without once thinking about fixing the problem(s). Once again too many people are slain and traumatized for absolutely no reason at all, because we resolutely refuse to own up to one simple fact: tragedies like this are, by and large, avoidable, because -- and this is key -- they are of our own making.
Events like this happen all over the world, but they don't happen as often nor on such a scale as they do in the United States. There is something to the perception that everything is simply bigger there. The only thing really different about American events are the gun-nut reactions. Just about everyone else around the world sees guns for what they are: sports equipment, not some glorified extensional illusion of something they never really had. The right to own a gun has little, if anything, to do with freedom.
Real rights and guarantees of freedom were given up willingly in America in the wake of 9/11 and in accord with what the so-called American leadership wanted: suspension of habeas corpus, the ability to monitor, search and seize without warrants or just cause, the elimination of special considerations for American citizens and the legal authority to declare them terrorists – through mere suspicion -- and extract them from the civil judicial system, increasingly brutal and capricious law-enforcement agencies. Those are signs of authoritarianism. Only the justifications are different these days. But I didn't see Americans resisting even a little when all that was taken away from them. They just went on yelling "we're free, we're free ... we've still got our guns". I can tell you that when seen from the outside, it come across just a wee bit pathetic.
What events like Orlando bring into the harshest light is where people are willing to draw their lines, and how quickly, too. It is in times of crisis that people's true character comes to the fore. It's then you can see just how responsible all of us are for such things happening. It's no longer possible, it would seem, for us to see things for what they are. The facts mean nothing when you've got your prejudices and opinions to guide you. Yet, at first, and foremost, we're ready to blame anything and everything but ourselves for the tragedies that befall us. It's our rights being threatened (to have guns, of course ... to hell with the rest of them), it's our culture that's under attack (the one that is open and tolerant ... I don't think so); it's our alleged "values" that are being threatened by these others (but we have to ask ourselves which "values" are these and who are the "others").
In this case, as in the majority of terrorist attacks in most recent history, the perpetrator was one of our own: born and raised in the US, radicalized, yes, but maybe not from sources we would like to admit. In the end, the shooter was just another psychologically unstable person, someone who failed to make it in that violence-steeped morass we call American society and who had access to weapons that should have been beyond his reach. But it doesn't matter as long as it keeps the fear alive.
Most Americans, it seems to me, are scared to death, and death is then what finds them. An adolescent longing for good old days that were good for only a part of society; the yearning for law and order, whereby those sworn to uphold the law become ever more brutal and oppressive; the craving for any kind of protection in ever more situations that can never be secured. When you're scared out of your wits, you'll see a threat in every corner, beneath every shadow. And let's face it, most of us live in constant fear these days: the media work long and hard at telling us how to feel and what to think and what to be afraid of. Big, moneyed interests let us know whom to fear.
When you're at a loss for answers, when you can't talk or discuss any more, as I've said before, your only answer to such senseless violence is even more violence. When are we going to get it? When more toddlers kill more people than terrorists, well it's time to do something about gun access first not terror. When law enforcement kills more unarmed people than terrorists, then it's time to do something about law enforcement not terror. When prescriptions drugs kill more people than illegal ones, then it's time to do something about Big Pharma, not petty drug dealers made out to be thugs preying on our children. We've got our priorities all screwed up, that's for sure.
To me it's clear why: Americans killed their society with individualism a long time ago. It's every person for themselves. Only the losers, weaklings and leeches want help from others. Only bleeding-heart liberals would even think of giving them anything anyway. Why in the name of all that's holy would I want to lend a helping hand, ensure that the hungry get fed, the thirsty are given drink, that naked get clothed, the homeless sheltered, or that the sick get healed? And because such things are anathema to us (for even if most polls show that most Americans would like to deal with such things, I haven't seen or heard of a single protest or nationwide movement to address any of this ... well, of course, except Sanders' failed nomination bid, which was doomed from the start as the recent managed selection of Clinton unerringly showed), we allow all this other stuff to happen again and again and again and again. I have little hope that we're going to learn anything from this one either.
No, Pogo nailed it a long time ago: we have met the enemy, and he is us.
No comments:
Post a Comment