Bloodlust punishes Boston
What I find fascinating in so many of the comment threads about the Boston Marathon stories is the tempered expression caused by not knowing who the attacker-- or attackers-- were. The reactionaries that distrust-- and even overtly hate-- Muslims have to make sure first that the bombings were not the work of a right-wing fringe group made up of white males. (Funny how we frequently refer to Muslim terrorist organizations, but never to Christian ones, even though nearly all our white separatist groups, like the bombers in Oklahoma City, are Christian fundamentalists to their most core beliefs.)We live in such an insanely violent country, but you're not going to get exactly the harangue about domestic violence you might be expecting from me on this. (Or maybe you are.) I do support common sense gun laws like thorough background checks, waiting periods, the closing of loopholes for gun show and internet purchases, and limitations on what ammunitions and types of guns people can legally possess. I support the requirement of permits and I want it known very publicly the name of every person in my community who possesses one of these permits to carry. After all, the Second Amendment requires that our gun-owning citizenry be “well-regulated.” That’s a Constitutional mandate. Everybody agrees that an individual citizen should not be allowed to own an Uzi, one of those over-the-shoulder missile launchers, or a nuclear weapon, so if you’re denying that there are Constitutional limits imposed on weapon ownership, you’re being hypocritical. The debate instead should be centered on where we draw the line. Also, personally, you won’t see me loitering within two blocks of a gun, if I can help it at all.
But I also share some of the concerns of our gun rights advocates. Like them, I definitely don’t want to live in a country where the government possesses all the guns. Not this government. The root of most of our violence in this country is at the federal level. It’s our government that has dehumanized us. It’s our government that has cheapened human life in both our domestic and foreign policy. It has ranked the value of life by skin color and economic circumstance. I hate to have to be the jerk that points out that there were 55 people killed in coordinated car bombings by insurgents in Iraq on the same day the bombs went off in Boston. Violence is the shit we swim in when we eagerly take sides in regional conflicts far away from our region of the world. And that's who we are.
When the first question posed to the governor of Massachusetts yesterday is about the specter of a “false flag” bombing by the government, I don’t consider the person who asked the question to be a “nut.” I’m not at all convinced that this particular attack holds the characteristics of such an attack, but I’m not ignorant of history either.
Our federal government conspired to and successfully murdered Martin Luther King Jr., a man of peace that it considered very dangerous. Despite the lack of media coverage then and now, a civil jury in Memphis, Tennessee actually ruled this to be the case when the King family brought a wrongful death suit in 1999 alleging that James Earl Ray was used as a scapegoat in the shooting. Additionally, we’ve all seen Abraham Zapruder’s home movie of the assassination of John Kennedy and anybody with half a frontal lobe knows that a head doesn’t recoil backwards when it’s penetrated by a bullet from behind. Nobody can quite agree what happened regarding Kennedy, but we each acknowledge that the most sensitive government files pertaining to the assassination remain sealed.
We know that this government invented an attack upon the U.S.S. Maine in Cuba in 1898 when it wanted a war against Spain. We know it invented an attack by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin when it wanted war in Southeast Asia in 1964. We know it manipulated intelligence when it wanted war with Iraq in 2003, and that in the ongoing “War on Terror,” it has turned over nearly all of its military operations to the C.I.A. for the purpose of keeping as many of those actions as covert as possible. We also know that our government is decidedly more interested in prosecuting Bradley Manning, a whistle-blower to war crimes committed by U.S. military personnel than it is the war criminals he exposed and the authorities that covered up their offenses.
When you see such prominent “mainstream” media as the New York Post and Fox News jump so quickly-- and incorrectly-- towards a story about a Saudi national being held in custody in Boston in connection with Monday's bombings, some of us immediately recognize a potential repeat of historical treachery and deceit. If you’re one of those people laughing today at the “false flag” conspiracy theorists surrounding Boston, know that some of us think it’s simultaneously possible for you to be correct in your individual assumptions, but also a useful idiot in your knee-jerk dismissals.
If you're concerned in the slightest about the oceanic depths of our government’s culture of secrecy, now is not the time to keep quiet about it. This would be like victims of gun violence turning silent immediately following a high-profile shooting. These acts of terror are inherently political events. Why is only one side prohibited from being political? And if you want to avoid having a cluster of “truthers” in your midst, do your shit in the open.
Mark Twain charged the nation with bloodlust in 1907: "We build a fire in a powder magazine, then double the fire department to put it out. We inflame wild beasts with the smell of blood, and then innocently wonder at the wave of brutal appetite that sweeps the land as a consequence."
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Each year Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts marks the anniversary of the first shots fired in the Revolutionary War, the battles fought by militia men against the British army at Lexington and Concord. Maybe we shouldn’t have so many holidays commemorating historical acts of violence, however justified. Save your patriotism for the 4th of July. Better yet, make it December 6th. That was the date in 1865 when ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment extended the right of independence to all Americans.
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Why does it matter so much to our leaders whether the bombings in Boston are labeled an act of "terrorism"? Because doing so opens the door politically for the president to lead us into war.
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Here’s the AV Club’s report of the ostensibly-boisterous memorial for Roger Ebert at the Chicago Theater on Thursday. Among the heroes in this life are those that make their trade more democratic in convenance. That’s what Roger did for the narrow and esoteric world of film criticism. I appreciate the theory of the AV Club author that film is an inherently liberal art in that it engenders human empathy.
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Bob Newhart is going to be guest-starring on the popular series The Big Bang Theory during its May 2nd season finale, and in a role that may lead to future appearances. This is wonderful news. I watch this program and I love Bob. But just as importantly, we need to get Bob back into the forefront of the American consciousness so that somebody... anybody... will release the remaining DVDs for Bob's two previous hit series. Both The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart stalled out in the DVD format under 20th Century Fox in 2007.
posted by CM @ 7:15 PM
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