Speaking the Unspeakable

Talkin bout life and what it means to you,

It dont mean nothin if it dont run through

--Todd Rundgren

Henry II spoke the unspeakable, asking his loyal henchmen, "...will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" Shortly thereafter the Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered. Plausible deniability brought down the World Trade Center, the same way it brought down the Archbishop. No one would issue such a direct order, but cloaked in silence is intent, and in a system of "clubbish" cronyism, accomplishment of inferred intent is richly rewarded. "Whatever it takes" gets a free pass to accomplish the end.

Comparisons of the present day USA with Nazi Germany sound (to some) polemic at best, insane at worst .  Yet each time humanity exceeds its record in cruelty and brutality, both denial and disbelief join together to discredit the evidence.  We have a long history of murdering prophets of truth, erecting shrines and statues to them in later generations when the truth becomes “self-evident.”  It is our shameful history, secret only in its own time.

"When the big story arrives...it will be like a bullet with your name on it. You won't even hear it coming."

The canaries are dying in droves in our cultural coal mine.  And as always, we parse and quibble, deconstruct and dissect; fearful of losing our “objectivity,” when the ideologues, armed with their own brand of “moral clarity,” pursue their ideal without impediment of conscience. 

Obama-Hillary…Schmoebama-Shillery.  The Masters of War and their “patriotic-christian” stooges will slaughter you to return to Feudalism. They have sold your children into slavery without so much as a howdy-doo.  They will tut-tut through their jowels that it's "in the Bible."  

This is the story that is unspeakable: "...this is not about politics... this is about flesh and blood. This is not about right and left, this is about right and wrong.” 

“Beware lest you become what you fight,” warn Buddhists. America fought the Nazis in WW II and now we have become them. The use of uranium munitions by US forces in Iraq may be a greater crime against humanity than the Holocaust. Far, far greater! America now is the world’s most Evil Empire.”    --Tom Cahill, August 30, 2005 

How, then, do we attain the same “moral clarity” as the ideologues we choose to resist without “becoming what we fight?”  By now, the “litmus test” should be clear and obvious:  cruelty and brutality.  When we excuse our own cruelty and brutality with such memes as “…to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs,” or “freedom isn’t free,” we continue the Culture of War.

One heartbreaking thread running throughout Military History is that the advocates at the front are the first to stand and the first to die.  Invisible, of course, is the usual gang of cynics and opportunists who bait the bull and reap the profits.  They are the ones who justify themselves with “Social Darwinism,” the “Divine Right of Kings” in Drag.  The grim business of butchery is then left to the laborers, as always. 

Sadly, a culture that ennobles war and warriors will never think otherwise until their homes are rubble and they bury their children.  Let the yellow-ribbon flag-waving sports fans who worship war get a belly full of it.  Otherwise, they will not change.  Let the rah-rah flag-wavers drink from their own cup of suffering and death.  They beg for it, yet they “know not what they do.”

Maybe their Heavenly Father will forgive the cheerleaders for the culture of death, but History will not.  If the human species is to survive, it must see war as the rapacious barbarity it truly is.  The soldier defends what he thinks is holy at peril of his own life.  The war profiteer hedges his bets and grows fat on corpses, beating plowshares into swords and children into slavery.

“The time has come to tell the children the truth. The time has come to tell them that most are condemned to castes, unable to escape, destined to be exploited, destined for modern man’s version of slavery.” 

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