Pat Tillman walking away from millions to "fight for his country" does not impress me...but I am awed by the ability to manipulate humans into consistently acting against their interests and the interests of the entire planet.
"People often are conscripted into armies, but sometimes they enlist with gusto," explains Steven Pinker, director of the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Jingoism," Pinker declares, "is alarmingly easy to evoke."
"War itself is venal, dirty, confusing and perhaps the most potent narcotic invented by humankind," says New York Times columnist Chris Hedges. "It allows us to suspend individual conscience, maybe even consciousness, for the cause. And few of us are immune... The contagion of war, of the siren call of the nation, is so strong that most cannot resist."
But resist we must...and unless we in America create new, powerful-and urgent-ways to resist, we cannot expect the victims of our indifference and ineptitude to not hold each of us accountable. As Ward Churchill explains, it's not acceptable or realistic to believe that the "brown-skinned folks dying in the millions in order to maintain this way of life...can wait forever for those who purport to be the opposition here to find some personally comfortable and pure manner of affecting the kind of transformation that brings not just lethal but genocidal processes to a halt."
As yourself this: Who gave up a life of luxury and turned his back on millions to fight in the mountains and caves of Afghanistan for what he believed in and, as a result, is revered by millions as a "hero"?
Depending on who you are and where you live, you might answer "Pat Tillman" or you might answer: "Osama bin Laden."
The world doesn't need any more "heroes" like Tillman or Osama. One of the first things it needs is for the American people to snap out of their propaganda-induced fog ASAP and seek a "greater calling" in the truest sense.
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at
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