The Great White Camel

Here is an excerpt from a thoughtful review of the movie Zero Dark Thirty:

Zero Dark Thirty shows America swaggering and bragging, torturing and killing and proud of it. Americans love this shit because they have no empathy — they never imagine themselves on the receiving end of it. And they’re so damnably stupid and easy to manipulate that even when they are on the receiving end of it, as on 9/11, they don’t learn anything from it. Forget about any self-reflection as to why so many people in the world hate America. It was so easy for the ruling class to channel Americans’ bigotry onto Muslims and deflect away the normal healthy reaction of what should have been tremendous anger at the US government for not preventing 9/11 after all the trillions of dollars spent on “defense” and “security” and all the warnings from various other nations’ intelligence agencies. (Ralph Nader suggested four decades ago that cockpit doors on planes should be strengthened and locked. But what does he know compared to “bottom line” airline executives — he only gave us seat belts.) Three thousand people dead, a nation shellshocked and yet no one in our vast political/intelligence/military/surveillance state lost a day’s pay or got a reprimand. No one on top pays for anything in America whether it’s torture, financial fraud, illegal eavesdropping or negligent homicide. Zero Dark Thirty shows the incredible resources available to kill and destroy while Americans live in cardboard boxes in New York City and tents next to off-ramps in San Diego. A country whose infrastructure is so dilapidated that it’s not even safe for people to live under its bridges. A moral and social wasteland where more of its “true believers,” its trumpeted soldiers, kill themselves each year than are killed by its enemies. A country so fucked up, from its rotting Obama drone-head on down, that an increasing number of alienated citizens make their final statement the mass killing of total strangers, especially children. One great day it will be unanimous: three hundred million Americans will hate America.

You can (and should) read the rest @
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/01/the-great-white-camel/#more-47451

As I have stated elsewhere, I believe that Osama bin Laden was more like Snowball of Animal Farm than Moby Dick, but the allusion to Captain Ahab's obsession is pretty damn appropriate.

And we all know what happened to Ahab.