Thoughts for the day

The media teach us to be horrified at the Oklahoma City bombing, but I won't have time to be horrified at it as long as there are greater horrors in the world that make it seem insignificant by comparison. Moreover, our politicians and our military kill people in far larger numbers than was done at Oklahoma City, and they do so for motives that are far more cold blooded and calculating. On orders from the president, a general will kill some thousands of people (usually including many civilians regardless of efforts to avoid such losses) without bothering to ask himself whether the killing is justified. He has to follow orders because his only other alternative would be to resign his commission, and naturally he would rather kill a few thousand people than spoil his career. The politicians and the media justify these actions with propaganda about "defending freedom." However, even if America were a free society (which it is not), most U.S. military action during at least the last couple of decades has not been necessary for the survival of American society but has been designed to protect relatively narrow economic or political interests or to boost the president's approval rating in the public-opinion polls.

The media portray the killing at Oklahoma City as a ghastly atrocity, but I remember how they cheered the U.S. action in the Gulf War just as they might have cheered for their favorite football team. The whole thing was treated as if it were a big game. I didn't see any sob stories about the death agonies of Iraqi soldiers or about their grieving families. It's easy to see the reason for the difference: America's little wars are designed to promote the interests of "the system," but violence at home is dangerous to the system, so the system's propaganda has to teach us the correspondingly correct attitudes toward such events. Yet I am much less repelled by powerless dissidents who kill a couple hundred because they think they have no other way to effectively state their protest, than I am by politicians and generals---people in positions of great power---who kill hundreds or thousands for the sake of cold calculated political and economic advantages.

Ted Kaczynski, the alleged Unabomber

[borrowed from http://www.3-3-3.org/docs/Kaczynski's%20comments%20on%20McVeigh.htm]

By the way, the same comments could be made about the Boston Marathon bombing and our war in Afghanistan. Not much has changed in the past 20 years.

Note 1: I post this NOT to condone Ted's actions, but because I believe that even violent people have things to say which are worth listening to. President Obama ad-Dajjal boasts that he is "really good at killing people". Do you still listen to him?

Note 2: I have called Ted the "alleged" Unabomber because it has never been proven that he committed all the crimes of which he was accused.