My friend shared the interesting article below with me today and I thought I'd repost. Something about this whole killing of Osama bin Laden makes me feel uneasy. I try not to get too involved in politics because the corruption depresses me. However, I did watch President Obama's speech a couple nights ago and I didn't like how he made it sound like this was an American victory in the name of revenge. I know we have to protect our country. I know lives will be lost in that process. Maybe bin Laden's death was crucial in that fight. Maybe it will only make matters worse. But the bottom line is, I am uncomfortable in the way this headhunting is being celebrated. What was the price for this man's death? How many years? How many lives? How much money? How many other national crises neglected in the name of homeland security? Part of me thinks it's some carefully orchestrated Illuminati plan- are they pulling one over on us? The other part of me thinks Yosemite Sam may as well be running this country. What are your thoughts?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TZM: Response to Media; Death of Osama bin Laden
On May 1, 2011 Pres. Barack Obama appeared on national television with the spontaneous announcement that Osama bin Laden, the purported organizer of the tragic events of September 11th 2001, was killed by military forces in Pakistan.
Within moments, a media blitz ran across virtually all television networks in what could only be described as a grotesque celebratory display, reflective of a level of emotional immaturity that borders on cultural psychosis. Depictions of people running through the streets of New York and Washington chanting jingoistic American slogans, waving their flags like the members of some cult, praising the death of another human being, reveals yet another layer of this sickness we call modern society.
It is not the scope of this response to address the political usage of such an event or to illuminate the staged orchestration of how public perception was to be controlled by the mainstream media and the United States Government. Rather the point of this article is to express the gross irrationality apparent and how our culture becomes so easily fixed and emotionally charged with respect to surface symbology, rather than true root problems, solutions or rational considerations of circumstance.
The first and most obvious point is that the death of Osama bin Laden means nothing when it comes to the problem of international terrorism. His death simply serves as a catharsis for a culture that has a neurotic fixation on revenge and retribution. The very fact that the Government which, from a psychological standpoint, has always served as a paternal figure for it citizens, reinforces the idea that murdering people is a solution to anything should be enough for most of us to take pause and consider the quality of the values coming out of the zeitgeist itself.
However, beyond the emotional distortions and tragic, vindictive pattern of rewarding the continuation of human division and violence comes a more practical consideration regarding what the problem really is and the importance of that problem with respect to priority.
The death of any human being is of an immeasurable consequence in society. It is never just the death of the individual. It is the death of relationships, companionship, support and the integrity of familial and communal environments. The unnecessary deaths of 3000 people on September 11, 2001 is no more or no less important than the deaths of those during the World Wars, via cancer and disease, accidents or anything else.
As a society, it is safe to say that we seek a world that strategically limits all such unnecessary consequences through social approaches that allow for the greatest safety our ingenuity can create. It is in this context that the neurotic obsession with the events of September 11th, 2001 become gravely insulting and detrimental to progress. An environment has now been created where outrageous amounts of money, resources and energy is spent seeking and destroying very small subcultures of human beings that pose ideological differences and act on those differences through violence.
Yet, in the United States alone each year, roughly 30,000 people die from automobile accidents, the majority of which could be stopped by very simple structural changes. That’s ten 9/11′s each year… yet no one seems to pine over this epidemic. Likewise, over 1 million Americans die from heart disease and cancer annually – causes of which are now easily linked to environmental influences in the majority. Yet, regardless of the over 330 9/11′s occurring each year in this context, the governmental budget allocations for research on these illnesses is only a small fraction of the money spent on “anti-terrorism” operations.
Such a list could go on and on with regard to the perversion of priority when it comes to what it means to truly save and protect human life and I hope many out there can recognize the severe imbalance we have at hand with respect to our values.
So, coming back to the point of revenge and retribution, I will conclude this response with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., likely the most brilliant intuitive mind when it came to conflict and the power of non-violence. On September 15, 1963 a Birmingham Alabama church was bombed, killing four little girls attending Sunday school.
In a public address, Dr. King stated:
“What murdered these four girls? Look around. You will see that many people that you never thought about participated in this evil act. So tonight all of us must leave here with a new determination to struggle. God has a job for us to do. Maybe our mission is to save the soul of America. We can’t save the soul of this nation throwing bricks. We can’t save the soul of this nation getting our ammunitions and going out shooting physical weapons. We must know that we have something much more powerful. Just take up the ammunition of love.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, 1963 -
~Peter Joseph
www.thezeitgeistmovement.com
Source: News Letter From The Zeitgeist Movement
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ReplyDeleteI had the same reaction when I watched the speech. I almost felt like the timing was too good. But, everyone around me seemed so vindicated by the event. Like somehow him dying will make us safer and make sense of all of the lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the US during 9/11. Not to mention, I am the only who noticed that Obama forgot to address the plan moving forward. I mean after 10 years of war following 9/11, billions of dollars spent, many lives lost we finally get the guy responsible for starting it all and he doesn't even mention - What happens now?!
ReplyDeleteAnd, its hard not to feel like all of this is not apart of some bigger plan. Using 9/11 to go back to war in Iraq even though Osama Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11, electing Obama partly because he said he would stop the war and then three years later not only are we still at war but right before his reelection he finds Osama Bin Laden, which helps justify his decision to keep the war going and makes people feel like he is doing everything right even though he didn’t follow through on his promise.
Thanks for sharing. I feel better knowing I am not the only person who feels a little uneasy about how our country reacted to Osama Bin Laden's recent death.
Right there too. I feel like I am the only sane one out in this U.S of A sometimes. I find the American dream to be very much so a contradiction in most ways.
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