11:33 AM 5/3/11
About Osama bin Laden.
So the news article that I got angry about yesterday... After a few more days, people will forget about Osama bin Laden's death, and I won't have to read any more upsetting news articles.
The news article said, 'How to discuss Osama bin Laden's death with children.'
This made me very, very angry. Are you telling your children about him? Are you telling them that they should walk around constantly scared and terrified that we are going to be randomly attacked by people from a foreign country? Osama bin Laden is just another guy in the news. There are hundreds of 'evil,' dangerous people out there in the world. He is only one amongst hundreds and hundreds of them. Thousands. Millions. There are tons and tons of people who potentially want to hurt other people. Our own military is a large group of people who goes around shooting and killing other people. The idea of blaming it all on ONE PERSON who has some supernatural power is totally foreign to me. I just don't see the world this way at all. I don't view all evil as coming from one particular person who we should all be afraid of, and whose death we should rejoice at.
In fact, I don't see 'evil' as being something personal at all. I see more evil in huge, anonymous social systems that nickel-and-dime us to death every day and are taken for granted as 'the way it is.' I don't view it as all coming from one individual person who is responsible for everything bad that happens in the world. I have never felt any fear of Osama bin Laden or the 'terrorists.' I am more afraid of having a car crash or dying in a tornado or choking to death on a piece of food or catching a virus that kills me quickly and unexpectedly before I have a chance to realize that I'm extremely sick and in danger of dying.
So it's totally foreign to me to imagine a family where you tell your children that there's this big, scary, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-evil, supernatural guy out there, somewhere in the world, (and as I'm writing this, I'm remembering Harry Potter and Voldemort, and seeing both sides, because I got into those books and agreed with that perspective while reading them). Instead, I see it as, large numbers of people are doing a wide variety of activities that are harmful to us in many ways, and some of them are individual criminals, some of them are part of organized crime gangs or groups, and some of them are members of government and other institutions that are supposedly respectable, and some of them are ordinary, ignorant people following the rules, doing their jobs, doing what they're supposed to do, and supposedly being 'good' while actually doing harm and not realizing it and not meaning to - that applies to all government employees who don't harm people intentionally.
Some of the 'evil' people are actually heroes in their own world, as they are fighting back against something evil we did to them, and they have a legitimate grievance. After all the reading I've done over the past few years, I have the viewpoint that says that when people in other countries are angry at the USA, they usually have a very good reason for being angry at us. We really are doing horrible things to them, invading their countries, bombing them, controlling their money supply, making economic sanctions to prevent them from importing things into their countries, destroying their buildings and killing and torturing their people.
After seeing it this way for so many years, I can't imagine telling my children that this one specific person just suddenly went crazy and became evil for no reason at all, and he spontaneously decided, without cause, to attack the United States, just for the heck of it, while we're all perfectly innocent and good over here, we're all innocent unsuspecting victims who never did anyone any harm, and so this evil scary guy is out there in the world somewhere, lurking around, invisible, about to strike us at any moment, unexpectedly... and thank God, he's finally dead! I just can't see things that way AT ALL. That is such an ignorant and naive way of looking at things that it is coming from a completely different universe to me.
So 'how to discuss Osama bin Laden's death with children' is irrelevant. Why would you even waste time discussing him at all? There are far more important things on earth to discuss with your children. What about Santa Claus? I'm interested in 'how to discuss Santa Claus with your children.' After reading 'The Trouble With Christmas' I agree that you should never, ever tell your children that Santa Claus is real, and you should warn them ahead of time that other parents, and other children, WILL try to brainwash them into believing that he is real, when he isn't. Discussing Santa Claus with my children is something that I intend to do.
Bin Laden is just another guy who died. He has a false persona of being somebody really important, when really, he has no effect at all, and I say that because we are still going to be fighting over there, all of the troops will remain - you want to bet money against me? Go ahead, bet money against me. I would bet money that the troop decisions, the military decisions, are not affected by the death of bin Laden. We will not suddenly say, 'Well, it's time to bring them all home.' I heard some co-workers saying wishfully that they hoped that now, some of the troops will finally come home from Iraq. I'm not trying to be mean about this, but that is an extremely naive thing to wish for. Of course we wish that would happen! But the troops being over there has NOTHING TO DO WITH BIN LADEN. They are over there because the people who make the big decisions in government have some kind of ulterior motives of their own, some crazy insane ideas, or something that they gain, some kind of physical power, money, or political advantage that they gain, by invading those countries.
In fact, we will be invading EVEN MORE COUNTRIES! It seems as though the more bankrupt we become, the more we go reaching out into the world looking for stuff to steal. Bin Laden is NOTHING. It's like he didn't even exist. He is a puff of smoke that blows away in the wind. We will still keep reaching out and invading more and more countries to steal their land and their resources. The death of bin Laden has no effect at all on our military decisions, and in fact, we will continue to invade more and more countries. I don't expect any troops to be brought back at all.
I should stop ranting...
In a few days, I won't be seeing any more news articles about bin Laden, so I won't have anything to react to and get all angry about. Everyone will forget he ever existed. In a few days, nobody will notice anymore that bin Laden was the 'reason why' we were invading all those foreign countries. Everyone will forget that he was the reason. Because HE ISN'T THE REASON!!! We will still keep invading. And no one will notice this, and no one will care. We don't even NEED another scapegoat to replace bin Laden! We can do this perfectly fine without any scapegoats at all! Our scapegoat can just be some big vague imaginary concept, like 'terrorism,' and that works just fine. 'Terrorism' still exists. Terror still exists. Feelings and emotions exist. Fear exists. As long as fear exists, then they will have an excuse to go kill people and steal from them.
I said I would stop ranting. Just wait a few more days - all the news articles will disappear. There are no 'deep thoughts' that can be gained by musing over bin Laden's death. The subject will quickly dry up. There is no depth in it at all. The news articles will vanish, just like bin Laden. There will be nothing left to say about his death, because his death is just like the death of any other guy. It has no effect on the invasions. It has no effect on our military. It is nothing. He is just another guy.
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2 comments:
OBL was right out of the novel 1984,by Orwell in a way.
As Osama was used as an icon of fear although I was like you never afraid of him. but as that icon could force the multitudes to be manipulated and react or justify actions of those in power.
He was our Emmanuel Goldstein from the novel 1984 except Bin Laden really did exist which is doubtful of Goldstein in the story...........................
Emmanuel Goldstein is a character in George Orwell's classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the number one enemy of the people according to Big Brother and the Party, who heads a mysterious and possibly fictitious anti-party organization called The Brotherhood. Despite being a key part of the story, he is only actually seen and heard on telescreen, and may in fact be nothing more than a useful propaganda fabrication of the Ministry of Truth.
However, Goldstein's persona as an enemy of the state serves to distract, unite and focus the anger of the people of Oceania, as he is always the subject of the "Two Minutes Hate," a daily, 2-minute show beginning at 11:00 AM where a purported image of Goldstein is shown on the telescreen (a one-channel television with internal surveillance devices that cannot be turned off). Ostensibly, Goldstein also serves an important role as both a convenient scapegoat for the totalitarian regime in 1984, and justifying reason for more military buildup, surveillance and elimination of civil liberties................
.......sound familiar???? Its an old novel, but really mirrors the last decade of OBL as an icon of fear to manipulate the masses in to supporting wars, torture and things like the patriot act which stripped the constitutional rights.of citizens.
I never read 1984 but have often heard about it from other people. So we did all the same things, using OBL as an excuse for torture, etc... I'm guessing that most of those things we're doing will just continue anyway now that the scapegoat is gone. When I say 'scapegoat' I mean, yeah, he actually did attack us, but we're using him as a representative of everything we fear and hate, when he's actually just a person.
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