When I read the following excerpt from a NY Times editorial I thought I was going to get some insightful commentary...
“Of the many truths in President Obama’s powerful Tucson speech, none was more indisputable than his statement that no one can know what is in a killer’s mind. So why have we spent so much time debating exactly that?The answer is classic American denial. It was easier to endlessly parse Jared Lee Loughner’s lunatic library — did he favor “The Communist Manifesto” or Ayn Rand? — than confront the larger and harsher snapshot of our current landscape that emerged after his massacre. A week on, that denial is becoming even more entrenched. As soon as the president left the podium Wednesday night, we started shifting into our familiar spin-dry post-tragedy cycle of the modern era — speedy “closure,” followed by a return to business as usual, followed by national amnesia”.
But instead I got a pile of drivel to suggest that he had no insights either. This is despite making the following statement:
"If we learn nothing from this tragedy, we are back where we started".
We might ask why do we have to get to a place where people are being killed before we start questioning social discourse. It's gratifying that its just 9 people killed. Well done society! Well done. This is actually an improvement because in the last decade it took the takeover of Poland by the Nazis before people started thinking. The problem then, as now, is that the social discourse is destined to be uncritical and a 'democratic takeover' of legitimacy, so its destined not to be different. So what did we learn from WWI? Absolutely nothing. Far from repudiating fascism....we went into overdrive and greatly expanded the powers of the state. We had a post-war reconstruction like Hitler's emergency provisions. The state rolled out a series of 'national imperatives. Roosevelt abolished the Gold Standard, commencing an era of 'ultra-easy' monetary policy and evaporating accountability, and this of course financed 'The New Deal', a free lunch...at least we thought.
Here is more evidence. The graves in the local cemetery in my town have words to sum up the values which those World War II veterans were fighting for....it says:
"Service before self"
Let me place that in the context of Hitler's propaganda:
"You are nothing, your nation is everything"
Before you tell me that they are different; that there is at least 'self' in the 'collective good', I impel you to identify it and differentiate your good from his. If you do, you will realise that you will be left in a place of conflict. This is why you repress because you don't want to acknowledge that the cake is actually shrinking because some people are not making cake, but rather tanning on the beach; whilst others seem to have lost their enthusiasm for work because their rights meant more than your 'collective good', but they could not find the intellectual ammunition to debate you. And given that the democratic political system scarcely recognises their thoughts, and gives them only a small and meaningless vote in political charade called an 'election', they have effectively and cynically resigned themselves to psychological repression.
In actual fact we did not need these murders to have a debate. We could have had a debate before guns were even sold. I am sure there was a debate; I am sure the implications of that debate would not have been fully understood. I am also sure that we do not now know the implications of our current political system. I am sure I know more than most people. This is only because I am more honest, because I recognise the mental efficacy that arises from constant debate and learning, critical thinking and a respect for facts. A preparedness to never place a pretense about the facts. It takes a mind that goes looking for problems; as opposed to a mind that shrieks and dives for cover when they find one.
There is nothing hard about finding truth. There is a very small percentage of the population who in fact know the truth of the matter. The problem is that they are encased in fear of the senseless majority who make the decisions; who have the power to extort; who have the 'power to be stupid or not', and who renounce their minds, and disregard all manner of objective standards of responsibility, and instead offers a relativist standard in the form of the justice system and our statutory law making. Today, we have shifting goal posts, and we wonder why the world is not fair. We wonder why those 'arbitrary' goal posts are not the same width. Why that team gets to play 10minutes longer than your team. Don't know what I mean? That is alright. You don't even need to know the rules; you just need to 'comply'. Hitler would have used the word 'obey', but it does not matter. Ignorance is as good as fear for all concerned. You were never supposed to know the rules....because it was never about you. There was always a bigger collectivist goal in mind. i.e. Its kind of like being forced to attend the football. You think they built that stadium for your enjoyment, but after each week of attendance, you realise it was never about your enjoyment because you are forced to go. It is simply about the money they make. You stopped being important when:
1. You became indifferent to the quality of your life experience, i.e. You stopped thinking and dropped your expectations or standards
2. You stopped being free, i.e. Life became a social obligation with consequences of some punitive action.
That is not to say that there should not be standards, or that you should not be responsible for your actions. The issue is that those standards (i.e. laws) should not be arbitrary, and they ought to be open to your reproach. i.e. Those laws should not be enacted on the basis of collective extortion, nor free of any form of objective accountability. There is a reason why Loughner killed Gabrielle Giffords in the United States. It is certain that he killed because he was not just young, but he was frustrated. Not just by the nature of society, but that by the fact that he could not identify the nature of society's problem, and he was clearly sure that no one else had the answers either; because if they did we would all seek it reverently.
So what do I mean when I say "At least murder counts for something". I mean that its better to die fighting for something than being one of the living dead. Our democratic system was designed to silence debate, to achieve stability, rather than to resolve the problem. Look at democracy....it is about backyard deals and extortion on the basis of representation that does not even mean anything. It is an utter pretense in order to achieve legitimacy rather than anything real. Until we start debating again, and ideas start to matter, we will have no freedom, and no escape from cynicism.
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Author
Andrew Sheldon
