No one is innocent – except, maybe, children, but they
do grow up; and a baby rattlesnake
will kill you as quickly as its mom or dad!
Years ago, when I still attended church, I heard, “Good morning, fellow sinners” delivered from the pulpit; an honest Christian greeting – an honest Christian greeting that angered more than a few “good” Christians in the congregation. Some – the blatant hypocrites – were clearly insulted and let their feelings be known.
Well, sorry about that, but no one (“fellow sinners”) is innocent; and I’m not talking some gobbledygook about “original sin.” No, it’s more relevant than that.
Nowadays we ALL (except maybe some small bands of folks in the Amazon, Africa, or some backwater of Asia) are “civilized” and live in the belly of whatever beast our particular “civilization” has produced. As such we are inescapably guilty. Not one of us is innocent.
Every “civilization” exists for the furtherance and enhancement of the status quo; and every status quo – to this point in history – has been based upon the degradation of others, the debasement of the largest possible number of “others,” upon the manipulation of the masses for the benefit of the few; hence, the guilt.
Obviously the selfish, callused, flint-hearted monsters who benefit most from “civilization” and who calculatingly maintain their privileged position at the expense of others are in need of a serious thumping or worse. They KNOW what they are doing and don’t care! Moreover, they put their above-average intellect to work to guarantee that law, ethics, morality, “justice,” and taxes are ALL for “the little people.” No regular folks are “above the law” or ethics or god’s moral code or the “justice” system or taxes. Only the “elect” can make that claim.
The heads that rolled during the French Revolution were heads well-cut, and there are many more heads nowadays just begging for the return of the guillotine.
What’s more, THEY know it. The aristocrats in Louis’s France knew it. The Victorians in England knew it. The Czar and his ilk knew it. White Southerners during slavery and Jim Crow knew it. And bloodless, international Corporations know it today.
They know they deserve retribution - even a terrible and bloody, head-rolling retribution! And as always, in their secret hearts, they tremble, and feverishly plot to forestall it with ever-greater means of repression.
They know their guilt. It is thrust inexorably in their faces by the unjustifiable disparity of their place and privilege. No amount of rationalization, no amount of spin by their media lapdogs, neither appeals to god nor to prejudice and fear can hide their atrocities from themselves!
They know what they are doing, even if they do manage to keep the serfs in befuddled, obedient ignorance.
They are schooled in, as our benighted boy president would say, "disassembling" – both to us and to themselves. Consciously they recognize no guilt over their self-serving actions; but subconsciously the guilt is transformed to fear. Instinctively they know they deserve to be struck down; they know that THEY would hate themselves if stuck under their own cruel boot. But like Jefferson dithering between impoverishing himself by freeing his slaves and holding off until death would free him of his dilemma, they fortify themselves with denial, press on, and let the less well-placed carry the freight of pain and injustice.
Guilty as charged!!
But what about the rest of us?
There are those among us who recognize the sins of the “aristocracy” but slobber longingly to join them – the American dream – “upward mobility” – You Too Can Stand on the Necks of Your Brethren!
Guilty as charged!!
But what about the rest of us?
There are those among us who recognize the sins of the “aristocracy” but tell ourselves that god wants it that way, or it’s always been that way, or that nobody can do anything about it. So we say, “I don’t want to hear about it” – “Leave me alone” – “I have to mow my lawn” – “The game is coming on” – “Shut up.”
Guilty as charged!!
But what about the rest of us?
There are those among us who don’t have a clue about much of anything beyond sports or family or fashion or TV. They would have difficulty
defining “aristocracy.” They just want to graze like cows as long as they can - without having to consider any complications suggested by the reality of “hamburger” and “rendering plants.”
Unless they are mentally challenged, they are guilty as charged!!
Then there are those of us who recognize the problem and are committed to fighting it, but fail to take the necessary but threatening steps to confront and overturn the beast; those of us, who in the end – like Jefferson – pull back from full commitment to attacking the heart of darkness that controls the fate of humanity.
We are guilty as charged!
In the end no one is innocent. All are guilty, and if this horrid, hypocritical, lying, venal, selfish construct we call “civilization” were to disappear from the vastness of the universe, that might very well be – by any objective measure - an improvement.
- Uke Man
Dunkle’s Digest - If you think Bush is just fine, that the safety net is just too expensive, that Social Security should be saved by making Grandpa work until he’s 72, that the economy has turned the corner, that “we” are spreading “democracy” (rather than shit) around the world, that god talks with W and/or Pat Robertson, or that the war in Iraq is worthy and going well; stay the fuck out of my way!!
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