Once The Beacon of Peace & Democracy-Now Just Global Flamethrower

[kpete]

America, Narcoleptic Pit Bull
Once the (tarnished) beacon of peace and democracy, now just another global flamethrower
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist


I have never been in a grand melee. I have never been in a violent clash or in an angry mob scene or part of an anti-war protest that got completely out of hand and the police had to come in and throw tear gas and swing batons and drag screaming dreadlocked dudes away by their hair.

But I do remember my time on the childhood playground, the fights between boys (and even the scarier girls), where two or more of the single-digiters would, for reasons most likely having to do with the opposite sex or turf or licorice whips, decide to throw down and take to kicking and punching and squealing, and suddenly everyone would rush over and gather round for the mad entertainment, everyone cheering and stomping and some of the bystanders even starting fights themselves, and you could see their blood rise and their demons come out as their own innate sense of violence and rage steamed out their ears like fetid smoke.

It is, verily, the common analogy for our Bush-ravaged times. Violence, as we seem to forget in some sort of collective denial, begets violence. Intolerance breeds intolerance. And war begets war. It self-perpetuates, feeds on itself, sucking and teething on the blood and exploded limbs and the punctured hearts of the dead, growing in the soil of hate and ignorance and my-God-can-beat-up-your-God.

Go ahead, try it yourself. Launch a major war. Watch how the flies of death and rage and religious sanctimony swarm to your bloody hate pile in abject glee. Watch how every other war hawk/terrorist/dictator with a major bone to pick looks over at your nasty war and giggles like a Republican in a gun shop and jumps right in, how your enemies quickly join together in mutual recoil and take up arms in retaliation, how they all instigate or enflame their own battles in eager reflection of/deference to yours, as they feel that side of them that so desperately wants to find something, someone to hate, to beat down, to feel sanctimonious and righteous over, emerge like a pair of engorged horns from their head.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/02/24/notes022406.DTL&nl=fix

[sinkingfeeling]

1. I love Morford! He really spells things out.