Historical Perspective

I found "Astonished Head" a while back, but stopped reading after he took an extended hiatus from blogging as the election was kicking off. Great religious men once told me that there were two types of sins; ones of omission and ones of commission. Well, call me guilty of the former, as Astonished Head has been writing hysterical stuff that has been milk-shooting-out-of-the-nose funny (note: this is why I don't drink milk...well, that and it makes my ass look fat). Here is his December 7th post:

"[...] become ungovernable
and the world [will]
beat your ass
with [an unidentified garden implement]."

Immediately I thought of the Garden Weasel, which doesn't mean a damn thing other than to point out that the only gardening references I am capable of involve late-night infomercials.

Don't let my goofiness bely the real content of this post. Yesterday, Astonished Head wrote a fascinating post that puts our world in perspective. He argues that Americans have been sheltered from all that has happened in rest of the world over the last 100 years. To paraphrase from "Spaceballs" as we stand in the desert with our massive, collective hairpick combing the desert, "We ain't (seen) shit." To set the stage, he lists the brutality that has occurred outside of our borders this century:

But we here in the midst of the American experiment have been ambling along into unprecedented prosperity in the midst of unprecedented violence. Eight million dead in Congo by 1908. A million in the Mexican revolution by 1920. A million and a half in Armenia by 1923. Eight hundred thousand in China by 1928, and another three million by 1937. Almost three million in Korea by '53. Seven hundred thousand in Algeria by 1962. One and a quarter million in Rwanda and Burundi between 1959 and 1995. Three and a half million in Indochina between 1960 and 1975. Almost a million and a half in Ethiopia between 1962 and 1992. A million in Nigeria between '66 and '70. One and a quarter million in Bangladesh in 1971 alone. Over one and a half million in Cambodia between 1966 and 1970. A million in Mozambique between '75 and '93. Almost two million in Afghanistan between 1979 and 2001. Another million in Iran and Iraq in the Eighties. Two million in Sudan the following decade. And, neatly bookending the century, over three million in Congo between 1998 and now. Add to all of that that seven million in the First World War, and, if you're not too numb, toss in another forty million or so for the Second, plus another ten million for Uncle Joe.

Spot on. I'd argue that there were about 20-22 million victims in Uncle Joe's budding utopia excluding WWII, but Uncle Joe would agree that it is just a statistical error.

The post continues, arguing that historical ignorance has given many, mostly pointing to the Left, an unreasonable, and false view of history:

In 1994, while we debated the right to bear arms in great detail, as if that would somehow keep us all safe, Hutus armed mostly with machetes and rocks managed to kill over five hundred thousand Tutsis.

In 1999, we were shocked that an eighteen-year old and a seventeen-year old would march into a school and kill a dozen students and a teacher. Meanwhile, eight to ten thousand children fifteen years old or younger were serving on both sides of the simmering conflict in Burundi. 10,000 children between the ages of seven and fourteen were rounded up and brought to the front in Rwanda. And, that same year, the Ugandan army executed five teenage boys between the ages of 14 and 17 as suspected rebel soldiers.

And so, when I hear various "progressives" blathering about America's "culture of violence," I stand amazed at their ignorance. Here, most of us watch movies where the blood goes pshhhh! in slow motion, or play video games where we can make peoples' heads explode. Elsewhere, people kill each other as a matter of course over the same issues that they've been killing each other over for millennia. I should note that they actually kill each other. No popcorn in the dark or health packs to charge you up when the shooting stops.

Please allow me to pile-on--Americans express outrage over ratings assigned to movies due to their violent content, while many millions of non-Americans are murdered because of their political and religious backgrounds. Currently, there are concentration camps in North Korea, "gulags" in China, children publicly hung for "fornication" in Iran, mass graves filled with children and adults dug up in Iraq, political challengers shot in Venezuala, religious minorities systematically murdered in the Sudan, etc, etc, etc.

September 11th scared me for more reasons that just the obvious. I worked for a brief time in the 61st floor of the second tower of the WTC and while I wasn't there that horrible day, I knew some people who, fortunately, made it out alive. What really scared me about that day was more long-term in nature--that while America's theofascist enemies would do whatever they possibly could to kill us, too many would look the other way in hopes that it would go away. As time progresses and the chances of an American city going up in a nuclear fireball approaches one, we have to meddle with Michael Moore's "argument" that depicts a Third Reich-like regime, lead by a privileged, village idiot, who attempts to turn America from the land of the free into an imperialist superpower bent on world domination. Saudi Arabia, playing the roll of co-conspirator, would aid in the modern Hilter's effort to rid the world of kite-flying, Iraqi children in the name of oil, greed and a hate for all things European. Usually, the lowest common denominator is best ignored, but it is hard to elevate the debate when Leni Riefenstahl's protégé is sitting next to a former U.S. President at his party's national convention. I'm not calling Moore a Nazi; I am calling him a first-rate propaganda master. He is someone who has disguised invective and conspiratorial drivel into "issues" and "facts that need to be talked about."

What are the chances that, on our own soil, we see a state-sponsored terrorist hollocaust, which finally awakens America to the real world where people kill each other for completely illogical reasons that have nothing to do with poverty or globalization? I am not in the prediction business, so I don't know the answer, however, whether it happens or not will not be because of a lack of trying the part of the Islamofascists. It will take a little luck and the sacrifice of good people to ensure our survival, yet I am confident that civilization will endure and democracy and freedom will continue to reign. What is unknown, is the price we will have to pay to protect it.

Posted by 10 fingers 6 strings at December 22, 2004 09:45 PM | TrackBack