[lit-ideas] FW: Happy New Year/Firebombing

I had to post this.  I have permission.


    ... The power of culture to define our consciousness is in somme (some) 
cases irresistible.

    Those of you who are sufficiently well-balanced right now and want to make 
some interesting discoveries (do a little meditation before you do your 
research), might want to plug the word "firebombing" into the Google Search 
Engine and check out what happened at Dresden or Tokyo during the Second World 
War.

    This is an example of mass-slaughter undertaken by the "good guys." You can 
read about men, women and children being burned to death in various grotesque 
ways. These were acts undertaken by the heroes of "civilization."

    Forget about politics: just try to look at what happened.

    To be "against war" seems to me to be an untenable or unnecessary position. 
This suggests there is an alternative position-- being "for war"--that one is 
trying to oppose. If one is "for" war, what exactly is one for?  

    Please begin to abandon the idea that war has to do with anything real; 
that it possesses some sort of rationality. Please try to abandon the idea that 
people (including leaders) actually KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING when they wage war.

    Sometimes I feel that they only people more deluded than those who promote 
the ideology of war are those promoting the ideology of rationality: the 
historians and political scientists that try to "explain" what occurred as if 
the actors are functioning according to rational principles.

    Some military historians declare that the strategy of the First World War 
(asking soldiers to get out of trenches and to advance toward the opposing 
trench) was based on the fact that they were operating according to an 
antiquated military strategy that "underestimated the power of the machine gun."

    This would explain the first few days perhaps, but wouldn't explain why 
this strategy persisted for FOUR YEARS. The explanation is as psychotic as the 
behavior. Historians and historical actors COLLUDE to pretend that the behavior 
of the actors makes sense. They try to provide the insane actions with a gloss 
of dignity.

    What is written up in the history book really happened, but let's stop 
trying to pretend that it makes  sense or is based on some sort of rational 
thought. Please try to let go of the delusion that your civilization is 
civilized. Two-hundred people (I mean two-hundred million people) were killed 
in the Twentieth Century in political concepts (genocide, by the way, has taken 
more lives than war, although the history books push this fact under the rug). 

     New Years has to do with letting go of the past. Instead of thinking of 
war as evil or wrong (anybody can do that), start thinking of war as bizarre or 
strange or weird. The "radicals" aren't radical enough. They believe that they 
know what the purpose or meaning of war is. 

    Imagine that you are one of the characters on the "Third Planet from the 
Sun" (the situation comedy) and came to the earth and observed people dropping 
bombs and burning people to a crisp (or however people end up when they are 
burned alive). These people were slaughtered not because of anything they had 
done, but because they were classified as "Germans" or "Japanese."

    Bin Laden's ideology grows out of the same logic:"All Americans deserve to 
die by virtue of the fact of what their governments have done."

    Gee, I hope the mayor of New York City (Mayor Bloomberg), doesn't bomb 
Newark, New Jersey. Because this will mean that the Newarkers have the right to 
and will feel justified in bombing ME (because I'm a "New Yorker")--in revenge 
for the fact that Major Bloomberg bombed Newark. Maybe they think I supported 
Mayor Bloomberg (perhaps some of the three year olds in Dresden supported 
Hitler).

     However, even though Mayor Bloomerg is called "the leader of New York 
City," I barely know who he is. 

    In any case, have a happy New Year and as we used to say in the Fifties: 
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do, and if you do, name him after me."

Regards,

Richard Koenigsberg

Other related posts: