207. Holier Than Thou
You wouldn’t think I had any faith in humanity if you've been reading my comics, but I’m a closeted optimist. Every time I see or read about an evil group, I learn of a good individual. In general it’s always throngs of people who allow evil, but individuals who exemplify humanity at it’s best. I’ll take a tree over the forest when it comes to humanity.
These times, all we hear about are the indefensible things that groups do: High level collusion between the government and the idiot parade that stormed the Capitol, Purdue suppressing and inventing clinical data, Facebook knowingly contributing to the crassification of everything. We forget that there are individuals showing bravery against insurmountable odds and that they are the reason we know about all these things.
As long as we remember and celebrate the whisteblowers, Tiananmen tank people and the Ukrainians telling the Russian navy to f off; we can keep the plodding, overweight mass of selfishness and stupidity at bay.
Angels and God are myths born of Judeo-Christianity, created in the image of European man, so Angels might as well curse God as curse humans, for He is the cause of all things. Believers pray for God to change His mind - something they can do and so God, in man's image, must also be able to do. While the Western World praying for peace, or Americans praying for a return of Trump, indicates solidarity, it is a silent and invisible solidarity. Loud, visible solidarity is Ukrainians united in battle, the pro Trump January 6th march on the Capitol, and the demonstrations against racism in the US and other nations following the murder of George Floyd. We need to pray to each other. We need to celebrate whistleblowers with actual parties where participants look over and discuss the material that our brave brothers and sisters, motivated only by their own sense of morality, have uncovered. It is being re-buried. Whistleblowers and demonstrators are being prosecuted by increasingly draconian laws, censorship is choking out dissenting opinions. Banning Russian media makes us no better than the Russian Government; Russian polls indicate overwhelming support for Putin and the war, showcasing the success of blocking opposing views. Most governments are envious of that kind of control, and here we are putting up our own "iron curtain." Anyone discussing NATO's broken promises to halt its expansion toward Russia's borders and the placement of American bases close to her border gets accused of being pro-Russian. We are supposed to believe only that it was "an unprovoked attack" (How many times have you heard that phrase? After a while disagreeing with that statement sounds dubious.) when, in fact, the provocation has been going on for years. CNN parades hawkish retired generals who own stocks in defense industries, discussing war strategies while making untold millions from supplying the unprecedented military expansion in Europe and Australia, and perhaps getting long awaited old-man hards-on as they engage in foreplay with nuclear annihilation. The angel is right to curse humans because the present situation, being on the verge of military and ecological oblivion, is entirely because of humans and human faith, faith that requires nothing but robotic adherence to the status quo, and to systems that require psychopaths to captain top positions in governments and industries to ruthlessly pursue the bottom line all the way to the bottom.
ReplyDeleteWhen the USSR fell we could have been kind and become real friends and partners, but we, the people, were silent about that idea and instead bragged that they lost, and then even that faded as we let governments and corporations (particularly the defense industries) have their way with them. The media sold advertising with stories about poverty and the rise of gangs in Russia, not on the kindness and love, the shared humanity we have with Russian people, and all people.