Compassion is the love muscle of caring.
But a lot of the muscle flexing I see going on these days is more like body
building than world building. It looks great and makes the "flexer" feel
darn good about him or herself, but other than putting on an impressive
show, it doesn't get much done. And it actually may do some real harm.
Look at all of the crocodile tears over the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370.
Granted that this is a tragic, highly unexpected event. Whether pilot error,
pilot meltdown, mechanical failure, a vibrational burp in the harmonic
spectrum, or some hairline gash in the condom of the space-time continuum,
it happened and represents a tragic loss for the families of the passengers.
But shit happens. None of us caused it. None of us can bring back to life the
victims of this bizarre malfunction. None of us particularly needs this reminder
that the world we live in, even those things we so fastidiously design and
meticulously create, are not and never will be perfect. Certainly none of us
can even do anything to prevent it from happening again. We have no idea
even what happened.
So why themedia drama and obsessive news reports? And why the disproportionate
and OCD level of attention to a fluke, affecting 239 people who 99.9999%
of us didn't and will never know?
Well . . . we do know why the media gave this particular event so much attention.
Yes, if it bleeds it leads. But now since the spurting of blood is down to a trickle,
we find the story consignedto the "back pages" of the 24/7 cyber river of pseudo
news and hand-wringing, gut-wrenching, love-muscle flexing. And like the switch
man at the local railway yard, we can send our trail of tears down another track.
The Compassion Express is off to some brand new destination of manufactured grief.
During the unfolding of the Malaysian airliner crisis though, we really cared.
We really felt for those victims __ the dead and their surviving relatives and friends.
It really felt good to care about others. It really showed what a good space we were in.
It really let those families know what a big concerned family the 7 billion of us are
here on Earth.
Really?
Did anyonecheck with the families to see if they really wanted all that
attention? Did we forget about something called "privacy" or "solitary
mourning"? Do we actually think that mass, anonymous sharing of their
grief made any of those poor, sorrowful individuals feel any better? Did
anyone stop to think it might actually make them feel worse? Maybe a
big group hug from millions of television voyeurs wasn't such a great
idea?
During the sanctions imposed on Iraq for their invasion of Kuwait, lasting
for twelve years from 1991 until 2003 when Saddam Hussein was finally
toppled by the U.S. invasion, it is estimated that over 500,000 children died
of malnutrition and lack of medical supplies and proper health care.
Articles reporting this horrible tragedy startedon the back pages and
stayed there, or they disappeared entirely. There certainly was no outpouring
of shared grief for the millions of Iraqi casualties resulting from our insidious
foreign policies, including the death of over a half million children.
No crocodile tears were shed outside of some very dedicated, truly caring
on-the-ground aid organizations who saw first-hand the genocidal results
of our cruel punishment of innocent civilians.
But there should have been.
What's the difference between Flight 370 and sanctions on Iraq?
While we had nothing to do with the vanishing of Malaysian Flight 370,
we were directly responsible for the death of those innocent children. It
was our government perpetrating this horror. We could have stopped it.
We can and should stopthings like this from ever happening again, because
each one of us is implicitly involved. As citizens of a democracy, we are directly
and personally responsible for the policies and actions that come out of our
often misguided representatives in Washington.
And when we murder 500,000 innocent children, that's something to cry about.
Unlike disappearing jetliners, it's something we could have done something about.
There is something we could do about right now.
Something we should and must do. That's ending the illegal, immoral,
and self-sabotaging murder of innocents with drones. It's estimated that
just during the Obama presidency 2400 individuals have been killed by these
impersonal weapons of our errant, self-defeating foreign policy. Estimates
which run as high as 37% say many are completely innocent people, having
absolutely no interest or role in terrorist activities against the U.S. or its allies,
mere victims of our paranoid and extralegal campaign of assassinating militants.
Often these folks were just attending weddings or other family events.
A lot of the dead again are children.
The harsh truth is that we are all complicit in these murders. It's our government.
It's our trigger-happy Congress and President who perpetuate this carnage.
This is something we should be crying about.
Crying and yelling and screaming.
Do you feel it?
[ This originated at the author's personal web page . . . http://jdrachel.com ]
