After this, no more body counts. But I was startled not to feel the full impact of something in my own writings down below. It is an accounting summary of “terrorist” attacks against Western Civilization, 1970 to present. These are official numbers – there are people in our government whose job it is to count such things. Bean counters. I could do this. I could work for the Pentagon!
In total, “terrorists” have engaged in 2,953 incidents of violence resulting in 4,947 deaths. Remove on incident, 9/11, and you have 2,952 incidents resulting in 1,974 deaths.
The U.S. (under King George the First) killed that many people with one bomb in one incident in a barrio in Panama City in 1989.
The difference is, of course, that the 4,947 people are people that matter, people who count. And so we count them when they die. Ask the Pentagon bean counters how many people died in that Panama City barrio, and you’ll get a disinterested shrug. Those we do not count. Those people, working men and women with families who dance and sing and love one another just as we do – their removal from the planet elicits hardly a blink of the eye here in the civilized US of A.
This is all old news to me. I know what’s up. I know why certain people matter and others don’t. I know why we are menaced by one evil demon after another, from Hitler to Osama. For the Panama barrio, the justification for our murder spree was Manuel Noriega, and man who is currently rotting away in a jail in Florida, about as harmful as Fred Rogers. But he became the face of the enemy.
We are but sheep given knives and led to slaughter other sheep. The game is old, and interestingly, has come full circle now. The U.S. is in Afghanistan – Central Asia, where the original “Great Game” was played.
Can’t do anything about it. People are as they are. Israelis are murdering and enslaving Palestinians, but if the tables were turned, if the U.S. had armed the Palestinians instead, then Palestinians would be murdering and enslaving Jews (and dropping white prosperous on them).
Life goes on. Only a few of us ever get our heads out of the trenches to see the game at play and understand the rules. That’s all we can hope for – some understanding. Imagine being a football fan for life and yet never knowing the rules of the game. That is what it is like for the ordinary American citizen.
I feel lucky. I escaped from the trench, found the rule book, and now have a sense of empowerment that comes from knowledge. I think this is what it means to be free.
How about you? Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
Piece of Mindful 