National Prorities

Posted by: Holly | February 11, 2009

National Prorities

Responses

Hi Holly,

I can be called Miss Baccara or Ninon. Anyway, I do not think these priorities will change under Obama, though I believe they may receive more consideration. Both the GOP and the Democrats support ongoing war and now we have the convenient threat of “terrorism” to justify increased military spending. Before it was Communism/Cold War powers and before that the World Wars. It just continues to grow and unlike the previous threats, terrorism is nebulous, intentionally so in too many cases.
By: missbaccara on February 13, 2009
at 4:52 pm
Lovely Miss Baccara! I just realized who you are, and it is fab to see you again! I’ve missed you, beautiful!

Yes, the “war on terrorism” came into play when they realized that the “war on drugs” wasn’t doing as much for them as they’d hoped.

But I am a little more optimistic about Obama, I think. He is already angling to get the country much greener. I was looking through the whitehouse.gov website the other day, and actually found myself tearing up because, I thought, FINALLY there is someone in the White House who actually wants to do the right thing.

Where my niggling cynicism comes in is in whether or not congress will actualy let him. I hope he is brave enought to stick with (congressionally) unpopular decisions because they are the right thing to do.
By: Holly on February 13, 2009
at 11:02 pm
Missed you too, Holly! Check your email, I’ve sent you some information.

I am trying to be optimistic these days, though I didn’t exactly make it a New Year’s Resolution, because I basically void those out by, oh, January 2nd. I am comforted by the fact that Obama is better than Bush. And I love that link you provided! My national budget gave 21% to education. Of course, I’m slightly biased in my current status as an undergraduate.
By: missbaccara on February 14, 2009
at 6:49 pm
“War, war war. It’s positively ruined every party this spring! I’m so sick of all this talk about war I could scream!” — Scarlet O’ Hara

Have we turned into a War Nation? The progression of long wars, including other wars like the “war on drugs”, does make one wish for a leader whose vision goes beyond battle. Is that Obama?
By: Audrey Cain on February 18, 2009
at 8:30 am
In the name of being devil’s advocate:

Doesn’t even war have a place in reality?

Particularly in the case of a definable threat, as was the case of WWII. Did not the Nazi machine need to be met with brute force in order to stop it? When dealing with madmen, can you count on diplomacy?

I’m not advocating any war, nor suggestion the U.S. Defense budget is justifiable. More a philosophical question.

I can’t say I subscribe to utopianism. I believe in balance: for every ray of light, a shadow is cast.
By: Lauren Summerhill on February 18, 2009
at 9:32 pm
I certainly hope it is Obama. I am optimistic for the first time in a couple decades.

Oh-and excellent quote! 🙂

In the case of wwII, the world waited far too long to address the growth of the nazi party’s power and influence- it waited too long to denounce the fascism, racism, hatred, etc. loudly and publicly. The US was even responsible for sending a ship full of Jewish refugees back to Europe (and to their impending deaths) when they came to the US for help.

If at the first stirrings of racism, people had spoken out (and were permitted to be listened to- because many did speak out and were not heard), there never would have had to be a war. War does not happen in a vacuum, nor does it happen because it is “just the way things are”. It is a conspiracy of silence among the people (some of whom have far too much power to make it happen).

All wars are preventable on some level, I believe. The problem is (as is illustrated by the graphs above) there is far too much profit to be made from them, and far too few effective people against them to really put an end to war.

Wars are fought for questionable reasons, by questionable people who make mostly bad and shortsighted decisions to send other people to do their dirty work. The use of PR management to sell a war to the public is reprehensible (babies on bayonets in wwI, the caricatures of the “Ugly Jew” and the “murdering Japs” in wwII, anti-communism and the “Red Scare” in the cold war, the Gulf of Tonkin sham for Viet Nam, babies being thrown out of incubators for “desert storm”, and most recently, the Nigerian yellowcake scam for our current war.

I can’t say I subscribe to utopianism. I believe in balance: for every ray of light, a shadow is cast.

Being another devil’s advocate, one could see this statement as a lazy excuse for doing nothing; an excuse to remain apathetic in the face of injustice. Interestingly, it reminds me of a conversation I had with a lady living in Thailand about Buddhism there. She said that often you will see people leave a hit-and-run victim lying in the road, because to help would be to interfere with his or her karma.

We each are responsible for the world we live in, and our actions (or lack thereof) determine what is acceptable and what is phased out. For instance, we no longer have public hangings in most countries, nor do we have lynch mobs (at least not in the traditional sense of the word!). Slavery is severely shunned (I would love to say nonexistent, but I can’t) and agreed to be a heinous crime. This is because people believed enough in a better world- a utopia, in your word- to do something about it. It is so important that as citizens of the planet we are ever vigilant against what we perceive to be counter to our proposed highest standards for ourselves.

Being a devil’s advocate again, one could argue that those highest standards are inconstant and ever-changing, so while today we see public beheadings as unacceptably barbaric, given another few presidencies like Bush’s, and such a thing could once again become haute mode. After all, most nations pretty much agreed torture was bad as of 1999, but the US quickly brought it back into high fashion by thumbing its nose at the UN Convention Against Torture. And we “elected” that president twice.

As Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”.

Back to rays of light and shadows, the shadow of incurable (and curable) diseases, natural disasters, and global warming is ominous enough without adding man-made violence such as war as something that “just happens” and therefore should be accepted. Or worse yet, endorsed as a solution.
By: Holly on February 19, 2009
at 3:34 am
Holly,

You speak to my heart and my conscience. War is too profitable for governments to resist. This does not make it an answer for any problem.

Lauren,

Shadows are everywhere but shadows do not need to be war. Shadows are poverty, exploitation, abuse, indifference, tyranny. War is worse than a shadow, it is an absence of light altogether (if we’re speaking metaphorically).
By: Audrey Cain on February 22, 2009
at 7:22 am
This is precisely the kind of Rhetoric that gets me addicted to the internet.

The US certainly waited too long to get involved, and might have not gotten involved had certain events played out differently. I can’t say enough to know whether the bombing of the Harbor was an excuse to get involved (as some Japanese friends claim), or if they would have been happy just selling arms to the alliance.

But perhaps getting involved too late, is better than not getting involved at all? For all it’s mistakes, can US citizens be too hard on their nation? They have saved live, they have won crucial battles that protected nations. They have make a difference. They had moments of changing history for the better. I’m not suggesting we sugar-coat, self evaluation is important for evolution, but certainly we should acknowledge the successes.

The US gets criticized for acting too early. It gets criticized for acting too late. It gets criticized for acting at all. There is no perfect formula for getting involved in any kind of armed conflict – and regardless of how it’s done there will always be moral questions.

The US couldn’t have crushed the roots of WWII, that was up to the German people, who helped the Nazi power rise. They were spurned by the embarrassment of that was the Treaty of Versaille. The roots of WWII go back to WWI. The US did try to prevent that disaster with Wilson’s 14 points, a far less demoralizing solution. The roots of that WWI go back to the early 1900’s. Which can probably be linked back further to Austro-Hungarian and Serbian tensions and many other Western European tensions. The roots of antisemitism go back to ancient civilization. Afghanistan can find roots in the fight against the Soviets in the early 1980’s. Even without Afghanistan, terrorist organizations could have taken root in other Middle Eastern nations. How do you define the point at which it is necessary to act? If you want to stop problems while they are only seeds, you run the risk of becoming totalitarian – no one knows which seeds will blossom and which problems with wither and die before coming into fruition. Though protectionism can be a harmful philosophy, a certain degree of self-interest is vital to prosperity and survival.

All war is preventable in retrospect, but all things seem painfully predictable long after all the facts have come together. We speak from a perspective which allows us to look all the documents and read essays written by scholars who took years to digest the information. Such simultaneous, broad and well digested information isn’t always possible in the moment.

Coming from a culture that was war torn for many generations, one cannot avoid a war when the other side craves it, and their own people aren’t able or willing to stop it. When enemies are not only looking for wealth and power, but are trapped in mad ideological systems which leave no room for dialogue, diplomatic efforts will continuously fail – though they should be continuously perused.

Propaganda doesn’t seem to be a system that has entirely died, but with the internet, we have the ability to convey our own message to society – we aren’t slaves to it. Corporations no longer have a strangle hold on the flow of information, and thus governments can’t really influence it. Sure, radio and TV can be bought. But blogs, emails, conferences – people cannot. I think that’s been a very useful armor for Obama – amidst all the slander being laid out, individual people were able to research the truth and release it to a population which could then share it in their network. As we are doing now.

________________

ORIGINALLY POSTED BY LAUREN
” I can’t say I subscribe to utopianism. I believe in balance: for every ray of light, a shadow is cast.”

ORIGINALLY POSTED BY HOLLY

Being another devil’s advocate, one could see this statement as a lazy excuse for doing nothing. ; an excuse to remain apathetic in the face of injustice. Interestingly, it reminds me of a conversation I had with a lady living in Thailand about Buddhism there. She said that often you will see people leave a hit-and-run victim lying in the road, because to help would be to interfere with his or her karma.
______________________

Agree. It can be an excuse. However, in my context, I am suggesting not that we sit by and do nothing, but suggest that peaceful tactics will not always be enough, though they should always be preferred. Sometimes, it requires getting getting dirty, and possibly effecting your future karma.

ORIGINALLY POSTED BY HOLLY
“We each are responsible for the world we live in, and our actions (or lack thereof) determine what is acceptable and what is phased out. For instance, we no longer have public hangings in most countries, nor do we have lynch mobs (at least not in the traditional sense of the word!). Slavery is severely shunned (I would love to say nonexistent, but I can’t) and agreed to be a heinous crime. This is because people believed enough in a better world- a utopia, in your word- to do something about it. It is so important that as citizens of the planet we are ever vigilant against what we perceive to be counter to our proposed highest standards for ourselves.”

I agree, the world is a better place because people were willing to stand up for a better life. By speaking out, by supporting communities, and in extreme cases by being willing to die for what you believed in so future generations would have a chance at a better life without making those sacrifices.

POSTED BY H:
“Being a devil’s advocate again, one could argue that those highest standards are inconstant and ever-changing, so while today we see public beheadings as unacceptably barbaric, given another few presidencies like Bush’s, and such a thing could once again become haute mode. After all, most nations pretty much agreed torture was bad as of 1999, but the US quickly brought it back into high fashion by thumbing its nose at the UN Convention Against Torture. And we “elected” that president twice.”

In my study of history noticed that for every leap forward, there is a lash back. People who feel disconnected with modern changes, become nostalgic for a past that has been brushed clean of all its faults. Not only older generations, but younger ones that never experienced the past they crave. For every two steps forward humanity takes one step back. Fortunately, those movements never last.

I certainly agree that war doesn’t just happen, but I would not support living in a prosperous nation without an army. The army must be equal to that of what it is protecting. Should the grievous day that an evil power decides to erase us from existence and history, we stand hope of survival. Every now and then, a lunatic rises to power.

Miss Cain:

“War is worse than a shadow, it is an absence of light altogether.”

I have always said: War is the absence of God.

In a place that is absent of light, it will dissolve in the darkness regardless how fiercely we shine. Perhaps sometimes have to fight in the dark to crack it, and let the light in.
By: Lauren Summerhill on February 22, 2009
at 2:31 pm
Lauren,

What a great response! I can’t say I agree with you — I never believe there is a real reason for war. I think others agree, which may be the base reason for criticism of any warmongering the US does or doesn’t do.

Your intelligent thoughts and passion are palpable and if our country IS to go to war, I wish the leaders would think like you. There is no knee-jerk reaction here.
By: Audrey Cain on February 23, 2009
at 7:47 am
Reading this thread brings a few thoughts to mind, this is one of them

It is dangerous to abstract the rational behaviour of an individual to a large group. First, how many individuals act rationally. Individuals act in their own best interests, which from an external position may not appear rational. Now I hasten to add I am not one who believes that all or even most people act in their own best interests to the detriment of others. For most individuals their pursuit if their own best interest is tempered by any number of factors including tradition, compassion, and concern.

However two things are universally true. One, the vast majority of individuals will pursue their own best interests to the direct detriment of others if the situation becomes in their mind desperate enough; think of a parent stealing the last piece of food on a lifeboat for their child. Two, a group does not exhibit the sum, average, or mean behaviour of the individuals in it. In this case, it is not just math. Think back to phsyc101 and mob behaviour, or look at it in light of chaos theory.

Picking on the Germans, as they are singled out in the thread, I am not convinced that the state exhibited the average behaviour of the individual Germans, but as a group history is pretty clear about what the results were. Why did it happen? Who was/were the catalyst(s) that turned average behaviour as individuals to abhorrent behaviour as a group? Who would you stop?

This is all without analyzing whether stopping one or more Germans would have resulted in safety for the Jews, or world peace. Remember that anti-Semitism was common many places in the world at that time. Fascism was heralded as a modern innovative political philosophy that among other things could lead to economic prosperity while the world struggled through the depression. Frighteningly fascism outside of Germany generally also included the common enemy component. The death chambers used to kill so many Jews (as well as Gypsies, political prisoners, and other undesirables), were conceived by physiatrists as an effective tool, along with forced sterilization, to deal with the problem of mentally incompetent citizens in the 1930’s. There was support for this view in the US and the UK. The Russians, under Stalin killed untold numbers of their own citizens; focussing on the undesirables.

I’m not saying that if Germany would have somehow been stopped the same events would have occurred; but I don’t think we would have had world peace. After all Hitler was Austrian and Austria’s treatment of Jews wasn’t much different than Germanys’. He might have just moved.

If as individuals, average behaviour is “normal”. Who would you stop? How would you recognize them? When would you stop them? How many would you have to stop?

I think there is a logical argument that intervention could prevent undesirable outcomes, I just don’t think, in most cases, it is possible. Life is too complex.
By: Mike on February 28, 2009
at 4:08 am
And another.

Is war inevitable? Asking that is, at the root, asking is conflict is inevitable. In my opinion yes. Not because I think war is a good thing, I have been very fortunate to never have had to participate in any conflict anywhere near as serious as war. War is the ultimate breakdown of negotiation. War is conflict with tools.

But is conflict something we can eliminate? I think conflict is at the very core of life on our planet. Right or wrong it exists; the dominant most aggressive plant life eradicates the weak, stronger animals force out the weaker, it is nature and I don’t think humans can escape this through some superior intellect. Just, as discussed elsewhere here, sexuality, sensuality, and pursuing them are core to being human; aspects of human behaviour that can be shaped, tempered and restrained through social convention, but not changed.

I am not saying conflict cannot be avoided; all attempts at diplomacy should be exhausted before taking up arms. But how do you decide when diplomacy is exhausted?

This too is a lesson from WWII (used throughout this thread as a backdrop). The avoidance of war (appeasement) if nothing else allowed Nazi Germany to establish a stronghold to pursue its’ further goals and as a specific example lead to the fall of Poland. Poland was not ill-prepared or ill-equipped to fight the war. To the contrary, Poland was a very good match for Germany (as was France, but that’s a different story); not perhaps for outright victory, but to make the price to take Poland too high for Germany. However, Poland’s strategy was based entirely on the treaties with its’ allies that promised immediate support if she was attacked. In that scenario Poland only needed to slow down the German attack for two weeks; until the allies showed up. This was a good strategy that minimized both human losses and the destruction of towns and cities. But the allies never showed up; and when it became apparent that the allies were not going to intervene, Russia attacked. In this example, an early commitment to war could have saved thousands if not millions.
By: Mike on February 28, 2009
at 10:03 am
“Picking on the Germans, as they are singled out in the thread, I am not convinced that the state exhibited the average behaviour of the individual Germans, but as a group history is pretty clear about what the results were. Why did it happen? Who was/were the catalyst(s) that turned average behaviour as individuals to abhorrent behaviour as a group? Who would you stop?”

It is a cliche example, but one that exhibits the madness of human behavior well, precisely because group behavior didn’t truly reflect individuals.

“The death chambers used to kill so many Jews (as well as Gypsies, political prisoners, and other undesirables), were conceived by physiatrists as an effective tool, along with forced sterilization, to deal with the problem of mentally incompetent citizens in the 1930’s.”

The disturbing evolution and popularization of Social Darwinism gone awry. Forcing hereditary improvement. Ick.

“Just, as discussed elsewhere here, sexuality, sensuality, and pursuing them are core to being human; aspects of human behaviour that can be shaped, tempered and restrained through social convention, but not changed.”

I like that you point out that conflict is as much part of our natural selves as is sexuality. War is the beast in human. It is a sophisticated break down of civilized action and thought. We had to fight in the wild to survive, as far back as history can trace the shedding of blood, for food and territory, has been a very real part of our human existence.

“Poland’s strategy was based entirely on the treaties with its’ allies that promised immediate support if she was attacked. In that scenario Poland only needed to slow down the German attack for two weeks; until the allies showed up. This was a good strategy that minimized both human losses and the destruction of towns and cities. But the allies never showed up; and when it became apparent that the allies were not going to intervene, Russia attacked. In this example, an early commitment to war could have saved thousands if not millions.”

Many of the Polish people have not forgotten that the allies never came. There is indeed a lesson to be learned.
By: Lauren Summerhill on March 7, 2009
at 11:51 pm