Think of an acquaintance of yours. Not someone you're particularly close to, just some guy in the cast of extras from the scenery of your life. Now, imagine learning that that guy is a serial murderer, who has been prowling the streets for years stabbing people to death. Imagine he goes his whole life without ever suffering any consequences for murdering all those people, and then when he dies, everyone wants to talk about how great he was and share heartwarming anecdotes about him. If you try to bring up the whole serial killing thing, people react with sputtering outrage that you would dare to speak ill of such a noble and wonderful person.
"Look, I didn't agree with everything he did, but you can't just let one not-so-great thing from a man's life eclipse all the other good things he's accomplished," they protest. "For example, did you know he was a baseball captain at Yale?"
"But... what about all those people he murdered?" you reply.
"God, why can't you just pay respect to a great man in our time of mourning??" they shout in exasperation.
You turn on the TV, and it's nothing but nonstop hagiography and adulation for this guy who you know was a serial murderer. Pick up a newspaper and it's the same thing. On the rare occasions where they do mention his astonishingly high body count, they frame it as a good thing: he got the killing done quickly and efficiently. He helped our country get over its phobia of mass murder. Our streets sure are a lot cleaner without all those unwanted prostitutes and homeless people he butchered.
"What the hell?" you think to yourself. "This guy brutally murdered a whole bunch of men, women and children for no good reason. We all know this. How come that isn't the single defining thing about this man's life that we're all discussing right now? When Timothy McVeigh died people didn't spend all their time talking about his love of the Constitution or how he never liked broccoli. Nobody cares how much Ted Bundy loved his cat. Why are they celebrating this mass murderer as though his mass murders are some marginal, irrelevant anomaly in his life and not the single defining feature of it? I mean, that is his legacy!"
How surreal would that be? How weird would it feel to have all that death and destruction go either unmentioned or outright praised in discussing your acquaintance who perpetrated it?
Of course, this will never happen. No random schmuck in your life will ever get caught committing a single murder, let alone many, without being punished and seeing it become the very first thing people think of whenever their name comes up. No, that sort of treatment is a privilege that is reserved only for the elites who rule over us.
If a man kills a lot of people, then his legacy is that of a mass murderer. There is nothing else anyone could possibly accomplish in their lifetime which could eclipse the significance of the act of violently ripping the life out of thousands of human bodies. I don't care if you started a charity, if you gave a graduation speech, or if you loved your wife very much. If you committed war crimes, knowingly targeted civilian shelters, and deliberately targeted a nation's civilian infrastructure to gain a strategic advantage after the conclusion of a war based on lies, then you are a mass murderer who may have also done some other far less significant things during the rest of your time on this planet. That is who you are.
Murder is treated as the most serious crime anyone can commit in societies around the world because it is the single most egregious violation of personal sovereignty possible. When you murder someone, you willfully overpower their will for themselves and take everything away from them, without any possibility of their getting any of it back. This doesn't stop being true if someone happens to be sitting in an office which empowers him to murder people without fear of consequences. If you murder one person, then what you are for the rest of your life, first and foremost, is a murderer, because murder is such a hugely significant crime. If you murder a large number of people, then what you are is a mass murderer.
George HW Bush was a mass murderer. That is his legacy. That is what he was. Any discussion of the man's life which does not put this single defining legacy front and center by a very wide margin is being dishonest about the thing that murder is, and is doing so out of fealty to a corrupt power structure which enables consequence-free murder on a mass scale as long as it happens in accordance with the will of that power structure.
Whenever I hold my customary public "good riddance" social media celebration after a war pig dies, I always get people telling me they hope I die for saying such a thing. And of course I am aware that I am courting controversy by saying immediately after someone's death that the world is better off without them, and hostile reactions necessarily come along with that. But I also think it says so much about people's deification of these child-killing elites that simply being glad to see them leave this world, peacefully of old age and in their own homes, is seen as such an unforgivable offense that it deserves nothing short of death. I suppose that's how high of a pedestal you need to place someone on above the ordinary people in order to see their acts of mass murder as insignificant little foibles instead of horrific atrocities which define their entire personhood. In the eyes of the thoroughly propagandized public, they are gods, as the nonstop fawning beatification of Poppy Bush makes abundantly clear.
US presidents are not special. They are not made of any different kind of substance than you or I. When they order the extermination of large numbers of human lives for no legitimate reason, they are as guilty as you or I would be if we murdered each and every one of those people ourselves, personally. And if you or I had done such a thing during our lives, we both know people wouldn't be spending their time after we die talking about how delightful and charming we were.
George Herbert Walker Bush was a mass murderer, and the only reason that undeniable fact isn't dominating public discourse today is because of the myopia caused by a deeply unjust power dynamic.
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Reader Comments
That's a funny one, HLF. If he had had an accident and tripped over you, now that would have been a good outcome.
Now I hear that Canadian ex-PM Brian Mulroney is to deliver the eulogy - "Mulroney said Bush asked him three years ago if he would speak at his funeral, and he said he’d be “honoured” to do it." [Link] Birds of a feather.
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LOL.
A request: Your thoughts (there?) on post, par moi at?:
SOTT Focus:The Truth Perspective: How To Survive A Totalitarian Nightmare: The Psychology Of Tyranny
What is it like to live in a country with a brutal, totalitarian government? According to Dr. Andrew Lobaczewski, the only way to truly know is to actually experience it. Literary accounts and...R.C.
*No disrespect to any canid whatsoever**; it's simply that the analogy has acquired a life and separate meaning of its own. (C.f., 'Fox guarding the henhouse.')
** Why is it that felines have canines? (I'd bet someone else has said/written this 'Steven Wright'-ish*** thought, but I've never read nor heard it.)
*** E.g., "I went to the hardware store to buy a can of used paint....
.....it came in the shape of a house."
RC
Unfortunately these perpetrators of evil do not initially take their place in the hells but prefer to remain earth bound continuing to influence others to continue these heinous acts. Just because they are no longer seen on earth does not mean they are no longer influencing earth as the likes of Bush and McCain are.
For the good of all i pray that these warmongers have a change in heart and see the damage they have inflicted.
"There is nothing else anyone could possibly accomplish in their lifetime which could eclipse the significance of the act of violently ripping the life out of thousands of human bodies."
How DARE this site allows this egregious LIE to even hit the 'net.
This man either permanently destroyed or ripped the life out of MILLIONS of people with his policies as well as his war mongering. His incredible efficiency was EPIC and must be stated correctly for the record.
Thousands my @$$. This monster belongs in the same class as Mao, Stalin, and Hitler - who his own father backed, BTW. Let noone EVER underestimate what this reptile (and his family) did to this world, and may he reap his "rewards" whereever in hell he is now.
This (article) is a pretty good illustration of what is going on. I give the author credit. It is however, partial or incomplete.
As well it should be. Illustrations are useful, definitions are helpful. Problems add up, though, when things become too strict. Which is also, what is going on. Is anyone understanding me? How do you define truth? How do you capture freedom? How do you do good? Can we do this and make things better? Or maybe this is as good as it gets. After all, technology is pretty groovy and we have lots of that.
Formerly, people lived in communities. I have used that word before. We now live in organizations. These are clearly defined things for sure. How precise do we make these definitions? How do we even come close? Surely, everyone knows, already. We are very progressive and have made much improvement to our lifestyles. Our definitions are very good, very precise, very strict. We have understanding.
So maybe we shouldn't. Maybe I shouldn't. Since everyone already knows.
Community members all serve the needs of the community, overall. Organization members, however, serve the needs of their leaders (men like George HW). They are taught this. And believe it or not, leaders are corrupt! Their 'needs' are to extend further and to cover-up completely their crimes. Crime is king! Leaders consolidate, ruthlessly, their power, their ability to wage awful war and to commit heinous crime. They establish strict hierarchies, which they call 'truth' (by powerful definition)....but what they call 'truth' is in fact c-r-i-m-e. Big time, consolidated, encapsulating (having many members. many believers, many followers) crime.
So anyway,
This is how you tell the difference between community and organization. Interestingly, people still believe they are a community when they are but cogs in organization, serving blindly, corrupt leaders and thinking these leaders are great. This is due to mind control. To complicate further: Even when they denounce these leaders--due to the composition of organization and the many facets or means of mind control--they still serve them. Their denouncements and their pronouncements are phoney. It is a vicious, vicious circle.
Communities, families, individuals--because of the overall astonishing efficacy and complete 'circular motion' of organization and mind control--have pretty much ceased to exist. The tatters remain. The horror, the depravity of the destruction of these good elements and the cries for justice can be heard everywhere, only because of these tatters, these ruined actual people. There do exist people who are still trying to be people! Who, while they feel ruin, remember something better, if only, slightly.
Who will answer and who is answering these cries? Organization members, people dedicated and mind controlled to serve the 'needs' of their leaders. Even as they say they are serving justice, and the 'needs of people' these people, those party members, these cogs, serve only crime.
This is a very bad situation humanity finds itself in.
Will it ever get better?
Ummm, you tell me.
I have said enough.
I will tell you this one last thing though:
Good ol' George HW is even now being re-tooled for another 'adventure in wonderland', where the leaders and their consolidations and holdings frolic and play. And the people, the good people, the honest people, suffer needlessly, endlessly, and die.
May he be born as a people.
ned,
OUT
Engraved on a tombstone:
'Where you are, I once was.
Where I am, you will be.'
ned, out
believedknown! that you could far more easily write what your above, SUPRA-EXCELLENT and eloquent commentary states; vis a vis the route where you far more often are found, skipping over the valleys of thought; from snow capped peak of correct conclusion, to the next; and again, and again,; where those who wish to follow know that they should at least try to.Good job! We need more of such input - (yeay, even moi!)
Second, I just now started reading down the comments, and in my note to HFL, above, I intended to add the same request to you, but forgot/didn't; and the enter button was hit.
I hereby respectfully request and would be honored by your thoughts posted there. (Same to HFL.) (Call, I guess, my situation an ongoing moral conundrum of (honestly) about a magnitude above what a typical blissful and ignorant sheeple deals with; but maybe that's me being an ass. I hope not.)
R.C.
When it comes to political leaders, who are psychopaths, and by their decisions and actions are responsible for the deaths of thousand and thousands, if not millions of innocent peoples.
They are given magnificent eulogies, lauded how good they were and the benefits they have given to society, in a non stop 24/7 monologue. And not only that they are given a state funeral.
There is something seriously wrong with a society and culture that can accept that a lie is truth, and to disclose that truth is a lie... and the consequences are..........
Then... it's a question of doing the right thing. It's not that hard. Totally simple, and straight forward. Then, imagine STS tearing their hair out, and laugh because all their stupid plans just got derailed. It really is funny to mess with their plans.
Not even this guy gets a pass. Well actually, nobody does.
Is he consigned to 'history', or was his life 'meaningful'? That is what is called an 'interesting' question...