Curious title.
Just another ramble on a topic I can't hope to fit in to tweets.
It's just that there is no alternative language or voice against the situation the western world finds itself in at the moment.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's been assumed that the good guys won. That's us right? The cold war ended and glorious American style capitalism won out over corrupt terrible communism.
Well that's the history we're told. Having learned more about how the media treats those the establishment don't like over the years, I begin to wonder quite how horrible East Berlin and the old USSR actually were. Probably quite bad. But ... dare I suggest .. just as bad as the "good guys" that won?
We have a growing perceived threat of terrorism. Increasingly domestic. That is people radicalised and ready to carry out atrocious acts without ever needing to travel to some far off easily blamed country. The only language I see in the main media against that is quibbling over just how draconian the surveillance laws need to be to catch these evil people before another bomb goes off.
I have another idea.
Why aren't we asking what makes a terrorist act against our own people seem logical to some? I don't know, maybe it's an illegal Iraq war, the injustice of Guantanamo Bay, blind support for Israel and it's persecution of Palestine, countless innocents killed by ongoing drone strikes ... you know .. stuff like that. Maybe it's us doing that kind of stuff that gives people the beginning of an idea that the only way forward is to blow something up.
Worse. Maybe it's the fact there is no voice in the mainstream saying "Hey! Maybe it's this stuff that's creating terrorism against us?!", that makes it even MORE likely for someone to feel horribly aggrieved against America and it's allies. If there was a political voice arguing against the hypocrisy then it would remove a huge part of the incentive for someone to go and make a bomb. Why would you? Wouldn't you join the party protesting the injustice, that has it's voice heard in mainstream media and shout even louder instead?
Yeah yeah. Go for it. Call me a terrorist sympathiser or something. I'm not in anyway justifying terrorist acts. I'm simply saying American acts ARE terrorist acts, or at least can very easily be interpreted as terrorist acts, and it seems highly likely that being a terrorist to others is going to result in some terrorism being done in return.
What do we do? Remove our own liberties and rights as a reaction. Maintain that we (the western world) are not terrorists, even though we commit acts of murder that we would call terrorism by others.
It's just plain dumb. It's a self perpetuating spiral down. I know "think outside the box" makes people spit in hate. But we are in a very small box.
No comments:
Post a Comment