If you read a book about the history of the Ottoman Empire and the fact that in the battle for Constantinople 30,000 civilians were raped, beaten, hacked to death and left to rot is very upsetting to you - brutality unworthy of the human spirit inflicted on innocent civilians -- and you have earlier in your life been actively involved in the firebombing of Dresden - which intentionally burned to death 30,000 civilians in one night, motivated entirely by the intent to "break the will of the German population" -- would you somehow connect the dots and tell yourself "I was part of the same brutality I am abhorred by reading about the Turks"? And that was my country doing it.
Well, that did not happen in that conversation. And I find this more often than not in civilized, intelligent conversations - an inability to connect the dots. Is it an unwillingness to see because it is uncomfortable? Is it just plain lack of knowledge of current developments and recent as well as ancient history? Mental paralysis? A media-propaganda-induced accumulation of blind spots?
One current example:
Israel has 300 to 500 nuclear warheads, unacknowledged, undeclared, un-inspected, ready to be shot off at anybody who dares to threaten Israel. Iran is enriching Uranium and most probably has some wish to develop nuclear weapons because it feels threatened, but does not have any of the aforementioned capabilities, neither now nor in the foreseeable future. We, the Western bully nations keep parading our military and economic threats before Iran. Never around Israel. The dots here are not even far apart, in geography and in time. And yet very few people are able or willing to connect them. What happened to intelligence?
Monday, January 9, 2012
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