"These are the times that try men's souls," proclaimed Thomas Paine in his masterful The American Crisis. Although written on the eve of the American Revolution, Paine's ominous observation resonates loudly today. Reason has left the building it seems, replaced by a histrionic "I-am-right-because-I-am-right" mentality that extends into the ridiculous.
Just yesterday someone posted on my Facebook wall a picture of New York City's Twin Towers aflame after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. My friend (since defriended) had Tea Party sympathies which alarmed me. He had taken the post from an Israeli website (I couldn't read the Hebrew), but the message below the horrific images read "We are fighting the same terrorists who did this."
It makes you think, doesn't it? There are many things to say about that posting:
1. Has there ever been a direct connection between Mohammed Atta and his men and Hamas or Palestinians? No. Ultimately, the staged scenario backfires: people will empathize with the thousands killed in the Gaza strip because they have been suffering constant, daily attacks from an enemy that has abused the notion of self-defense to masquerade genocide.
2. Using violence to end violence hasn't really worked very well, has it?
3. I have always been curious about the use of the pronoun 'we.' It somehow exudes a feeling of vicarious inclusiveness that allows armchair patriots to condemn an action, philosophy or a race of people without having to take a bullet or worry about being killed by gunfire, bombs, etc. Perhaps the person who posted the image and message actually is an Israel soldier. Then I could sort of understand where he/she is coming from. After all, actual combat is a respectable pedigree. But it is most likely that the person is sitting comfortably at home and wanted to express him/herself in a way that would align him/her with the solders on the front lines.
What that person has done is not justify the mass killings in Gaza; he/she has instead shown a spotlight on his/her own cowardice.
This is merely symptomatic of the era we live in. Reason has exited and its space is now occupied by hypocrisy masquerading as righteousness. I will end with another Thomas Paine quote (I have researched him for a class I am teaching in Cuba): "To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture."
No comments:
Post a Comment