Moral Relativity

God's will...

I remember reading something Noam Chomsky wrote at least ten or fifteen years ago--paraphrasing here, it was about often having to schedule lectures quite a bit in advance. Because current events, by their nature, tend to be fluid, this made coming up with a working title for these lectures somewhat challenging; however, Noam wrote that his workaround was to generally go with "The Ongoing Crisis in the Middle East."

Sadly, it seems that as long as we've got the luxury of even being able to consider going to forums on current events, we'll have an "ongoing crisis" in the Middle East. I suppose this is marginally better than the alternative, which in wingnuttia seems to be gushing, salivating phraseology (and a bit of one-upmanship) as to which World War they'll soon be marching gloriously into...um...commenting upon from the comfort of the nearest teevee studio or wood paneled sitting room (while conveniently patronizing, ignoring...or, even blaming those unfortunate enough to have to live through the hell-on-earth conditions).

It's a pattern I keep seeing--they've done the same with the Iraqi quagmire, and they did pretty much the same with the Gulf Coast, singling out New Orleans for particular scorn because the city had the audacity to flood so visibly, which caused great pain and embarrassment...to the codpiece-in-chief (pResident Codpiece took care to embarrass himself all on his own today, sparing the need for his handlers and synchophants to come up with a convenient scapegoat).

Anyway, at the risk of making this even more disjointed, this morning I was thinking about just how awful it must be for the folks caught up in the various crossfires over there (I seriously doubt most of these people, to borrow Mr. Codpiece's expletive, could give a shit about the political machinations they use to justify continued mass death and/or destruction, disruptions, and whatnot)...when I noticed Moldy City's latest concerning the pace of recovery in NOLA.

No, there are no missiles raining down along the Gulf (of Mexico) Coast--thank heavens--but it's part and parcel of the same contempt for ALL of us that drives their thinking: on the one hand, "collateral damage," which has a somewhat sterile, clinical ring to it...as long as you don't know the victim personally, on the other hand, there's a barely concealed contempt for "those people" in New Orleans, who should have "known better," even as the Gulf Coast suffers from neglect from Washington and worse from vicious, bastard insurance companies (do you get the feeling I don't like insurance companies? I hope so, and have a damn good reason of my own for that...but).

There's a certain sort of moral relativity that seems to affect--or infect--some, and I came across this little (warning: irony alert) nugget of "wisdom" this morning while on my usual sojourn around the internets. It's actually regarding religion and politics in light of Barak Obama's appeal for Democratic courting of the "religious" vote, and it's from a decidedly twitnut persuasion, but it's nonetheless an interesting insight into the mindset:

They have taken God and country out of the classroom and taught youth that anything is acceptable as long as you can rationalize it. There is no judgment; no right or wrong.

Well, leaving aside the "God and country" nonsense, I'd say that the last few days--and, for that matter, the last few years of Codpiece rule--have been little more than a lesson to ALL "that anything is acceptable." War with no pretext: hey, just come up with a catchy, scary theme (WMD, anyone?), make sure you don't "introduce new product in August" and bombs away. Ignoring a national calamity like the flooding of a major U.S. city? No problem, especially if the victims can be stereotyped as ignorant minorities. Allow Hizbollah, Hamas and Israel to play tit-for-tat at the expense of hundreds of innocent lives, not to mention the disruption/devastation the survivors are now forced to deal with? Bring it on, they say...because among other things, NONE of these assclowns will ever have to deal with the consequences. Hell, if anything, they might even profit from it...

You know, I wish I could end this on an uplifting note, with some words of hope about the general public seeing through the bullshit and saying "enough." However, I'm afraid the only thing I can think of is how the 2nd International fizzled away during World War I. Damn.

(Oh, and ignore the timestamp on this post--I started out this morning, but then got caught up in work-related stuff...yeah, I actually have to work sometimes).