Christmas time's "Baby Jesus" — and the United States' warmongering hypocrisy

03 December 2019

At Christmas time, especially

There are real ethics.

And there are Bullshit America's.

For instance

I often see "peace on Earth" Christmas cards.

Or similarly phrased "happy December holiday" sentiments.

The usually inadvertent hypocrisy involved in sending these out, across the perpetually warmongering United States, is laughably large.

Consider William Astore's pertinent comment

He wrote that:

Have you noticed that peace is no longer even a topic in America today?

War . . . is our new normal, America’s default position on global affairs . . . .

When you garrison the world with an unprecedented 800 or so military bases,

when you configure your armed forces for what’s called power projection,

when you divide the . . . total planet . . . into areas of dominance (with acronyms like CENTCOM, AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM) . . . .

when you spend more on your military than the next seven countries combined,

when you insist on modernizing a nuclear arsenal (to the tune of perhaps $1.7 trillion)

. . .what can you expect but a reality of endless war?

What fuels this deadly refusal to recognize ourselves?

Astore suggests that:

The delusional idea that Americans are, by nature, winners and that our wars are therefore winnable.

American society’s almost complete isolation from war's deadly effects.

Unnecessary and sweeping secrecy.

An unrepresentative government . . . . weapons makers are always likely to be able to shout louder in Congress than you and I ever will.

America’s persistent empathy gap.

Those are markedly unspiritual traits

Yet we, as a supposedly predominantly religious society, exhibit them every day.

And almost no one, among our burgeoning mass of alleged spiritual and religious teachers, mentions these lapses.

The moral? — Maybe if we don't acknowledge our wrong-doing, no one will notice?

I have the distinct impression that most among our herd do not really believe anything that comes out of our mouths.

Perhaps, I'm over-reacting. Hypocrisy irritates.

Baby Jesus — (I'm sure, aren't you?) — forgives me.

I sometimes wonder whether the Old Testament better motivated slothful souls toward quasi-rectitude.

Burning in Hell and all that.

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