from T.S. deHaviland, Special Correspondent
“In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile–and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: Not necessarily to Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely.”
–Hunter S. Thompson
The Culture Wars are literally making me ill–my stomach turns when I hear words like “values” and “moral authority” and “the American way of life” said by politicians and pundits and the criminally insane who are carefully screened to appear on call-in shows.
Probably because this is because I’m a liberal and we lost, but it’s also because the more dualistic and partisan we become the more we look and act like a third-world country. Pretty soon each party will hire its own death squads to eliminate opposition outright instead of just killing their characters and careers on the evening news. When the side you’re on becomes more important than the ideology you espouse, this tends to be the result.
It’s sort of sad, though, to see that the vestiges of actual civilization have pretty much retreated to the European Union, having been abandoned by the rest of the world for a lawless brand of command Capitalism. And, yes, I’ve seriously considered moving there. But I can’t seem to get my gun collection through customs.
Both the torture of Iraqi prisoners (70% – 80% of whom are innocent according to the Red Cross) and the beheading of Nicholas Berg (who was a pretty clearly innocent American businessman) are, of course, horrible and immoral. That the beheading of Berg would probably be considered more humane than sexual abuse to the average Arab male does confuse matters a bit, but when you look at the history of warfare (and both sides of this conflict believe this is war), neither of these events should be all that surprising.
Armies spend countless hours of basic training making the enemy seem less than human. In fact, that’s part of the point: we’re us, the “good†people, the Band of Brothers (or Sisters), fighting for Freedom and Democracy and All that’s Right. And they’re “them,†the enemy, the “evildoersss,†the freedom-hating enemy. Rather than men or women with families, histories, aspirations, desires, they are “targets.†Rather than people with fears and joys, knowledge and abilities, they are “enemy assets.†When the other guy is a mere beast, it’s a heck of a lot easier to squeeze that trigger or chop his head off or lead him around by a leash.
Once you’ve established “themness,†you can actually say things like “Well, if they were going to be a threat to our interests, they will have to suffer the consequences.†It’s a lot easier to shoot a coyote that threatens your sheep than a fellow shepherd.
This shows pretty clearly the true nature of war: rather than a an imposition of will by force, war is simply the breakdown of morality. Rather than a punishment meted out, it is the failure of cooler heads to prevail on a massive scale. It is the failure of diplomacy, genuine influence, economics, culture, civilization, and basic human empathy. In other words, by declaring war, by training for it, by waging it, we open ourselves up to the sort of behavior that results in the Abu Grhaib prison scandal and the beheading of Nicholas Berg. Rather than being the exception, war and crimes against humanity are synonymous.
Our literatures and moving-picture narratives – our ad hoc mythologies – are all full of times when war was chivalrous and clean, noble and courageous. History tells us otherwise. Despite moral aims, such as the fight against fascism during WW2, or even the fight against genocide in the former Yugoslavia, the waging of war itself tends toward moral breakdown. The discussion of pacifism vs. militarism is really a debate between means vs. ends.
Before declaring himself emperor, Napoleon, after all, was fighting for democracy. He, and many others, Beethoven included, thought of his sweep across Europe as a fight for liberation from an abusive and outmoded monarchy. But he, too, committed atrocities in his campaign in Spain, perfectly and grotesquely memorialized in the drawings of Francisco de Goya. The ostensibly moral task of ridding the world of Nazism resulted in the firebombing of Dresden, enduringly memorialized in Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel Slaughterhouse Five, and ushered in the age of nuclear weapons. The use of those weapons on Japan was done ostensibly to save the larger number of lives that would have been lost in a direct invasion.
We like to think that bombing Dresden or nuking Japan is more moral than the Nazi concentration camps or the Bataan death march. We killed fewer than they did – and quicker too. But is it really better to burn to death than to starve? Is it really more humane to wipe people out in a radioactive flash than to gas them to death? All of these killings, on both sides, were done deliberately and with careful planning. They were all conducted in cold blood, all premeditated murders.
My point isn’t to dispute that we were more justified or had better reasons. I’m still reasonable enough to say that we probably were and that we probably did. However, if we look at war strictly in terms of some kind of weird utilitarianism where there are a million fine gradations of evil, figuring out right from wrong gets pretty absurd pretty fast. Soon you’re forced to place relative values on people’s lives. Is the life of, say, an American president really worth more than that of an Afghan farmer?
If we want our soldiers to start acting better in war, if we want our enemies to stop treating our citizens as livestock fit only for the slaughter, perhaps we should start to think a little harder, more frequently, and more creatively about why and when and where we wage war in the first place.
Wow, that wasn’t too hard at all. In fact, moving to WordPress from Movable Type was pretty darned easy, although our database played hide-and-seek for a few minutes. It actually went missing according to one interface, but not in another. Very weird.
The built-in importer worked flawlessly. Carthik.net’s instructions really proved to allay fears more than they were actually necessary. I’m not too concerned with permalinks to the old MT entries since we’re not like some sites that have thousands of entries.
If you’re not a blogger, you might have missed the reason why there’s been a mass exodus from Movable Type to WordPress in the past week. Let’s just say it comes from having your previously-free software suddenly going up to either $199.99 or $699.99, depending on whether MT considers us an organization or not. (We have 14 active members; that’s not counting the 4+ inactive members and other prospective Villagers we could add at a minimum of $10/head.)
Obviously, none of us blog daily here. I have no desire to pay more for blogging software than a year’s worth of web hosting and if that makes me an ungrateful cheap bastard, then so be it. So far I’ve been very impressed with WordPress (hey, it’s easy to make links) and the hacks the community has built for it since it’s open source.
MT did work for us, but I think WP will work even better. Welcome to the new world, villagers. New features, etc., to come as I tweak around with things.
On May 17, 2004 · Comments Off
We’re moving to WordPress from Movable Type. Apologies in advance if anything awful happens to the site. Keep your fingers crossed.