Friday, September 11, 2009

To Muse or not to Muse on 9/11

It’s 9/11 again, only without President Doofus and his gang of thugs. 9/11 always makes me wonder about a lot of things. For example, I still don’t know whether George W. Bush caused the attacks to occur, by doing nothing in response to an obvious threat, or whether the attacks were just one of those numerous awful global events that occur, like hurricanes and earthquakes. I remain convinced that the CIA was complicit, simply by being so inept. And that the FBI compounded the problem by their unwillingness to collaborate. But I still weep internally for the victims and their families. Assigning blame doesn't seem to help those people.
I continue to be amazed at all the continued killing around this poor benighted globe of ours. For a brief moment after 9/11, I hoped that perhaps mankind would declare all this killing crap off and sit down and actually talk to one another. How silly of me.
Now, I just wonder how long the world’s population needs to remain both this ignorant and this brutal, in the name of (take your pick) God, or Greed. I alternate myself. Isn’t this phenomenon, all by itself, proof that there is no Godly intervention in the affairs of mankind, and there never was? Note, it is not the case that global killing is proof that there is no God. On that we have no evidence. But, for me it is compelling evidence that God does not ever intervene.
But on another line of inquiry, I also have begun to wonder why such a large percentage of the world’s population needs to remain stuck mentally in the 12th century. Part of it, I know, is caused by religion, i.e., the conscious desire of the world’s religious leaders, regardless of their belief system, to keep their respective populations ignorant. But it seems to me that the people happily cooperate in this crazy endeavor. Some do escape, generally by a personal decision to actually use the brain with which they were born. But so many seem unwilling to rely on their own brain, and instead rely on someone else for their life directions (often crazy people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, the Ayatollah, or the Pope). How else can you explain the personal decisions of people to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings full of people who have never harmed them? Or to strap on an explosive belt, walk into a crowded marketplace and explode themselves and dozens of innocents? Even given the inane promises made to them by charlatans who promise them a discrete supply of virgins after death (I wonder, do the virgins come supplied with wine and cheese--but I digress.), it seems a stretch that someone would actually buy into those crazy tales. Of course, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck sold people on the notion that Obama was creating death panels that would send grandma on her way to her own nirvana. And most of these people were actually “educated” in this country. So, I guess we should not be surprised that people living a 12th century life in an isolated village in the middle of Afghanistan, would buy into such crap.
But how long does this go on, I wonder, before someone makes a huge goof, and commits some act that triggers all the crazy people to push the buttons of global destruction? Do we all really need this kind of crazy lifestyle? I mean, waiting for Godot is one thing, but this seems totally whacko.
I did hope, for a while, that someone both intelligent and with a social conscience, President Obama for example, could talk us down from our nutso desire to blow up everything. But since the election, republicans have been doing their best to destroy my hopes. And I can’t even figure out what they really want? Should we all just march back into the 12th century, and allow republicans to dictate from on high? Give them all the money, and everyone else jump off a high building. Is that what they want?
But then I keep thinking of that old saw, “Suppose they gave a war . . . and nobody came?” Where’s Jon Lennon when we need him?

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