Rhinocrisy

Happy Thanksgiving. I deeply appreciate your coming here to read our random thoughts and musings. And I feel lucky to get to write on this blargh. And I’m thankful that no one is pressuring me to eat turkey today. I feel lucky to be alive in this time and place, no matter how much I make fun of it. Hooray.

I am glad that there will be inquiries and that some more facts will come out about how several countries were conned into a war. But it’s pretty annoying that so many of us saw through the lies in the first place — not just about Iraq but about Afghanistan — and that the Iraq lies are now being treated as though they were anything close to convincing. It looks to me like a lot of people were fooled because they wanted to be fooled, and now they are looking for someone to blame. But most of them have no one to blame but themselves.

The part that really worries me is that the current round of inquiries seem intended to protect the mindset that assumes that America is basically right in all things, that military force is value-neutral at worst, and that we are only the victims, not the perpetrators, of evil.

This type of denial of responsibility reminds me of the ongoing failure to take responsibility for the genocide of the First Nations and slavery. I think these traumas, which peaked in their intensity long ago, continue to haunt the USA by forming dangerous habits of mind.

More on how the changing zeitgeist isn’t much of a change at all: go read Josh and Bob.