AMERICA'S TANGLED MORALITY
Far too many Americans think they have a corner on what is moral. We twist morality to fit our own prejudices, shallow thinking, judgmentalism, etc.
Religious people seem to be especially judgmental of homosexuals. Though disproven by all medical and psychological data, too many of us still think that homosexuality is a choice. However it is inherent, we are born with those traits/preferences. We used to think, not too many years ago, that left-handed children had to be made to write right-handedly because that was "normal." It is amazing that there are still large segments of our society who judge homosexuals as having made a choice to be gay.
We currently love to generalize about Moslems and demonize them. However most people killed by Moslems are fellow Moslems. Most Christian killing is against Christians, and in Moslem and Christian history, it has always been so. Further, we forget the slaughters of Moslems that have taken place through the years by Christians. We also forget how Western Christian nations and peoples raped the natural resources of Moslem nations, used their land as their own, bought politicians or set up their own Christian idea of who should rule a Moslem nation. We stole their land. From the Crusades forward, Christians have treated Moslems horrendously. And most Moslems are NOT terrorists. We don't label all Christians as terrorists, though Christianity has a sordid history in the way it has terrorized people.
Judgmental people are very selective against whom they use moral criticism. Bill Clinton is a favorite to judge because of his Monica Lewinsky trysts. But Ronald Reagan was quite the ladies man when he was married to his first wife. Not only was he an adulterer, he had a reputation that he cherished for all the women he bedded. He was also once a labor unior leader, a Democrat, and fought against big business in the movie industry. My, how we forget that he used Christian and Republican expediency to foster his political career. And we are justifiably angry with John Edwards for cheating on his wife, who had breast cancer. But we forget that Newt Gingrich told his wife he was leaving her while she was in a hospital bed being treated for cancer. Newt, the supreme critic of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, was himself fooling around with young Washington staffers. This list is too long to do justice in this space.
Oh, how we pound our Christian chests in criticizing drug sellers and users. But we forget that the tobacco industry lied to Congress about the dangers of smoking. AND the tobacco industry fought hard to label marijuana dangerous and wanted it to be declared illegal, even for medical purposes. And the tobacco industry targeted children as a major market to addict.. The tobacco industry also handed out free cigarettes to World War II soldiers to get them hooked on nicotine. Western nations thought nothing of making profits off of opium as they got tens of millions of Chinese hooked on their big-profit opiates. We thought the opium trade was good in Afghanistan when the Afghanis were fighting the Soviet occupiers, but now have changed our mind as we are there in force.
Two of the most ardent militarists in the White House, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush never saw battle. Bush, in fact, used his father's political clout to stay out of Vietnam. These two presidents did everything in their power to get profits for the military-industrial empire in the U.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower, on the other hand, a man who truly knew war, warned against the military-industrial profiteers. And General Smedley Butler, twice awarded the highest award, the Medal of Honor, spoke out strongly against our warlike nation and wrote a book, "War Is A Racket." Further, two true heroic figures who sought the White House, John McCain and John Kerry, never made it. Interestingly, both men were thwarted by George W. Bush via lies: McCain in the South Carolina primary, and Kerry by the awfully contrived Vietnam Boat people. What a twisted morality we weave in America.
A history of the United States of America is a history of morality twisted and bent to serve immoral purposes. The only way we will ever put an end to this kind of hoax is to call it what it is, and to bring it out into the open. We certainly like to strut our stuff when we talk about our nation, but we cheat ourselves when we whitewash over the immorality that drips from our nation's leaders.
