I've no patience for people who lace rhetoric with moral imperatives. I'm supposed to care about people starving somewhere or some intolerable injustice being perpetrated in another location because it's the right thing to do. I'm presented with deserving cases that are almost always suitably photogenic. I've no patience because I've no faith in their sincerity, blah blah blah, their worthless words trip like lemmings over a cliff. I've witnessed how much people really care, it's not an impressive tally. Unless there's some suitable emotional bribe, something to stoke those cosey 'dogooder' embers in their hearts, such people will the overlook the most bestial brutality.
Randall Jarrell said it all for me in his poem, Death of the Ball Turret Gunner. With it he illustrates the murderous faculty of the state and the callousness with which it is exercised. Jarrell describes the drama of warfare with the imagery of abortion and illustrates the state's pitiless insistence for murder. Now this is where I'm supposed to be expounding my own moral argument, nothing could be further from the truth. I don't believe there's a any practical alternative to either of those practices but please don't lie to me any more. Don't tell me you're doing for the love of humanity, you're doing it for self interest. You're launching missiles into crowded markets or flushing children down the bog because it's better for you. You're not doing it for democracy or a woman's right to choose.
No comments:
Post a Comment