I suspect that one of the reason’s the US has such affinity for Israel (besides really bad End-Time theology) is that their founding and growth took such similar trajectories. In addition, the bullshit hiding those stories is just as deep in both nations.
Yep. America lives in a dream perhaps like no other country. A dream of a past where slavery was not bad. Where Southern estates and southern lifestyle were 'grand'. Where cowboys were gun toting heroes. Where the whole nation was 'god fearing' and protected by god because of it. Where total devotion to the profit motive is the highest aspiration of man. Hollywood depicts their reality for them. They believe Hollywood more than they believe their own eyes it seems.
I think dispassionate observation and measurement would decide the nation is simply lunatic.
yup, sir brogard, the lunatics outside have taken over the loonie-bin... so how do we impuissant loonies inside recapture our domain [we'll run it far better] and flush the REAL loonies into the nearest sewer? that is one issue that was not addressed or resolved by the film "one flew over the cuckoo's nest". the slimy, corrupt cabal of outside loonies seems to perpetually win. however, it is dubious that the exterior loonies regnant in the halls of power and the bank-vaults of lucre are as capable of the unfettered, conscious-free glee that those of us whom the REAL loonies categorize as 'lunatics' are capable of.
I gotta hope that shortly there'll be a wave of enlightenment will spread throughout the masses of the world as they suddenly realise they can communicate with each, gather true information, process information, devise plans and schemes and implement etc. all without having to go via the supposed 'controllers' of our world since time immemorial - the 'governments' and the powerful and the wealthy.
Historically held in thrall and serfdom by our own admitted lack of ability to communicate effectively, to organise, to even know: gather information, understand the forces at work in the world - sort of caught in a limb of helplessness needing our tormentors to save us from possible unknown worse torments and unable to escape.
Now it has all ended if we wish it so. The penny will drop, I think, I hope. And it'll be a completely new ballgame.
And the hapless Biden administration, led by the barely sentient Joe Biden and his wandering fool Antony Blinken, demonstrates on the world stage the corruption and irrelevance of a late-stage empire. It blusters with carrier battle groups and an Ohio-class SSGN but is unable to take any meaningful action that can stop the genocide in Gaza, end the war in Ukraine, or demonstrate any leadership on global issues.
On the domestic front, political considerations and fear of the Israeli lobby and Christian evangelicals are eliminating fundamental rights of our citizens. Laws have been enacted by compliant politicians that criminalize any critiques of the nation-state of Israel; any criticism of zionism is labelled anti-semitism. Apparently, even the First Amendment does not apply when it comes to Israel.
And as Israel degenerates further into fascism under the right-wing government that is growing stronger, it seems the US will follow or at least accede to what its Israeli masters demand.
What is astounding to me is that Israel is put in a class by itself and has been since its creation. It has never accepted responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees that it created in 1948, refusing a penny (or shekel) to support them. Instead the UN had to come to the rescue and is still, 75 years later, providing health and education services to the over 50 camps still sitting on the sites where they were established using tents so long ago. Incredibly, Israel has asked that even this UN relief operation be stopped.
That Israel is a colony is undeniable. That Israel is not a democracy because it rules over people who have no vote is undeniable. That Israel has openly engaged in ethnic cleansing is undeniable. That the US has protected Israel from any censure by the UN is undeniable. The Palestinians have been referred to as the niggers of the Middle East. It's true for everyone to see - no civil rights, constant abuse, constant questioning over what they are doing and where they are going. Easy conviction and imprisonment. And something never suffered by African-Americans, a registry of every single Palestinian by the Israelis, a number assigned to each just as numbers were assigned to concentration camp inmates by the Nazis.
While all this might make sense to Israelis, what the hell is going on with America? It can only be the holocaust that makes Israel exempt. The movie Exodus was a blockbuster in the US, telling the story that Israel wanted told of its creation with handsome Paul Newman in the starring role. The intro to the movie that became famous is of crossed human arms holding weapons against a backdrop of flames. The British, portrayed in the movie as antisemitic by Peter Lawford, had in fact gone to great lengths to keep a lid on the region, up to and including a brutal suppression of the quite understandable Arab Revolt of 1936-38 that rejected the Zionist takeover that by then was perfectly obvious to anyone paying attention.
The British conducted a survey of the population of Palestine in 1939 to try to find a way to settle things that would respect both the Jews and the Arabs. In the resulting white paper, which soon-to-be Israeli president David Ben Gurion rejected immediately but secretly, land was reserved for both sides. The Arabs, seeing what had been all theirs at the start of the 20th century rejected it for "offering" them 45% of Palestine though the made up 55% of the population. Ben Gurion vowed to fight WW2 with the Allies and then get serious about Palestine. So it would be.
In the movie and in the actual event, the British were despised because they called a halt to Jewish immigration after 250,000 had arrived from Europe, in line with the recommendation of the white paper resulting in the British boarding the ship Exodus, loaded with holocaust survivors, and forcing the refugees back to British controlled Germany. The world, including the US, unwilling to take the refugees as morality would dictate, instead denounced the British.
The fact that is not allowed to be expressed, and is something I have never, ever heard anyone in any American government say, is that Jews are no more or less human than anyone else. That they suffered a horror in Europe in no way justified their going to Palestine and forcing the Palestinians out. This would not have won Harry Truman the vote of American Jews. Yet the movie Exodus would have us believe that Zionism was perfectly rational and even heroic as we see Paul Newman and Lee J. Cobb and a group of young Jewish kids deal with skulking Arabs hiding in the shadows, conniving with Nazis and murdering a beautiful white Jewish girl. Hollywood could have done no more for Zionism and Americans ate it up to our cost.
The US has thrown aside liberty and justice for all in favor of the Israeli exception. What makes this doubly strange is that American Jews would never ask for or be extended similar exceptionality here in the US where they are equal American citizens along with all the rest of us. There would be outrage if American Jews were excused when called before the justice system, if they were given a unique discount on home purchases, given land exclusively, from which they could pump sewage onto other land, etc., etc down the list of what Israelis do and have been doing to Palestinians openly and without apology for so many years.
Now we are allowing Israelis the ultimate: to kill and destroy without limit, to take more land, to determine what to do with all the money and weapons we give them while we stand by timidly and do not dare to intervene, our foolish Secretary of State running around the world trying to get other countries to join us! And this has been going at a lower level for decades with the US holding off all attempts at entirely peaceful sanctions from an outraged world via the UN, pressuring other countries economically to vote as the US and Israel wish them to vote.
The enormous irony of the holocaust is that it has so impressed the minds of Zionists and Americans that another holocaust is now underway perpetrated by those who believe that that victimhood 80 years ago makes them uniquely righteous, allowing any and all behavior on their part in the taking of land and the killing of people with the mighty US holding the world at bay with the immense armed force that is now truly doing the opposite of what that force is intended to do - PROTECT THE UNITED STATES, not a foreign outlaw country. Our Navy right now intimidates all for the sake of epic injustice to proceed without restraint. Need anyone wonder if this is ramping up hatred of the United States? HAMAS committed an act of terror, but in doing so it revealed, even to the most obtuse, the clear status of Israel as a unique oppressor that must not be stopped.
"Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."
The masses are huddled in Gaza waiting to be killed and have not been free in their lifetimes.
The Statue of Liberty is now nothing but a relic and a joke.
And our blind President is ready to go to the wall to leave unrestrained a foreign country with less than 2% of our population.
Let it be said that there are many American Jews who see exactly what it going on and denounce it. If you support them, as I do and have done for over 25 years, check out the Jewish Voice for Peace website. Let it also be said that there are a dwindling number of Israelis who denounce what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians over decades. Check out the website of B'Tselem (bet SELL um).
your extended exegesis is more elucubrating and illuminating than the star-studded welkin on a cloud-free night in a middle eastern desert, clif brown. thank you. i despair that my consociate volunteer teachers at PROJECT HOPE NABLUS, in the 4 refugee camps surrounding nablus in the west bank, have confirmed the deaths of 7 of my former students during our 3 months there in may, june. and july. several have died in gaza who made their way immediately to offer what assistance they could to their confreres and consoeurs trapped under the rubble that is now gaza.
This is brilliant. I will link to it and promulgate it as far as I can. Sadly, not very far but one never knows when a spark may kindle and off it goes..... :)
What is perhaps most outrageous about the US position on the slaughter in Gaza is the fact that, back in 1999, just 24 years ago, the US went to war against Serbia and bombed that country citing NATO's obligation to intervene on humanitarian grounds under the so-called "Responsibility to Protect (R2P)." The US and NATO claimed that, due to Serbia's repression and the ethnic cleansing of Albanians, they were obligated to intervene under R2P to stop the killing of Albanians. Although the US and NATO never obtained UN authorization, they claimed they had to intervene on humanitarian grounds, citing the UN's R2P doctrine which reads as follows: "The international community, through the United Nations, has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity." Does anyone even remember this history? So, let's get this straight--Back in 1999 the US/NATO decided to go to war to prevent civilians being killed in Kosovo, bombing Serbia relentlessly for months, but in Gaza in 2023 the US and NATO cheer on the Israelis as they carry out mass slaughter against Palestinian civilians, claiming Israel is just exercising its right to "defend itself." Such grotesque hypocrisy is enough to make one go stark raving mad.
This grotesque hypocrisy is just one example of US duplicity and perfidy. It should lay to rest once and for all the idea that the US National Security State operates according to "values" or "principles" or adheres to international law. The US National Security State operates like the Mafia, pure and simple. It does whatever the hell it pleases (at least for the last 30 years or so) based on its interests, nothing else. The US National Security State apparatus has no principles or values and does not give a damn about international law. That stuff is all a smokescreen to cover for naked US aggression, justified by the belief in American Exceptionalism. When anyone from the US National Security State apparatus explains US behavior around the world because of certain "values" or "principles" just remember one thing---they are lying.
we are all being driven "stark raving mad, charlie K. it is only thru people like you who blog and comment on these humanitarian sites that offer a shred of veracity that we are spared a scintilla of sanity.
only if loonies like us find a way to neutralize and limit the REAL lunatics, ab, but given the latter have gained seigneury over us for millennia, we must have too many other distractions and divaricating values to succeed in doing so... such as raising families, educating and nurturing children, intimately involving ourselves in eleemosynary causes, taking out the garbage, deterging our toilets and floors, growing crops [but not domesticated animals; i've been a vegetarian since the age of 27, videlicet, for 55 years], volunteering on behalf of the depauperate, nursing our elderly parents [tho' mine are long-dead], preparing meals, joining in protests... w/ certitude, there are more of us than there are of the REAL lunatics, but we are too overwhelmed by the quotidian exigencies in our ambit to prevail.
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” - Steven Weinberg
Dennis, it's always been sobering to realize how much of human history is drenched in the blood of religious wars, persecutions, and Inquisitions. All in the name of spreading the word of some sky god.
the elephant in the room, dear dennis, is that only humans are evil, and thus, as you suggest, they fabricate evil gods. why ours is the only species that does so is beyond the comprehension and purview of other species. subreptitious control over others is the cratonic newell post of human DNA. if most other species cannot find accommodation or concinnity w/ others in their territory, they either move on or fight, but the antagonism rarely results in the death of an opponent. this non-lethiferous dynamic is manifest in prokaryotes as well as eukaryotic invertebrates. no worries, however, the gods we have invented will lead us down the trail right behind the extinct dodo bird and felicitous oblivion
"It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous Universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil..." ... The stage is too big for the Drama..." Richard Fenyman
While I'm sure that many people in any number of states choose to retain belief in their specialness and rectitude, the U.S. and Israel seem to push that to a new level. I suppose they are perfectly matched in that arrogance and so I suppose it's not surprising that they are both among the most murderous states historically.
President Putin moves 6,000 children out a war zone and into Russia, and the ICC makes the mad dash to charge him with war crimes. Now, if we are not already at 6,000 head Palestinian children, we soon will be, and the ICC? Not a peep from them. “No red lines”–our mantra for whatever suits us.
I suspect that one of the reason’s the US has such affinity for Israel (besides really bad End-Time theology) is that their founding and growth took such similar trajectories. In addition, the bullshit hiding those stories is just as deep in both nations.
Yep. America lives in a dream perhaps like no other country. A dream of a past where slavery was not bad. Where Southern estates and southern lifestyle were 'grand'. Where cowboys were gun toting heroes. Where the whole nation was 'god fearing' and protected by god because of it. Where total devotion to the profit motive is the highest aspiration of man. Hollywood depicts their reality for them. They believe Hollywood more than they believe their own eyes it seems.
I think dispassionate observation and measurement would decide the nation is simply lunatic.
yup, sir brogard, the lunatics outside have taken over the loonie-bin... so how do we impuissant loonies inside recapture our domain [we'll run it far better] and flush the REAL loonies into the nearest sewer? that is one issue that was not addressed or resolved by the film "one flew over the cuckoo's nest". the slimy, corrupt cabal of outside loonies seems to perpetually win. however, it is dubious that the exterior loonies regnant in the halls of power and the bank-vaults of lucre are as capable of the unfettered, conscious-free glee that those of us whom the REAL loonies categorize as 'lunatics' are capable of.
I gotta hope that shortly there'll be a wave of enlightenment will spread throughout the masses of the world as they suddenly realise they can communicate with each, gather true information, process information, devise plans and schemes and implement etc. all without having to go via the supposed 'controllers' of our world since time immemorial - the 'governments' and the powerful and the wealthy.
Historically held in thrall and serfdom by our own admitted lack of ability to communicate effectively, to organise, to even know: gather information, understand the forces at work in the world - sort of caught in a limb of helplessness needing our tormentors to save us from possible unknown worse torments and unable to escape.
Now it has all ended if we wish it so. The penny will drop, I think, I hope. And it'll be a completely new ballgame.
And the hapless Biden administration, led by the barely sentient Joe Biden and his wandering fool Antony Blinken, demonstrates on the world stage the corruption and irrelevance of a late-stage empire. It blusters with carrier battle groups and an Ohio-class SSGN but is unable to take any meaningful action that can stop the genocide in Gaza, end the war in Ukraine, or demonstrate any leadership on global issues.
On the domestic front, political considerations and fear of the Israeli lobby and Christian evangelicals are eliminating fundamental rights of our citizens. Laws have been enacted by compliant politicians that criminalize any critiques of the nation-state of Israel; any criticism of zionism is labelled anti-semitism. Apparently, even the First Amendment does not apply when it comes to Israel.
And as Israel degenerates further into fascism under the right-wing government that is growing stronger, it seems the US will follow or at least accede to what its Israeli masters demand.
Also wandering tool.
He is that, too.
What is astounding to me is that Israel is put in a class by itself and has been since its creation. It has never accepted responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees that it created in 1948, refusing a penny (or shekel) to support them. Instead the UN had to come to the rescue and is still, 75 years later, providing health and education services to the over 50 camps still sitting on the sites where they were established using tents so long ago. Incredibly, Israel has asked that even this UN relief operation be stopped.
That Israel is a colony is undeniable. That Israel is not a democracy because it rules over people who have no vote is undeniable. That Israel has openly engaged in ethnic cleansing is undeniable. That the US has protected Israel from any censure by the UN is undeniable. The Palestinians have been referred to as the niggers of the Middle East. It's true for everyone to see - no civil rights, constant abuse, constant questioning over what they are doing and where they are going. Easy conviction and imprisonment. And something never suffered by African-Americans, a registry of every single Palestinian by the Israelis, a number assigned to each just as numbers were assigned to concentration camp inmates by the Nazis.
While all this might make sense to Israelis, what the hell is going on with America? It can only be the holocaust that makes Israel exempt. The movie Exodus was a blockbuster in the US, telling the story that Israel wanted told of its creation with handsome Paul Newman in the starring role. The intro to the movie that became famous is of crossed human arms holding weapons against a backdrop of flames. The British, portrayed in the movie as antisemitic by Peter Lawford, had in fact gone to great lengths to keep a lid on the region, up to and including a brutal suppression of the quite understandable Arab Revolt of 1936-38 that rejected the Zionist takeover that by then was perfectly obvious to anyone paying attention.
The British conducted a survey of the population of Palestine in 1939 to try to find a way to settle things that would respect both the Jews and the Arabs. In the resulting white paper, which soon-to-be Israeli president David Ben Gurion rejected immediately but secretly, land was reserved for both sides. The Arabs, seeing what had been all theirs at the start of the 20th century rejected it for "offering" them 45% of Palestine though the made up 55% of the population. Ben Gurion vowed to fight WW2 with the Allies and then get serious about Palestine. So it would be.
In the movie and in the actual event, the British were despised because they called a halt to Jewish immigration after 250,000 had arrived from Europe, in line with the recommendation of the white paper resulting in the British boarding the ship Exodus, loaded with holocaust survivors, and forcing the refugees back to British controlled Germany. The world, including the US, unwilling to take the refugees as morality would dictate, instead denounced the British.
The fact that is not allowed to be expressed, and is something I have never, ever heard anyone in any American government say, is that Jews are no more or less human than anyone else. That they suffered a horror in Europe in no way justified their going to Palestine and forcing the Palestinians out. This would not have won Harry Truman the vote of American Jews. Yet the movie Exodus would have us believe that Zionism was perfectly rational and even heroic as we see Paul Newman and Lee J. Cobb and a group of young Jewish kids deal with skulking Arabs hiding in the shadows, conniving with Nazis and murdering a beautiful white Jewish girl. Hollywood could have done no more for Zionism and Americans ate it up to our cost.
The US has thrown aside liberty and justice for all in favor of the Israeli exception. What makes this doubly strange is that American Jews would never ask for or be extended similar exceptionality here in the US where they are equal American citizens along with all the rest of us. There would be outrage if American Jews were excused when called before the justice system, if they were given a unique discount on home purchases, given land exclusively, from which they could pump sewage onto other land, etc., etc down the list of what Israelis do and have been doing to Palestinians openly and without apology for so many years.
Now we are allowing Israelis the ultimate: to kill and destroy without limit, to take more land, to determine what to do with all the money and weapons we give them while we stand by timidly and do not dare to intervene, our foolish Secretary of State running around the world trying to get other countries to join us! And this has been going at a lower level for decades with the US holding off all attempts at entirely peaceful sanctions from an outraged world via the UN, pressuring other countries economically to vote as the US and Israel wish them to vote.
The enormous irony of the holocaust is that it has so impressed the minds of Zionists and Americans that another holocaust is now underway perpetrated by those who believe that that victimhood 80 years ago makes them uniquely righteous, allowing any and all behavior on their part in the taking of land and the killing of people with the mighty US holding the world at bay with the immense armed force that is now truly doing the opposite of what that force is intended to do - PROTECT THE UNITED STATES, not a foreign outlaw country. Our Navy right now intimidates all for the sake of epic injustice to proceed without restraint. Need anyone wonder if this is ramping up hatred of the United States? HAMAS committed an act of terror, but in doing so it revealed, even to the most obtuse, the clear status of Israel as a unique oppressor that must not be stopped.
"Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."
The masses are huddled in Gaza waiting to be killed and have not been free in their lifetimes.
The Statue of Liberty is now nothing but a relic and a joke.
And our blind President is ready to go to the wall to leave unrestrained a foreign country with less than 2% of our population.
Let it be said that there are many American Jews who see exactly what it going on and denounce it. If you support them, as I do and have done for over 25 years, check out the Jewish Voice for Peace website. Let it also be said that there are a dwindling number of Israelis who denounce what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians over decades. Check out the website of B'Tselem (bet SELL um).
your extended exegesis is more elucubrating and illuminating than the star-studded welkin on a cloud-free night in a middle eastern desert, clif brown. thank you. i despair that my consociate volunteer teachers at PROJECT HOPE NABLUS, in the 4 refugee camps surrounding nablus in the west bank, have confirmed the deaths of 7 of my former students during our 3 months there in may, june. and july. several have died in gaza who made their way immediately to offer what assistance they could to their confreres and consoeurs trapped under the rubble that is now gaza.
This is brilliant. I will link to it and promulgate it as far as I can. Sadly, not very far but one never knows when a spark may kindle and off it goes..... :)
MSNBC tells me we are the good guys! They wouldn’t lie to me, they are credible journalists. 🙃
Credible journalists is rapidly becoming an oxymoron. There are only a few left.
What is perhaps most outrageous about the US position on the slaughter in Gaza is the fact that, back in 1999, just 24 years ago, the US went to war against Serbia and bombed that country citing NATO's obligation to intervene on humanitarian grounds under the so-called "Responsibility to Protect (R2P)." The US and NATO claimed that, due to Serbia's repression and the ethnic cleansing of Albanians, they were obligated to intervene under R2P to stop the killing of Albanians. Although the US and NATO never obtained UN authorization, they claimed they had to intervene on humanitarian grounds, citing the UN's R2P doctrine which reads as follows: "The international community, through the United Nations, has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity." Does anyone even remember this history? So, let's get this straight--Back in 1999 the US/NATO decided to go to war to prevent civilians being killed in Kosovo, bombing Serbia relentlessly for months, but in Gaza in 2023 the US and NATO cheer on the Israelis as they carry out mass slaughter against Palestinian civilians, claiming Israel is just exercising its right to "defend itself." Such grotesque hypocrisy is enough to make one go stark raving mad.
There's no R2P for "human animals." An oxymoron since animals are less bestial than humans. Yes, madness is appropriate here.
This grotesque hypocrisy is just one example of US duplicity and perfidy. It should lay to rest once and for all the idea that the US National Security State operates according to "values" or "principles" or adheres to international law. The US National Security State operates like the Mafia, pure and simple. It does whatever the hell it pleases (at least for the last 30 years or so) based on its interests, nothing else. The US National Security State apparatus has no principles or values and does not give a damn about international law. That stuff is all a smokescreen to cover for naked US aggression, justified by the belief in American Exceptionalism. When anyone from the US National Security State apparatus explains US behavior around the world because of certain "values" or "principles" just remember one thing---they are lying.
we are all being driven "stark raving mad, charlie K. it is only thru people like you who blog and comment on these humanitarian sites that offer a shred of veracity that we are spared a scintilla of sanity.
only if loonies like us find a way to neutralize and limit the REAL lunatics, ab, but given the latter have gained seigneury over us for millennia, we must have too many other distractions and divaricating values to succeed in doing so... such as raising families, educating and nurturing children, intimately involving ourselves in eleemosynary causes, taking out the garbage, deterging our toilets and floors, growing crops [but not domesticated animals; i've been a vegetarian since the age of 27, videlicet, for 55 years], volunteering on behalf of the depauperate, nursing our elderly parents [tho' mine are long-dead], preparing meals, joining in protests... w/ certitude, there are more of us than there are of the REAL lunatics, but we are too overwhelmed by the quotidian exigencies in our ambit to prevail.
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” - Steven Weinberg
Dennis, it's always been sobering to realize how much of human history is drenched in the blood of religious wars, persecutions, and Inquisitions. All in the name of spreading the word of some sky god.
Tom, all "Gods" are man-made - myths in ancient religious books.
And, is it not true here, that the imaginary Christian sky God started all this horror and killing in the Middle East in the first place.
When one party comes armed with their Bible and a 2,000-year-old promise from their imaginary "God", reason and rational thinking goes out the window.
The issue will only be settled on the field of battle with iron and rivers of blood.
Thousands slaughtered in the name of imaginary Gods. The Battle of the "Gods".
As it has been done since man invented God's.
There will be no winners.
Every religion claim's that theirs is the only true God!
What evidence do the Israeli's, or the Palestinian's, have that their "God" is not just other false "God"?
Why is their "God" real and all the others are not?
When they understand why they dismiss ALL the other possible "Gods", only then will they understand why the non-religious dismiss theirs.
When inventing a "God", the most important thing is to claim it is invisible, inaudible, and imperceptible in every way.
Otherwise, people will become skeptical when it appears to no one, is silent and does nothing.
"Religion poisons everything" - Christopher Hitchens
the elephant in the room, dear dennis, is that only humans are evil, and thus, as you suggest, they fabricate evil gods. why ours is the only species that does so is beyond the comprehension and purview of other species. subreptitious control over others is the cratonic newell post of human DNA. if most other species cannot find accommodation or concinnity w/ others in their territory, they either move on or fight, but the antagonism rarely results in the death of an opponent. this non-lethiferous dynamic is manifest in prokaryotes as well as eukaryotic invertebrates. no worries, however, the gods we have invented will lead us down the trail right behind the extinct dodo bird and felicitous oblivion
"It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous Universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil..." ... The stage is too big for the Drama..." Richard Fenyman
While I'm sure that many people in any number of states choose to retain belief in their specialness and rectitude, the U.S. and Israel seem to push that to a new level. I suppose they are perfectly matched in that arrogance and so I suppose it's not surprising that they are both among the most murderous states historically.
President Putin moves 6,000 children out a war zone and into Russia, and the ICC makes the mad dash to charge him with war crimes. Now, if we are not already at 6,000 head Palestinian children, we soon will be, and the ICC? Not a peep from them. “No red lines”–our mantra for whatever suits us.
Nearly everyone commits atrocities in war. What is galling , is that we taxpayers have to pay for theirs, when we cannot pay for our own.
Sharing more of your wisdom and insight to my Social Media. xo