Hypocrisy in Four-Part Disharmony

       I'm seeing a four-part hypocrisy being played out by Americans and Israelis, which is going to end up in a moral smashup that Christians and Jews are responsible for, but for which they will blame God, or Satan, or the Muslims, or the Left, or whoever else they can find.

1.

     The Obama Administration is quite rightly concerned about the fact that a bunch of US Marines recently pissed on the bodies of Afghans that they killed, and photographs of this act were distributed everywhere.  This was an intentional insult, violating longstanding traditions of honor and respect among both warriors and people of good will around the world, and at the very best, the US Government knows there will be "blowback," even though everyone professes to be "shocked" that congressman Ron Paul would dare to suggest that America has created many of its own foreign policy problems.

     Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, the Democratic Party -- or at least its liberal wing -- has represented itself as being concerned about international relations from a perspective of liberal values, common humanity, and so forth.  And so far as I have heard in the recent flap about the pissing ceremony, top administration officials have said the right things about "outrage," "American values," and calling for the usual "thorough investigations."  They have let it appear as if they really care.

     But this rings totally hollow to the entire rest of the world, which is fully aware -- much more aware than Americans who view all of reality through a very polarized media filter -- that the US has been expanding its "drone attack" strategy in Afghanistan and wherever else, indiscriminately blowing men, women, and babies into the next world.  This thoroughly undermines the legitimacy and credibility of Hamid Karzai, our own puppet in Afghanistan, who is seen to be unable to protect his own people from American excesses. (He can only "protest to NATO.")  To add insult to injury, our government then piously "holds Karzai and the Afghan people responsible for their own security."  But in sober fact, pissing on dead bodies is the least of our nation's outrages upon the common people of Afghanistan.  They are being carelessly murdered and maimed by the dozens, by the hundreds.

      I suspect that the (somewhat naive, and somewhat phony) hope-and-change humanitarian image of the Obama administration has been permanently ruined.  But we must acknowledge that much of the inconsistency of the Obama Administration can be traced to the extreme pressure of politically-minded Christians and politically-minded Jews who are reinforcing each other's self-delusions, at the expense not only of the credibility of the Administration, but also of the moral welfare of our country.

2.

     The Republican Party is an elephant that has been fed a cocktail of Koolaid and Prozac.

     The Christian Right wing of the Party has been drinking Rapture Koolaid for at least twenty-five years.  Its idea of foreign affairs comes partly from the British-Israelism of the Puritans, and partly from the dispensational imagination of Hal Lindsey types (Late Great Planet Earth), revised and updated by Tim LaHaye and the Left-Behind scenario, sugared up by faith-healers and "Dominionists" who have the answers to all our ills and are ready to "take charge, bless God."  The most consistent advocates of pre-emptive war and torture as an acceptable policy have been -- and are -- impudent "evangelicals."

     Their ideal America is apparently similar to their idea of Heaven:  vaguely beautiful, and very much like an everlasting Protestant church service.  Their idea of a Restored America seems to be a sort of cross between Disneyland and The Truman Show.  A clean, well-ordered, and prosperous Potemkin village.  There is No Drinking, No Smoking, and No Unapproved Sex.  But War is OK, as long as you are Pro-Life.  If it wears a uniform, salute it.  If it wears camo, fawn all over it.  And nothing can go wrong for them because Jesus is going to save them from any consequences of anything.  Thus, they are mistake-proof.

3.

     The other wing of the Republican Party is dominated by the Neo-conservatives, whose economic and political roots go back deep into the Finance-Business-Corporate-War philosophy that gave the Republican Party its inception in the 1850s and has never ever left it.  Currently, the Neo-Cons are operated by a more or less cohesive group of Zionist Jews (some of whom are religious in a political sense, while others are re-packaged Trotskyites), who apparently think that whatever the government of Israel does, says, or thinks should become American policy, and that to disagree with them indicates a criminal degree of anti-Semitism.  Their idea of New Israel appears to be some sort of a cross between Atlantic-City-on-the-Mediterranean, and a kitsch-y "HolyLand" for religious suckers and pilgrims.   They are enthusiastically joined and blessed by a multitude of "evangelical Christians" (who are also religious in a political sense).

     Both groups are on Prozac.  Supposedly for the sake of a visionary New American Century, wedded to the Greater Glory of Israel, they are really pursuing a less-noble agenda -- mutual financial and political advantage over their underclasses, which are the poor in both countries -- largely, but not exclusively, Arabs, Hispanics, and blacks. In order to achieve this, they have created conditions of perpetual war for both countries, and they are currently working rapidly to create matching police states.  They do not care about the consequences of "blowback" on the people of the United States or the people of Israel.  They imagine that they are doing God's will, or that they are going to force His hand.

4.

     It is true that the Israeli citizens-on-the-street have mixed feelings about all this, so one can hardly charge them with full-blown hypocrisy.

     (They do have a small but credible peace movement.  They do have activists who have strenuously done bridge-building with their Arab citizens as well as the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, both Christian and Muslim.)

     But the vast majority, alas, are too uninformed, or too apathetic, or too distracted, or too scared, to effectively question the policies of the Israeli government, media, and security apparatus.  For all their reputation of independence and intellectual vigor, they are too subservient to their own elite masters to influence much of anything.

*

     What, then, is the hypocrisy in four parts?

     Pretending to want peace and humanity, while nourishing their addictions to fear and war.


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In reference to point 4, here is an article which gives an idea of what the Israeli citizens-on-the-street have to deal with, and who runs their political campaigns as well as America's.