davydog

“Horror is the law of the world of living creatures, and civilization is concerned with masking that truth. Literature and art refine and beautify, and if they were to depict reality naked, just as everyone suspects it is (although we defend ourselves against that knowledge), no one would be able to stand it. Western Europe can be accused of the deceit of civilization.”
- Czeslaw Milosz, Milosz’s ABC’s, p. 39

Malibu Barbie^®?
I lied.
Malibu Ken^®, Skipper^®, PJ^® and Christie^®?
I lied.
Sunsational Malibu Barbie^® with “mod” cousin Fran^®?
I lied.
Sun Lovin’ Malibu Barbie^® with a peekaboo tan?
I lied.
I lie daily.

Fw: Something for our troops
from Virginia.X@yahoo.com
to [List Suppressed]
date Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 5:00 PM
subject Fw: Something for our troops

On Mon, 12/1/08, Carol.X@gmail.com wrote:

From: Carol.X@gmail.com
Subject: Something for our troops
To: [List Suppressed]
Date: Monday, December 1, 2008, 8:06 AM
Please do this - if you have kids or grandkids - have them do it too. Great as a classroom project and have your co-workers get in on this.

*Something cool that Xerox is doing*

If you go to this web site, www.LetsSayThanks.com you can pick out a thank you card and Xerox will print it and it will be sent to a soldier that is currently serving in Iraq. You can’t pick out who gets it, but it will go to a member of the armed services.

How AMAZING it would be if we could get everyone we know to send one!!! This is a great site. Please send a card. It is FREE and it only takes a second.

A Killer Dies Daily

A long time ago, in a land far away, Paul (“Apostle to the Gentiles”; formerly “Saul of Tarsus”) reportedly uttered these words: “I die daily.” A short time earlier (in his “Saul” days) he could’ve claimed “I kill daily” with equal conviction. That’s because the Saul version of Paul was a religious zealot and notorious persecutor of “Christians,” followers of a new religious cult. Saul became Paul while traveling “on the road to Damascus,” presumably to mercilessly hound more Christians. On that journey, he suddenly was struck blind while a voice from the heavens instructed him in the error of his ways. Paul regained his sight, converted to Christianity, and would become a martyr for the new religious sect.

A couple of millennia have intervened since that time. Today finds humanity stumbling towards the conclusion of our first decade into the 21st Century. Debate, much of it gibberish, over what Paul actually meant by “I die daily” continues. Western religious zealots might twist and contort one meaning from the phrase, while Eastern mystics might “enter Zen” with another. Perhaps Paul’s truth remains elusive, but I suspect there is a truth more pertinent to our time: “I lie daily.”

“The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”
- George Orwell: “In Front of Your Nose”

The Banality Of Evil

As with its siblings like deceit, deception, disinformation, evasion, falsification, fraudulence, mendacity, prevarication, and every other manner of untruth, the lie is the most profound of sins. At its core, it becomes the worst evil. Lies often even trump murder, which is fundamentally the product of untruth. Yet one of the truest statements any of us could make is “I lie daily.” So why do we do it?

Evolutionary biologist, Robert Trivers, deals with this paradox by explaining how “deceit is fundamental to animal communication,” while theorizing that “strong selection to spot deception” necessitates “a degree of self-deception” to ensure a species’ survival. In plain language this means you have to lie to yourself to get along in life. More often than not your ability to mask what you really feel to the extent that you avoid its conscious detection determines your success–or failure–to stay married to your spouse, hold down your job, get along with friends, and so on. “In the struggle for life,” writes John Gray in Straw Dogs “taste for truth is a luxury–or else a disability.”

Yet self-deception, as George Orwell reminds us, can often lead to catastrophe. Continued clinging to a delusion sucked dry of any useful value, yet retaining its destructive potency, is where the lie’s worst demons lurk. With this understanding, we can now examine the email message I received from my step-mom a couple of days ago (reproduced above, with slight edits to actual email addresses). Its subject line, “Fw: Something for our troops,” immediately identified it as probable chain mail spam advocating for one flag-waving agenda or another. Dutiful step-child that I am, I opened it anyway to peek at any “support our troops” fraudulence likely to lurk inside.

The email itself is a revealing case study of early-21st Century Americana. With the American economy quickly sinking into Great Depression II: The Famine Follies, the current violence our Pentagon is perpetrating on the other side of the world has been pushed to the back burner in most of our citizens’ minds. Thus Xerox Corporation leaps to the rescue with a valuable tool to assuage any lingering wisps of guilt we might feel due to our flagging interest in the “sacrifices” our “brave troops” make daily on foreign battlefields. Best of all, this “AMAZING” service is, like, totally “FREE” and “only takes a second.” Like, wouldn’t it great if we could all totally “get everyone we know to send one!!!”?

To be fair, there is evidence Xerox’s “Let’s Say Thanks℠” (a phrase for which the company actually obtained a service mark) public relations campaign has resulted in actual smiles appearing on the faces of a few bona fide members of the U.S. armed forces. And the art Xerox procured from lots of highly-creative youngsters truly is heartwarming. Perhaps this is enough to make this kind of corporate/citizen “partnership” worthwhile. At least the kids seem to demonstrate genuine sincerity through their drawings.

Triumph Of The Swill

But as a former Army brat, not to mention my own brief stint in the U.S. Air Force, I’m blessed with a bit of insight into potential attitudes many of our “brave soldiers” might harbor towards Xerox’s publicity stunt. I did my “duty to my country” in the late-’70s. Although the cold war still raged, the United States had abandoned its quest for glory in Vietnam earlier that decade. The only real combat I saw was my nightly battle against sobriety, skirmishes I handily won through my skillful command with the art of swill. Close quarters armaments were my constant companions: Budweiser, Schlitz, Boone’s Farm (the Cheez Whiz of wines) and similar weaponry available to Airmen and Airwomen suffering military purgatory at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota.

Attempting to get some clarity on this issue, I momentarily set aside whatever personal skepticism I have over ersatz flag-waving from multinational corporations to search through my dimming memory banks for clues as to what some of today’s soldiers might think. Many of the old-timers I’d known “back in the day” were enlistees who actually had seen combat (in Vietnam). A good number of them stood at “eternal vigilance” for retelling an old war story or cracking another “dead baby joke.” What might have these combat veterans thought about similar facile PR efforts by a Pentagon contractor, doing business in the combat zone, to cheer up American combatants during that earlier conflict?

Based on the handful of reflections I’m still able to conjure up, I can’t help but think that many of the soldiers from yesteryear would’ve quickly identified the underlying insincerity of this kind of public/corporate feel-good mendacity. Of course, my experience inside the United States armed forces culture has aged roughly three decades, and I’ll certainly admit that I’m not ready for another eight year “repeat” of that cultural experience. It’s also my understanding that the U.S. military culture has gone through significant changes in the intervening years. Even so, it’s hard for me to imagine that a significant portion of today’s enlistees, particularly those serving in a combat zone, wouldn’t harbor similar suspicions in reaction to superficial platitudes dreamed up by the flag waving, yellow ribbon bumper sticker-brandishing jingoists of our time.

“Sane perception INDUCES sane choosing.”
- A Course In Miracles

America’s Own Road To Damascus

Can we ever hope for a possible antidote to Our Daily Lie? Are Americans incapable of partaking in any process beyond that which is “FREE” and “only takes a second”? Even if it’s to save America’s “soul”? As we continue to stumble deeper into the 21st Century, might Americans benefit from our own “message from providence”? Would an honest, comprehensive and multi-year truth and reconciliation process become our heaven-sent message?

If we focused on spelling out exactly how and why our nation’s so-called political and military “leadership” criminally conspired to thrust our troops into harm’s way, might this process more honorably serve their best interests? We might also look into why our war machine’s cheerleaders from this country’s major media actively sold this crime against peace to the American people, and why We The People bought such devilry by the bushel.

This painful process will not come cheap, easy or corporate-sponsored. But it might help set us free. Afterward we can ask the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to specify what we owe them for war reparations, while we sincerely beg forgiveness for the horrors we’ve visited upon their homelands.