Few thoughts:
1) We create these grisly images often in war.
I was a war hawk on Afghanistan and Iraq because in the first case I thought the training that enabled 9/11 happened there; and in the second case because I thought that the attack happened in the first place because America had lost credibility not just since it chose to lose the Vietnam War, but also because Saddam Hussein had been more or less mocking us publicly for the better part of a decade. We knew he wanted nukes, and that he planned to make them. He admitted when we caught him that had we not invaded, he would have started the program up again–and as far as that goes, he did have a secret program which was transferred to Syria according to high level and credible sources which have been completely ignored by our complicit media. This is why the Syrians had a nuclear weapons program which the Israelis attacked. This is where Assad–if he has chemical weapons–likely got them.
Still, people have their heads cut off. They are cremated alive. They are blown to bits. Every condition of death is present in an average war that was seen in all the Saw movies. The only thing lacking is the specific intentionality, even though the broad outlines of what will happen are clear enough.
Watch these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atM2srk9qm8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvEvzr_T8RQ
Does this not frighten you just a bit? The ease and emotional distance from which men’s lives can be ended? They may all have been evil human beings, but I suspect they were operating from a sense of loyalty to their families and clans and religion. Why are we flying those gunships on the other side of the planet? Why are we killing them?
This point assume particular importance when we consider that there were clearly coconspirators in the 9/11 attacks. I will post again my treatment of Tower 7: https://moderatesunitedblog.com//2010/10/plausible-911-conspiracy-theory.html
To this I will add that if Islamic terrorists were able to place bombs in Tower 7, then why didn’t they blow it first, when it was full of people? If they placed bombs in Towers 1 and 2–and the official investigators on their own admission never tested for bomb/thermite residue–then, again, why not blow them? Why bother with the planes?
My answer is that the people who engineered these attacks wanted strong, valuable propaganda. They wanted a casus belli that virtually everyone would support because of the images presented on our TV screens. It was not mistake that there was a delay in the plane strikes. In my view, United 93 was supposed to hit just after the first plane. That is why top New York officials reported explosions. They were timed to go off just after the plane hit Tower 7.
To this DAY, this very day, this very war with Syria, the memory of 9/11 enables the call to war to assume stronger resonance than it otherwise would have. It makes for extraordinarily strong propaganda. It seduces people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who also are supporting the NSA’s development of an Orwellian surveillance state.
And of course the Puppeteers long ago put their strings into the Left, who oppose any war that could conceivably be in our national interest, and here astonishly support the Syrian War perhaps precisely because it is unnecessary and stupid. Mostly, they do what they are told. Surrendering the capacity for moral reasoning is the initiatory rite to join that gang.
To be clear, I have many friends in the military. I used to work out with an Air Force officer 3-4 times a week. I value this nation, and understand that evil exists in the world.
All the same, we spend more on national defense than most of the rest of the world put together. Why? Is China an existential threat? Are “Allahu Akbar”-chanting fiends going to be stopped with aircraft carriers? And how many of them are there, really? Given that the NSA can see everything, virtually, it is quite possible to limit the organizational possibilities of terrorists, and finish up what is left with HumInt.
We need to wage wars which actually concern clear and present threats to America. There are none at the present, although the nuclear weapons capability of the North Koreans will qualify if and when they figure out how to get nukes across the Pacific.
How STRANGE is it that Obama talks incessantly about Syria, and yet said NOTHING when a power which for all we knew might have been capable of it was threatening a nuclear strike on three of our biggest cities?
I feel like the scales have dropped from my eyes with this Syria issue. Never have I seen more clearly how patently CONTROLLABLE our complicit media is, and how miraculous it is that ANY alternative accounts make it anywhere into the public sphere.
With regard to Iran, here is an idea: fly high level aircraft, drones, or even balloons–this is a technical problem, but the very fact that the logistics can be worked out adds to its power–over major metropolitan areas and drop leaflets which read: “if your nation ever launches a nuclear attack on any other nation, you will die. This leaflet is within the blast radius of the weapons we will respond with.” I think that message is clear enough.
2) Saw VII more or less completes the recurring theme of encounters with death being therapeutic. John Cramer, to be clear, killed many innocent people in the pursuit of his “lessons”, but I think this theme itself is relevant and important.
In many traditional societies, rites of passage are quite dangerous and harrowing. To this day many people die in Africa from infections from circumcisions that are a part of these rites. Here is one link.
Over and above their higher testosterone levels and lower social IQ’s, I think one of the reasons men crave war is they value the transcendence that becomes possible with facing the worst situations possible and overcoming them. They crave that dying and being born again experience. That is what the Marine Corps, as one example, delivers. Most, perhaps all, Marines can tell you the day they were “born again” as Marines.
For women, giving birth serves this purpose. I would even argue that the monthly process of menstruation has a bit of this element as well.
Virtually all traditional cultures have some conception of, and place value on, the process of dying and being reborn. We need that. This is why CrossFit is so big. It is why the Tough Mudders, and Spartan Race and other such extreme events exist.
OK. I feel better. I may pull my actual list of notes out tomorrow and do some serious writing. We’ll see. Please ponder all this carefully. These are in my view important and deep thoughts, even if some of them are repetitions in new words of ideas I have spoken of often.
Actually, think about this, too: every heartbeat is a little bit different. Every breath is a little bit different. When you look at an EKG, what you do not see is mechanical precision. You see patterns that repeat themselves endlessly, but always in very slightly different ways. This is the nature of life, and part of the skill in living it is to see the new in the old–as well as the old in the new.
Stay awake, as well as you can.