I had one of those odd, dysfunctional moments on Saturday morning that leaves you shaking your head at the strangeness of being human. I have recently obtained a volunteer position at the Laurel Hills Country Club. I am a sort of “floater” who will take the place of those people who need time off from their assigned duties. Saturday my tour of duty was to be Course Marshall, my responsibilities being to keep the golfers moving at a constant pace, to police the grounds for trash, to check the water stations and bathroom, and to be a general ambassador of goodwill.
This is not a cheap place to play golf. A round is a couple of dollars short of a hundred dollar bill to play. I volunteer here because the benefit is that I get to play free golf, something I would otherwise not be able to do, being retired and of modest economic circumstances.
As I watched group after group tee off and move down the fairway, I was suddenly struck with the surreal quality of life on this planet on this Saturday morning. As rich men (and a few women) were enjoying a beautiful Virginia morning, smoking expensive cigars and toting hundreds of dollars of golf equipment in their carts, halfway around the world men and women were cringing in fear as yet another volley of missiles rained down upon their city in the Middle East. The thought occurred to me of how well-off we are in this country, while at the same time, our foreign policy has reduced a number of cities in the Middle East into unlivable piles of rubble. Where there used to be beauty, there is now ugliness. In countries where Christians and Muslims lived together and for the most part, got along (mostly because men like Saddam let people know that if they started trouble, he would finish it, and in a none-too-pleasant manner), now Christians flee for their lives and Sunni and Shia Muslims routinely kill each other.
I found myself thinking how odd it is that we so easily compartmentalize the suffering of other human beings so that we can pursue the things that please and entertain us without a qualm of conscience. I wonder if, at the precise moment they were teeing off to spend a day amusing themselves, any of these golfers gave thought of the fear that the Syrian people must have been feeling. You see, I have this bizarre belief that in a really humane world, a world run as God intended it to be, the suffering of even one person would be enough to stop things until the unjust situation was made right. Maybe I take this Jesus thing about “loving your neighbor” and caring for people a bit too far. Or maybe I’m just a silly little pollyannaish fool in a world that is ruled by self-concern and the use of force.
But perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on those who were just seeking to have a morning’s rest from the rigors of their week. After all, we are treated to a mind-numbing myriad of lies regarding the situation and politics in the Middle East. Lies so well-crafted that they make us comfortable in our complacency, and less than sympathetic to those who live in any country other than America.
Lies that began with George W. Bush’s standing on the ruins of the Twin Towers in NYC and stating to those watching on TV: “I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” He then proceeded to declare war on Iraq, which had absolutely NOTHING to do with the men who were one the planes that took down the towers in NYC. For a couple of years, I listened to right-wing blowhards on talk radio, men such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin, carry on about how just and holy this war was because “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.” After the passage of a couple of years, those of us who were paying attention began to notice this tune slowly changing. No longer were we being treated to a constantly litany of horror stories regarding supposed WMDs poised to kill us all. Now the justification, the drumbeat for continued war in Iraq, the righteous anger we were supposed to feel, was that Saddam was a horrid little turd of a dictator who killed his own people, therefore we should kill him and take over the country. The same justification was made to invade Libya. We were told that Gaddafi was another bloodthirsty character of bestial behavior. The truth of the matter is considerably different.
To some of us, this latest exciting military adventure in Syria by our government has the same smell of rotten fish.
Prior to last night’s attack, number of people urged President Trump to not bomb Syria without hard evidence of wrongdoing. He ignored them. I hate to admit this, but I have come to a point in my life that I am ashamed to be an American. From the beginning of this country, in which black people were kidnapped and enslaved, to our present government-sanctioned murder of the unborn, the government our country has a most unsavory history for anyone with even half a conscience. How do you defend lying to the Native Americans, stealing their land, massacring innocent women and children, and the overall genocidal actions taken against the Indian peoples, often done with the aid of our government? Catholics in this country fared little better. My own great-great grandfather changed his last name from O’Hara to Hara because living in New England and being Irish meant severe discrimination. No one in the government raised a finger to oppose this discrimination.
Our history books do not tell the story of the Ludlow Mine Massacre. In the 2oth century, government troops constantly took the side of rich corporate owners against men who were striking for safe working conditions and better hours and pay.
Sitting in a golf cart overlooking the fourth tee, my thoughts kept returning to the events in Syria. Now we are being told by our not-to-be-trusted-at-all lying media that these were “surgical strikes” which did not kill civilians. Just hearing this makes my bullshit meter go wild. I have a deep feeling that somewhere down the road we will find out that these “surgical strikes” were less than so, and that numerous innocent civilians paid the ultimate price for whatever it is our government wants to extract from Syria.
In other words, there are lies, damn lies, and United States government lies.
Muddling Through Life 