ANIMAL FARM REDUX
It appears that we are revisiting George Orwell's Animal Farm. You will recall in this story, the farm animals revolt and take over the farm. At first everybody pitches in and d0 their best to make the farm work, but before long the pigs gain control and take over not only the farm, but the lives and activities of all the other animals as well. As time progresses, the pigs increase their control, move into the farm house, and began to take on the behaviors, dress, and appearance of the humans they had helped oust. Before the story ends, it becomes impossible to tell the difference between the pigs now running the farm and the humans from whom it had been wrested.
Take a look at what's happening now in our so-called war on terror. We are busily engaged in a needless war in Iraq, killing as many Iraqis, not to mention Americans, as we can, destroying their infrastructure, putting their people out of work, invading their homes and killing their children. In addition, we've adopted the imprisonment and interrogation techniques of terrorism, locking up anybody at will without an pretense of cause and without any recourse to due process, subjecting them to tortures that throughout our history we have abhorred and refused to practice. At home we subject our own people to endless surveillance and suspicion and pervert political principles that have served us so well for over 200 years from tools of freedom to tools of oppression.
All of this makes me think we've taken a wrong turn and ourselves become the enemy we initially set out to overcome. We are a terrorist nation now. All other countries quake at the thought of what we might do to them if they thwart our interests, or if they even question why we're doing all the horrible things we do.
Take a look at what's happening now in our so-called war on terror. We are busily engaged in a needless war in Iraq, killing as many Iraqis, not to mention Americans, as we can, destroying their infrastructure, putting their people out of work, invading their homes and killing their children. In addition, we've adopted the imprisonment and interrogation techniques of terrorism, locking up anybody at will without an pretense of cause and without any recourse to due process, subjecting them to tortures that throughout our history we have abhorred and refused to practice. At home we subject our own people to endless surveillance and suspicion and pervert political principles that have served us so well for over 200 years from tools of freedom to tools of oppression.
All of this makes me think we've taken a wrong turn and ourselves become the enemy we initially set out to overcome. We are a terrorist nation now. All other countries quake at the thought of what we might do to them if they thwart our interests, or if they even question why we're doing all the horrible things we do.
posted by Jerry at 10:00 AM
1 Comments:
Jerry, I don't remember if Orwell indicated the inevitability of the piggish conversion, as long as the rest of us act as livestock to the business of government. The business of farming the citizenry is, much like most publicly held businesses, amoral, in that the officers duties are to the stock holders (savvy voters & contributors), rather than the clients or workers, and then no more than required to keep their work & money flowing past the profits tap.
Your articles struck true, it is too bad most citizens don't have more time to participate as other than livestock. (Time is money and life is much too short?)
Post a Comment
<< Home