There are some laws which everyone, no matter how powerful, no matter their nationality, must obey. I’m thinking of the laws of physics: gravity, the laws of thermodynamics and the like. No one gets a pass, at least not for long, not without exacting a price. Yes, we can fly to the moon, but it takes an enormous amount of energy to slip these surly bonds of earth, and we always come back.
There are similar laws which operate on the metaphysical plane--I call them spiritual laws but for the non-religious, how about “Eternal Laws.” Just as no one escapes the laws of gravity and thermodynamics, no one escapes Eternal Laws, either.
Religious texts of all faiths are full of them, and they serve as both a warning and guide to those of us here on earth. They know no nationality or creed but instead are truly universal. Just as the laws of gravity apply equally to a child on a playground or a multibillion-dollar rocket aimed at the moon, so do these Eternal Laws apply to great nations and individuals alike.
One of these is the Law of Karma. In the Judeo-Christian tradition this law is expressed as “the sins of the father.” There are dozens of verses in the Old and New Testament expressing the idea that what goes around, comes around. For example, from Numbers 14:18:
‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’
I repeat: No one gets a pass, at least not for long, not without exacting a price.
A related law is the Law of Truth. Nothing remains secret forever. Eventually the truth is revealed, if not today or tomorrow, then in a year, 10 years, 50 years. In the New Testament we see this expressed in Luke 8:17:
For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.
There are similar ideas in the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and other religious texts. In short: Repent ye sinners or pay the price. The longer you wait, the worse it will be.
America has been dodging Eternal Laws. We are wont to do this every now and then, for example our failure to atone for our genocide of native peoples. Little surprise that these chickens came home to roost in 1973. We have a lot of karmic debt which has gone unpaid, and the interest is adding up.
The latest is our reluctance to address the biggest moral failing this nation has faced since the days of slavery. We have swept our rush to war under the rug, ignored our imprisonment and torture of hundreds of innocent people. We have refused to acknowledge the use of ginned up confessions to justify our slaughter in a foreign land. We have chosen to believe that the shredding of civil liberties here at home is necessary in the interest of “national security” because we are emotionally lazy and perhaps still a little shell-shocked.
This week a new revelation popped up and, surprise surprise, we slapped it away. It came in the form of this story:
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.
These people were tortured. They were labeled “the worst of the worst.” They were in legal limbo, denied contact with their families, lawyers, etc. And did I mention they were tortured?
So far a Google News search of “Wilkerson, Guantanamo, Bush, Cheney” has revealed nothing from our mainstream national media on this story. Lefty blogs, Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic, foreign media like Arab News and Asian Tribune have covered it. CNN, the Associated Press, New York Times? Not so much.
So it appears our media is reluctant to look under that rock. Our government, of course, has refused to look into the sins of the past administration. And our church leaders? The Catholic Church is too busy dealing with the consequences of its own failure to adhere to the Law of Truth. Lefty evangelical Jim Wallis is doing battle with clown Glenn Beck right now; he has chosen a media circus sideshow over addressing a true moral dilemma.
So here we are.
We need a national accountability moment, a “time of repentance” if you will, where all is revealed once and for all. Will we get it? Yes, of course we will: it’s an Eternal Law that this moment will come. The question is, will that time be of our choosing or the universe’s? The universe is a harsh task mistress. It would be better for us to address this issue ourselves. But if we don’t have the courage, well, there are universal laws at play here. The debt will be paid -- with interest.
Eventually.
Eloquently said, Mrs. Beale.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most frequently aired right wing complaints about Barack Obama -- one which actually isn't true -- is that "he went over there and apologized to them."
ReplyDeleteIt's a tenet of American Chauvinism, or blowhard patriotism, if you prefer, that we never have done anything we need be ashamed of and if you think so, God help you.
It's not just collective amnesia, it's pathological and it seems permanent.
I'm a great believer in karmic payback. I think the energy of the universe is greatly affected by negative actions and eventually it will move to correct.
ReplyDeleteAnd by our silence and lack of action, we will be deemed as culpable as the next guy (or gal).
I'm sure that there were many Japanese and Germans who did not support the actions of their government but they suffered the same consequences.
Perhaps it is time for us to take it back to the streets and become the "drooling left wing screamers" or whatever silly description the right has for us now. Time to yell and shout and demand that transparency we heard so much about and also demand the perpetrators be held responsible for their actions. They claimed to represent us and they did not. But we kept silent - THAT is our sin.
Thanks for bringing this to everyone's (well, everyone in The Zone) attention, SoBe.
ReplyDeleteI'm not at all surprised to learn that Bush and his cronies knew of innocence of Guantanamo's prisoners. How could it be otherwise? They issued orders to almost indiscriminately scoop off the streets random men in far-away countries, under a grave suspicion of being brown... I mean, terrists, and transport them to a permanent gulag without any chance for due process. (That's one of the ways in which we spread freedom and democracy around the globe, btw.)
The whole "war on terror" is one of the greatest and most shameful political scams perpetrated on the American people (and the world as well), with the usual suspects at the helm and benefiting handsomely from their scheme. It will be long decades before we have a coherent and reliable accounting of these machinations. It may not happen in our lifetime, however.
SoBe,
ReplyDeleteSometime in the late 1970s, the eminent political scientist, Theodore Lowi, wrote a ‘themed’ college textbook called, American Government: Incomplete Conquest, from a unique perspective. He posited that all governments, no matter how enlightened or humanitarian in principle or practice, have a 'primordial mean streak' as he called it. During times of war or national emergency, any government will suspend and/or violate its own laws and Constitution when survival is at stake. Lowi cites the suspension of habeas corpus, the forced internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, and the concept of eminent domain … all violations of Constitutional Law and basic human rights … as examples. Looking for more recent evidence? Perhaps we need look no further than our government’s response to 9/11 and the immediate aftermath: Preemptive war in Iraq, extreme rendition, waterboarding, and Guantánamo.
I mention Lowi’s premise, not to dismiss our misdeeds or to exonerate the Bush administration, but to understand a fundamental property of government. And if we find it incomprehensible that Obama is unable to eliminate these abuses as easily as one flicks a light switch on or off, it is because this aspect of government is pervasive and systemic. Furthermore, the nature of sovereignty is such that government feels no guilt pangs for past misdeeds. Some sobering thoughts.
I should mention that Lowi approaches this argument not from the conservative side of academia but from the most liberal quarter.
Interesting, Octopus. I'd take Lowi's idea one step further and suggest that "mean streak" is not exclusive to governments but to us all. It's human nature, and governments are a human construct after all, so it makes sense.
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