Of rats and humanity (Steinbeck not included)

The award for best rebuttal of disproportionate stupidity this month goes to Maximilian Forte (aka Dr. Max Rat) at Open Anthropology. I'm not even going to summarize his recent encounter with ignorance; it has to be read in full. Read it now. Seriously.

Upon reading his post I was once again brought back to the awkward time- and culture-warp experience I deal with every time I return Stateside. I find the "us" and "them" justification of horrors against humanity to be particularly severe in my home country. Infuriatingly so. In the "war" in Iraq as in Afghanistan, it is impossible to throw around the word "terrorist" without feeling hypocritical. And yet the labels are taken for granted across all sectors of society. "We" are ultimately right: you can tell, because we have the military power to back it up. "They" are absolutely wrong: you can tell by the color of their skin and, let's face it, they're just not like us.

The truth is that we are all rats for the way we treat other human beings and the way that we allow them to be treated (more often than not on the basis of an arbitrary hierarchy of superiority). A world without borders will never exist, not because of geography, but because of humanity's repugnance towards itself.

The highlights of this eloquent and brilliant post (aside from the strong desire the interchange induces to bang your head against a brick wall) are the following obvious facts that warmongers and liberals alike are consistently afraid to admit:

1. "Salam murdered a foreign occupier." and "Salam got murdered in his own country by foreign occupiers."

2. "If you don’t like it, then stay the fuck out of Afghanistan, and you won’t get killed."

Not bad for a rat cowering in an ivory tower, eh?

In other news, Google truly is the key to understanding humankind; namely, how amazing it is that people have managed to maintain their stewardship of the planet for so long. In other words: "We. Are. Doomed." Check out these suggested search results based on keyword requests in Google:



[from Gizmodo]

I like when people ask me why I'm an anthropologist and what insight my research on the Internet could possibly provide in understanding human society. It's priceless!



Add to del.icio.us

Tweet

All the news that's fit to contrive

Every day, I browse the news several times on various sites and, more often than not, cringe helplessly at what I read. "Journalistic truth" is some subset of reality to which I do not hold the decoder ring. What makes me most angry is that the perspectives of major news agencies and media outlets (even those said to be liberal and leftist) perpetuate an egotistical, xenophobic and ignorant approach to both world affairs and domestic issues. The US is not alone in this despicable behavior - it is almost universal.

When I found this rant by Maximilian Forte on Open Anthropology, I was thrilled that someone else notices what I see. I'm sick of being called a Euroliberal when I'm Stateside because I criticize the way that Israel, Palestine, Muslims and America are portrayed on the nightly news.

This deserves to be quoted:

So THE WORLD trembles with love at the mere mention of “Obama,” while all those who oppose Israeli genocide and demonstrated against it were “Muslims.” In the meantime, the only real threat to peace is Hamas, and its bottle rockets. Palestinians, not being white, European, privileged allies of the U.S., unlike Israelis, are less than human, and less than important, except as “obstacles.” All that Israel ever does is respond and get provoked, it never initiates — a pristine white victim of irrational brown people, you can almost hear its maiden-like screams across the white Atlantic.

With “reporting” like this, the media will keep anthropologists in business for a long time to come, as we try to clean up the damage they cause in creating a deranged culture of war and hatred. And it is hatred, a subtle, insidious, and racist hatred that motivates and encourages AP to write the kind of articles about Gaza as it has.

In the meantime, as the message sinks in deeper that anyone who protests is a Muslim, or Jew hater, is it a wonder that some militaristic knuckleheads appear on this blog to insinuate that the author is somehow pro-Taliban, Taliban-leaning, or a Taliban sympathizer? It is a world of bleak ignorance, and self-destructive war lust that these people live in. If only they could live on another planet, and leave this one to humanity."

I agree wholeheartedly; except that perhaps it is humanity that should be left to this spent planet, while the rest of us move along to somewhere with less smog.



Add to del.icio.us

Tweet