Saturday, October 3, 2009
Today should be, by rights, a quiet Saturday.
Instead my nerves were just destroyed by a jet passing overhead.
This is part of an event which is euphemistically called an “air show”.
This is not an air show but a show of military might, part of a broader propaganda program designed to convince ordinary people that wars are waged in their defense and for noble reasons.
The truth is that what we have here is a display of weapons of truly mass destruction. To say that airplanes are not weapons but merely the means by which weapons are “delivered” is a cowardly evasion. The delivery of bombs is not like the delivery of a letter from your sister or mother. It is the delivery of death, destruction, and suffering.
We should stop kidding ourselves. Technology is wonderful, but the uses to which technology is put are rarely as wonderful as the promises of marketing and advertising agencies and the politicians whose life styles are deeply entwined with those dubious businesses.
after-thought
The key point, as I think of it now, should be that
these machines are primarily used to kill civilians. That was true in Europe and Japan during World War Two.
It was probably so in Korea as well, and in Vietnam.
And then there is the case of Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and even Palestine.....
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