The contributions of Lewis Randa, Dot Walsh, and the Peace Abbey to the promotion of peace and social justice have been featured on engaging peace several times in the last few years. I am glad to report that these forces for good continue to speak truth to power.
Stay tuned for more information on the “Refuse the Order to Launch” rally in Natick, MA, August 27, 2017.
by Kathie MM
“Dementia is progressive loss of cognitive function, marked by memory problems and confused thinking.” Although Psychology Today claims that the “most common form of dementia is Alzheimer’s Disease, a fatal condition that affects more than 5 million Americans,” there are much more serious and more widespread forms of memory disorder with extremely high mortality rates.
I am referring here to the disease that John Dower labels “Memory Loss in the Garden of Violence: How Americans Remember (and Forget) Their Wars.” Dower attributes selective memory loss regarding the country’s role in deadly wars to “victim consciousness.”
To illustrate, he says: “Certain traumatic historical moments such as ‘the Alamo’ and ‘Pearl Harbor’ have become code words…for reinforcing the remembrance of American victimization at the hands of nefarious antagonists. Thomas Jefferson and his peers actually established the baseline for this in the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which enshrines recollection of ‘the merciless Indian Savages’ — a self-righteous demonization that turned out to be boilerplate for a succession of later perceived enemies. ‘September 11th’ has taken its place in this deep-seated invocation of violated innocence.”
In his powerful essay, Dower provides appalling evidence of U.S. “terror bombing” around the world. Regarding the Korean War, he quotes General Curtis LeMay, who acknowledges, “We burned down just about every city in North and South Korea both… We killed off over a million civilian Koreans and drove several million more from their homes…”
As for the infamous war in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), Dower comments, “’targeting’ everything that moved’ was virtually a mantra among U.S. fighting forces, a kind of password that legitimized indiscriminate slaughter.”
Dower also diagnoses the current symptoms of saber-rattling between the U.S. and North Korea, suggesting, “To Americans and much of the rest of the world, Kim Jong-un seems irrational, to say the least. Yet in rattling his miniscule nuclear quiver, he is really joining the long-established game of ‘nuclear deterrence,’ and practicing what is known among American strategists as the ‘madman theory’…. most famously associated with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger during the Vietnam War, but in fact. .. more or less imbedded in U.S. nuclear game plans.”
My prescription for treatment: Let’s work on developing an antidote to the dementia enshrouding the country’s military aggression and spreading symptoms of victimization and self-justifying heroism regarding its aggression—from the genocide of Native Americans in yesteryear to today’s bloody flag waving.
This is the third post in a series on Two Paths in the Woods by guest author Dr. Anthony Marsella.
A popular tactic used by “national security agencies” to neutralize critics does not involve directly interfering with an individual’s efforts to promote peace and social justice or to be a voice for moral actions.
Rather, these agencies simply collect and collate extensive information from surveillance, monitoring, and searching archives from distant years. At some point, if the critic becomes too “unbearable” to the agency, they simply begin the process of neutralization by releasing “offensive” information gleaned from many sources, and systematically destroying the critic’s character and moral standing.
All our lives involve sins of commission and omission. Some are apparent and well-known. Others may be buried in the privacy of the critic’s soul. But agencies intent on “neutralization” engage in building a systematic profile designed to destroy the words and ideas of the critic. This is done by using different cooperating sources to affirm their conclusion. Was this not what occurred in Nazi Germany, STASI East Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist USSR, North Korea – “Enemies of the State”?
Is this not what is happening in the USA and its allies today?
These destructive acts, whether done by a person, society, or nation, are equally violent and devastating, leaving scars on minds and bodies that are painful and memorable for the agony they have carried. We accuse, vilify, slander, denigrate, abuse, and malign individuals, groups, races, religions, nations, and the very planet on which we live through choices we make and utter each day. This is the way it begins! This is the root of hate and violence. This is the seemingly innocent path that leads so easily to broader acts of violence, destruction, killing, and war.
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii. Dr. Marsella’s essay was originally published by Transcend Media Service at https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/10/two-paths-in-the-wood-choice-of-life-or-war/ . We will publish excerpts from it intermittently over the next few months.
October 10 is World Day Against the Death Penalty, launched by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty in 2003.
Every year since 1997, first through an initiative from Italy and then from efforts of the European Union, the United Nations Commission of Human Rights (UNCHR) has approved a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions. The ultimate goal is an international ban on capital punishment.
In its 2007 resolution (62/149), the United Nations General Assembly, appealing to the General Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, reminded the world of the following points:
Amnesty International also takes on the death penalty, calling it “the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state.”
As indicated in the Amnesty International 2012 video at the beginning of this post, support for a moratorium has increased, but the United States joined such countries as China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Zimbabwe in opposing the non-binding moratorium resolution in the General Assembly’s rights committee.
This year, Maryland became the 18th U.S. state to abolish the death penalty.
Time for more states to join the odyssey.
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology