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Bill Clinton treated terrorism as a criminal act. George Bush treats terrorism as the political act of war, sans a nation. Both as Commander-in-Chief have used violence in an attempt to end violence, not unlike all their predecessors. Terrorists view their actions as a religiously justifiable act, within their desire to create or rule a nation. Like the violence between Native American nations and European colonists, the “chief” within societal organizations find themselves tested by their use of, and their opinion of, violence. In fact, all of human history can be best understood by the moral tension that violence presents between leaders, frightened populaces and perceived enemies.
What can we make of these seemingly contradictory interpretations about our “good” violence and their “bad” violence and the differently nuanced responses to threats? The paradigm of violence and the motives behind it are not new or unique, and clearly the issues of violence and power have not been resolved in modern society any better than in ancient societies. The so-called “Enlightenment” was a failure in the attempt to bring a New World Order. Adults continue to indoctrinate their own youth into the need for, and virtue in, war. People believe themselves to be a victim long before they come to find themselves in war, and they see themselves as a victim long after their victory was won.
While conventional war is the collective effort of two societies focused on their mutual annihilation, the roots of terrorism and rebellion begin with individuals. Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber and Seung-Hui Cho were all loners, but they, too, were similarly possessed of a belief in their own “heroic compassion,” like their more “organized” rebel/terrorist counterparts. Somewhere in the back of their mind is a belief in a New World Order and a historical wrong that must be righted. However, their compassion has strict limits. They define both the innocent victim and the guilty criminal, and harshly judge them accordingly. While loners lack the organized conspiratorial nature of violence that a successful rebel group or an established military possess, their meticulous planning in killing and avenging is similar. Had they been more eloquent and personable, they could have created a following with others who share the same angry view of justice.
Killing people is easy, especially when you are in so much mental anguish that you want to kill yourself, too. The rise of domestic murder-suicides is part of the same human angst that spawns terrorism. While the goal may not be political power, undoubtedly a sense of personal power within the politics of the family is being reflected in these domestic tragedies. Workplace murder-suicides express the same paradigm of power and angst within the politics of work, just as the killings at Columbine and Virginia Tech reflect the political sensibilities of students within the political structure of the educational world. The content of the issues differs slightly, but not the method of violent reasoning. Violence follows the same emotion and logic paradigm from the simple act of a child bullying another child to the complex inter-related technicalities of the modern war-machine. The Crusades led by Popes, terror campaigns between Christians and Protestants, Muslims and Jews, and various ethnicities or economic classes against one another are all the same violence. The excuses change, but not the method of reasoning that leads to bloody conclusions.
The abundance of so much violence in history should give us pause, but it is a characteristic of violence and indoctrination that we become deadened to its horror and of our own participation in its cycle. All violence is justified as a response; the aggressor never sees themselves as the originator. As two sides exchange tit-for-tat it becomes impossible to clarify the history. Both sides have their own version of events, and they grow farther apart as time passes. Not even the victory of one over the other will kill the idea of the opponent’s history. The most ruthless will always be the victor, and that ruthlessness will seem to eventually confirm the loser’s account of history. Thus, a new victim is born with victory, and the slow cycle of revenge begins anew. History, however, has no wings. Ideas are carried from individual to individual across time.
Most violence comes from a sense of self-preservation or from compassion for others. The Iraqi War, for example, has been justified as both “pre-emptive” self-defense and to liberate a population enslaved by a tyrant. Every war, on both sides, usually contains these two justifications for action, even though they are self-contradictory. Preservation of self can never be compassion, since compassion is to put others before oneself. Compassion is to love one’s enemy, not to slay them. In a self-perpetuating vicious cycle, the response to violence uses the same contradictory logic as the reason for violence.
Every brief consensus on violence (war or rebellion) eventually weakens as the personal cost of violence grows. This sometimes takes hundreds of years. Internal political battles are a reflection of these two justifications colliding as the cost of self-preservation seems to become higher than the risk being avoided, and the limits of compassion meet the reality of changing others without changing oneself. Just as Americans question the Iraqi War, terrorist sympathizers come to question the strategy of terrorism, Nazis question Nazism and Communists question communism. While there may be fatigue with war, a particular strategy, or a specific leader, there is no fatigue in the belief in a New World Order. Hope and violence remain as co-equals, and the failure of victory is seen as a failure in execution and not as a failure in strategy. Violence is never repudiated as a self-defeating behavior in history books. Scripture documents repeatedly the consequences of war, yet that does not stop many religious from interpreting these examples as instructions rather than as warnings. Violence remains linked to compassion in the honors, words and codes of every established society on Earth. Naturally, the loner or impressionable youth also come to believe that some good will come out of their violence, too. That is the way they have been taught to understand history.
The crisis of today (however defined) and the need for violence in the face of a threat always has an echo in history. As mentioned previously, every culture has always had the same moral struggles. Every rebel that rises to the rank of General and gives birth to a new nation has his image emblazoned on the new currency. Washington is honored the same as Lenin, or Mao, in their respective countries, and the same as the Kings they overthrew. Regardless of how nations may suspiciously view one another, they are all more alike than different, and therein lies the problem. The splitting of hairs over nonsense has led to the splitting of the atom. With the end of hereditary monarchs, the possibility of peace through marriages has ended. Americans are afraid of a dirty bomb using the technology that they created. Many are trying to foster a confrontation with Iran based on the idea that they should not have the same weapons we do. We want our violence to be uninhibited, and are behaving exactly as the British did in colonial times. We put more effort into disarming others than in understanding why both sides are armed.
Mount Rushmore has its equivalent in the carving of Crazy Horse seventeen miles away, just as Buddhist monks honored themselves in the mountains of Afghanistan centuries ago. Pharaohs built pyramids, Louis built Versailles and Washington built Washington D.C., all with the praise and tender love of their followers. These leaders are remembered as great in victory or defeat using a standard that violence has virtue. Why then should the terrorist or the troubled loner avoid violence? The path to glory and change seems to be through the use of violence. Even Thoreau praised John Brown for his attack at Harper’s Ferry. The best way to get into a parade is to support or engage in violence. People are proud of the clever ruthlessness that brought them victory, and since that is all they have to celebrate, that is what they celebrate. The American Civil War is remembered for the good of ending slavery, and not for the damage it caused or the failure of democracy that it represents.
In killing, the terrorist thinks he is winning and achieving greatness. Rather than seeing his suicide as a personal tragedy, his victims seek revenge, thus taking what is a terrible event and re-invigorating it and affirming that it was a “great” event. Treating terrorism as a crime was silly. Terrorism is a political act, but it is not an act born from deep political thought. It is the result of indoctrination and interpretation of the hypocrisy of power. Politics is a general term referring to any social interaction amongst a group of people. When the weak attack the powerful, the powerful return their wrath ten-fold. The powerful have no self-restraint; that is how they came to acquire their power.
Violence needs to be recognized as a sinful act, not as heroic. The deaths of six million Jews in the Holocaust was only possible because they refused to engage in sinful behaviors. They died with their virtue intact, and left war and greed and power to the ruthless and frightened. Many Native Americans undoubtedly died with their virtue intact. They converted to Christianity on the words of the missionaries, and fell at the hands of the hypocrites that followed behind them. Of those that did not convert, they lived and died by the same sword they picked up, the same as suicide terrorists. The difference between the American genocide and the European genocide is simply the technology and record-keeping involved. We have photography and movies from the 1940’s, rather than stories, but the same tale has been told many times before in many places, only the faces change. Fear and pride is behind every clash in history.
The two most famous victims of violence are Socrates and Jesus Christ. While Socrates is generally remembered for his reason and logic, he would be more properly remembered for his virtue. It was virtue that he was trying to teach, not reason, the same as Jesus Christ. Wealth and political power were not their goal, but the same New World Order of peace and plenty that others seek through violence was their hope, too. Their intellectual significance is that they knew the only possible working strategy for mankind was through virtue. The tangled legalisms of “rules of war,” rights, property, and justice that ambitious hypocrites make in the corridors of power are no equal to the simple wisdom embodied in the concept of mercy. Only someone who is not afraid can be merciful. Without courage and faith one cannot be virtuous. Reason and humanitarianism are based on reciprocity, not virtue.
If we are ruthless, then we will live in a ruthless world. If we are merciful, then we will live in a merciful world. The choice is ours. The terrorists are controlled by their anger and angst and pride. It is a mental health problem that they suffer, but it is not one that is unique to themselves. They are an extreme representation of ourselves. The battle between virtue and violence continues. Ruthlessness has a thousand faces, but it is best known by “business as usual.” The oppressive status quo is authored by those who claim the sword is mightier than the word, or that the ends will justify the means. They will eventually fail. The question is only how long will it take before they will admit their failure to themselves. The mirror is a treacherous place, but when we can see our own faults as clearly as we can see the faults in others, then the mirror is our redemption.
Liberty cannot be found by following in the footsteps of violent men whose images adorn money. It is money itself that man must destroy if he wishes to be free. A Jubilee would heal our wounds, but a New World Order actually requires a new understanding of the role of money. Money is at the source of all our stress, and the indoctrinated habit of thinking money is “real” is a falsity. Money is an abstract idea, and the conversion of goods and labor into currency creates far more problems than it solves. A central bank that coins money, distributes money, and then collects the same back money in taxes, enslaves everyone to an intellectual absurdity. What makes an Empire is not the person who leads it, or how he comes to power, but the organization structure of cooperation that money represents. The US Constitution re-established the same empire that had just been overthrown. With the same mechanics in place, the same results will inevitably follow.
Besides recognizing the paradigm behind violent choices, we should also recognize that terrorism (and war generally) is about Trade. The current political climate is a battle between Red States (food producers,) Blue States (money exchangers,) and Black States (energy producers.) No one seeks to trade evenly; everyone seeks to profit in every exchange. The wisdom of the shrewd, rich, powerful and violent is sought and followed and embodied in law, and the wisdom of the virtuous has long been ignored. Will today be any different?
A terrorist sees in his mirror what he wants to see. What do you see? Long before you were educated you were indoctrinated. If you want to see a New World Order, then you must see the world in a new way, including yourself.
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