Looting and burning in Baghdad isn’t a whole lot different than chaos in Los Angeles over the Rodney King affair, and the result is the same — barbaric people showing that they are neither fit to self-govern nor able to control themselves. Laws are not made for law-abiding souls, but for the lawless, which appears to constitute a very large percentage of the human population of our planet.
A year or so ago, some kind of ballgame involving the University of Tucson (I’m not a sports fan) triggered blocks of student and bystander rioting and looting, resulting in a number of arrests. Major cities in the U.S. have to put police on “high alert” not for foreign terrorists, but for the resident population, many of whom appear to be normal until the mob mentality takes hold of them. This phenomenon occurs when there is some major sports event — a semi-final or championship game or a game between rival cities, or anything that gives people the feeling that they can just let go and become anarchists-at-large.
This lack of self-discipline, self-control and respect for the rights of others (in the much-touted “free” United States of America, some banana republic or an oil-rich emirate of oppressed serfs to the ruling sheiks) results in a cry for law and order by whoever is able to impose it and maintain it. The people suffer at the hands of tyrants, and when liberated, suffer at the hands of one another.
What is even worse is that the various societies in which these anarchistic looting and pillaging sprees occur seem willing to put up with dealing out minimum fines and penalties for the wrongdoers. They all had a bad childhood, were molested by a deviant clergyman, had a mean mother or just weren’t given a chance in life because they were born into a victim class.
Lame, Mame … don’t shove that excuse at me. Back in the mid-fifties, when I was at UCLA, a pal gave me an ashtray for a present — just because the Steig cartoon painted on it showed a pouting man sitting in a box, and the inscription read “people are no damned good.” This happened to be so much my view that the item was given to me as the ultimate statement of my attitude toward people and thus I could keep it as a plaque. And indeed I did keep it for many years, until I became a Christian in my thirties. I really have made a very serious effort to overcome this jaded view of people. I make a little bit of progress, and then reading the news blows it away. There’s this overwhelming desire to slap the crap out of people! I could and maybe should spend the rest of my life repenting — but it wouldn’t change my viewpoint.
Then along comes a strong man and takes control. The people listen to him because they view him as a leader and surrender to him the power that belongs to a free people because free people without any brains cannot and will not willingly behave as if they were civilized. So along comes a tyrant and the next thing the people know is, that rather than being just organized and kept orderly, they’ve been placed into oppression. The tyrant is no different, just more clever at manipulating the weaknesses of the masses.
Tyrants, too, are no blasted good.
The Iraqi people have doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, hospital technicians, computer programmers, journalists and many professionals of all types. Then they have the rabble, quite like Los Angeles, Detroit, Tucson, Phoenix, San Francisco, Chicago and other large US cities. Yes, the Muslim faith is very different than the Christian faith. Iraq is not a “Muslim” nation of devout Islamic fundamentalists although they probably exist and the clergy in any nation will have some power — except in atheistic nations like the former USSR. The US is no longer a “Christian” nation by any standard of measurement one could choose for a litmus test. Both countries have professionals, academes, students, average citizens and rabble.
People wonder why tyrants arise? It’s because the people lack the good sense and good deportment to self-govern in a manner that would prevent tyrants from rising to power! People who are frightened by crowds that make the running of the bulls in Spain look like a mild fox hunt will sell their fears, and their liberty, to the tyrants who promise them safety and security. Then we have another Iraq, or Yugoslavia as it was under Tito, or Zimbabwe under Mugabe.
It doesn’t appear to be a matter of education. The educational opportunities in the US are higher than in the banana or diamond republics, or the Arab sheikdoms, but the behavior of people tends to a certain similarity and uniformity regardless of educational level. There is no course in Common Sense and no doctoral degree in Civilization and Civilized Behavior. Even if there were, a degree is no guarantee of competence or the will to put into practice the knowledge acquired.
What is amazing is how easily people slip from the standard of behavior required of citizens or subjects under a strong ruler into the role of looting rabble and ungrateful beasts that make camels and jackasses appear to be more suitable creatures for the label “civilized.”
Now that the US has spent money and American lives liberating the people of Iraq, perhaps the United Nations can take over and that august body of useless feeders (mostly at US taxpayer expense for the rent and groceries) can squabble over how to control the rabble and stop the anarchy. It is rather sad that the US didn’t foresee this behavioral pattern arising immediately after liberation, since we have a problem with rabble here in the US over nothing more significant than a stupid ballgame. But then there are nations that take cricket so seriously that the same things happen overseas when one’s team wins a great victory or loses to a hated rival.
It is our conclusion that tyrants simply know human nature and how to capitalize on it to their own aggrandizement and benefit, while the masses suffer. This pattern has gone on for about seven thousand years post-Flood and shows no signs of abating. In fact, it appears to be growing worse as licentiousness, the drug trade, the sex-slave trade, and other heinous forms of human abuse dominate the whole inhabited earth. Is it any wonder that there was such a Flood? Or that archeologists are in no hurry to examine the antediluvian civilizations that appear to be submerged under the sea from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean?
The great creativity of the human mind is tainted with sin in its ugliest forms. The advances in medicine, technology and even political systems never quite achieve enough to conquer the last great frontier (and the first for that matter) and that is “inner space” — the human heart. Yes we have a great many intelligent people and some not-so-bright bulbs in the harbor who do a lot of good things, particularly in times of emergency. But in general, heroics are few, altruism is a word in the dictionary, and the tyrants prevail, even when they are depicted by other names, some glowing with attributes that are products spun by the media.
It is pathetic, but really, Steig’s cartoon had more truth to it than people like to think, particularly because self esteem is such a hot topic these days. We could use less self esteem and more selflessness, a mark of the true Christian walk. (Note … being a Christian is quite different from merely belonging to a church, wheat and tares look alike.)
We’re going to have tyrants on this earth in one form or another until time shall be no more. Only the form of the tyranny changes. Single tyrants are no longer cool. Group tyranny is the cool thing now, particularly when the group flies the UN flag. The corporate, industrial and military tyrants and the world financial cabal contribute to the new forms of tyranny, the cool guys. And as long as the rabble behave like rabble, there will be dictators and tyrants; freedom, too, will be either a memory of a failed experiment or a word in the dictionary.
Pogo’s statement stands … “we have found the enemy and it is us.”
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”