Roguedinosaur.com

Greetings Readers:

The question is do foreign deaths matter as much as U. S. deaths? My opinion is No they do not matter nearly enough, and unfortunately the great majority of lives lost do not hardly matter at all. They are too impersonal.

Let’s review the casualty figures for Syria where over 350,000 people, nearly all innocence, women and children, the young the old, have died in a tragic four-year war. We rarely, very rarely hear or glean much more than the statistic. People look over the day’s casualty figures and are shocked or uneasy, for two seconds, but they shortly forget them, go to bed and sleep soundly. Statistics don’t bleed.

It was once explained to me in journals and verbally by learned men, as modern-age communications progress we become less and less personally involved. The listeners and readers are concerned more about a mild headache, or a tooth filling, or the next mortgage payment or the next item they’ll post on Facebook. For the rest of the world there is no time. ‘Let’s not think about that, think about something pleasant, and what are we having for dinner?’ The rest of the world? The marching armies, coups, terrorist incidence, and nuclear miscalculation. Not right now at least, hope not.

Fifty dead in China floods, estimated 700 on one raised ferry-boat were people trying to flee and become immigrants in Europe, 234 killed during clashes in Juba the capital of South Sudan… Folks will forget it in a moment. The 86 murdered four days ago in Nice, France won’t be remembered very long either.  “All souls have the same value in God’s eyes.” Maybe, but not here on earth. In Vietnam the U. S. lost 65,000 American lives. North and south Vietnam combined with other Southeast Asian counties perhaps 4,000,000. The four million are commemorated because they ‘Won’ and are not occupied by a foreign power; however, should they have lost and been occupied not any one outside of Vietnam proper would have remembered those gross casualties figures, least of all in the United States.

Conversely, thinking too much, the deliberation over many innocent lives lost in conflicts and wars may drive an activist person plumb crazy. It can also be counter productive to some who say ‘We have a world to win; markets to gather, and because of it prosperity.’ Namely they are the Elitists, the Pentagon, and those on Wall Street. So the mostly unthinking public pushes ahead in their daily lives not realizing there are forces desiring conflict and conventional war. They didn’t go away after WWII, Vietnam, and Iraq II. They’re still around with profit motives and unlimited hubris.

All the Best.

Ron Miller

(Charitable and political advertising available through WordPress.com)