The recent racist incident at the USAF Academy was certainly
appalling and is rightfully condemned but I'm afraid I cannot go along with the
world's praise of Lt. Gen Jay Silveria, the Superintendent of the school.
His speech is almost ubiquitous at present dominating news
feeds and newspapers and I'm sure he'll get a few feathers in his cap. Many are
saying, "This is the speech we wish the president would give."
"This is the right response to racism."
This is insanity on display. These commentators as well as
the general are blind. This is true in terms of our culture and its history but
they are also spiritually blind and their moral judgments are askew. Allow me
to elaborate.
The general is not a paragon of virtue or leadership. In fact
he's a racist killer himself, something far worse than the cadets he's
condemning.
This general flew air missions over the Balkans and Iraq and
he was previously vice-commander at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. In other
words he's part of the tip of the spear, he was literally 'pushing the button'
of the war machine and on its cutting edge. This war machine of empire is all but
predicated on racist theory... as all
empires are.
They all rest on a basic premise. We are better than you and
we have a right to take what you have and kill you if you resist us. We are
either racially or culturally your superior and we have a right to your land and
if we desire it...your life.
Silveria had no qualms about bombing the people of Balkans.
Slavs and others who inhabit that 'impoverished backwater of Europe' (as many
refer to it) are not granted any dignity. They are not allowed to sort out
their own affairs or reckon with history and its many crimes. The little fleas
need the US to step in and with violence force them to conform to the
Western-NATO order. It is for their own good. If they resist, they deserve
death and this Air Force officer was more than willing to bring it to them as
he flew his combat sorties. After all NATO had a continent to consolidate and
they had to hurry. Russia was being manipulated and destroyed but there was
always the chance it could get back on its feet.
As best we can tell he had no hesitation or experienced any regret
in attacking and bombing the people of Iraq... a people who never attacked the
United States. And yet the United States decided that it had the right to come
in and take their country and their resources. Even before the 2003 invasion
and subsequent catastrophe, the US had been engaged in a genocidal campaign
that killed over a half million Iraqi children. The so-called No-Fly-Zones and
sanctions regime were largely in the hands of the US Air Force and its pilots...
men like Silveria, men without consciences.
Like politicians of all ages and stripes the American
leadership whipped up some lies to justify this destruction of Iraq. They did
this in both 1991 and 2003, though they did not take responsibility for the death
and destruction let alone the monsters the desolation produced. But that's
hardly a new story. And yet this fine paragon of virtue and leadership even
when it was all exposed as rot and deception had no problem continuing his
career in that finest and most honourable of institutions... the US military.
He'll take a pension too, the blood money of the war machine upon which he
feeds.
Silveria decried the racist graffiti on the doors of black
students. I wonder how many US bombs were scrawled with the same types of
racist epithets when dropped on the 'brown' people of Iraq?
Bagram Air Base was a centre of US torture and at the nexus
of the Empire's brutal and immoral war on a country that also never attacked
the United States. It was country slated for attack as was evident by the
timetable in 2001. The invasion which commenced in October was not something
planned in the wake of 9/11. It had already been set in motion. The official
narrative has proved spurious on many fronts.
On a somewhat related note, one cannot but marvel at the
speed of the US military and yet how slowly the US colossus drags its feet when
it comes to storm ravaged Puerto Rico! We're led to believe that plans and
logistics for an invasion of a landlocked mountainous country in Asia come
together within a couple of weeks but the US can't get basic necessities to its
own hemispheric territory in the same time-frame? Or could it be that the folks
of Puerto Rico are somehow less important than say... the folks of Florida or
Texas?
This general is part of the war machine that has (just since
2001) been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. By extension
when one includes the spin-off and resultant conflicts... a number now creeping
into the millions.
He's a butcher and a murderer and then decided to earn some
more medals by returning to the fatherland in order to train up some more young
men in the paths of death.
I guess there are those that think a generation of war is somehow
unrelated to the economic stress and social disintegration we are witnessing. They
think America's militarist foreign policy has nothing to do with the problems
in our society. They don't see the connection between the US system, its
economy, law enforcement, drug addiction, the phony drug interdiction, the
security state and the push for endless war.
The fabric of American society has been torn apart by the
greed of deindustrialisation and Wall Street's lust for international markets,
resources and labour. American Capitalism and consumerism has made shipwreck of
the world and now it is turning on itself. It has led to decadence and
self-destruction. It has resulted in many
defeated people who look for scapegoats and lash out in anger at things they
don't understand.
How could they? They are propagandised endlessly by the
education system, the workplace, television and social media. It's a confusing
mess especially for those who have failed to reflect upon it all, or may not
even have the tools to do so. It's no wonder so many have turned to drugs and
suicide.
That is the irony in this episode. There is a direct
connection between the unrest, between the growing race war on the American
Street and the wars of the Empire and system it generates.
The war profiteers are cashing in on multiple fronts and the
system is predicated on men like Silveria to do its dirty work. It also depends
on 'losers' the people who are used and thrown away, the people who fight the
wars and fill the jails.
This general so lauded by the media and its hosts of blind
political pundits could be a poster-child for the system... the system that has
led to Ferguson and Charlottesville... the system that has generated the
bestial behaviour on display at the Air Force Academy.
I found his speech to be obscene because it came from his mouth. But of course the soldiers
and the military are untouchable. The flag's veneration has been intimately wed
to 'the troops'. Patriotism and Militarism have been so intertwined as to
become symbiotic and inseparable. Just look at and reflect on the insanity and
stupidity of the NFL controversy. A bunch of prima donna spoiled brat
gladiators want to parade and strut even while their gluttonous admirers want
to feel good about themselves and their wasteful lives and habits. Having
bought into the Pentagon's propaganda they have turned even sporting events
into culture-affirming religious acts and now they are offended because the
gladiators have grown irritated. They've been paid off, they should just
shut-up right? Of course how many of these millionaire athletes have in reality
turned their back on their people and their values and instead feed from the
system... the system they sought to escape. They couldn't beat it, so they
joined it and now we're supposed to respect them?
All sides are obscene as is the president who attacks
kneeling football players and yet defends racist brawlers in Virginia. It would
seem our society has all but lost its mind.
Incidentally as a Christian I tend to avoid situations where
I know patriotism will be on display. And yet sometimes I can't help it
especially as it continues to creep into hitherto untouched aspects of our
culture. When confronted thus (as I was at a graduation not too long ago) I
always sit down when the national anthem plays. If our culture called us to
kneel, I would stand tall. I will not show respect to the golden image, even if
my fellow Christians have confused a strip of cloth with an icon of Christ.
Sometimes the protest even has to be taken into the Church,
especially when the Church slips into such idolatries. It's both interesting
and ironic that the Christian population is more likely to get angry (and
threatening) with you than the confused people of the lost world.
I suppose in another sense it amazes me that any minority
would want to be part of the US military. But like the redneck kids I saw at
the fair today being wooed by recruiters, they don't understand that they are
expendable cannon fodder, fighting the wars and destroying their lives for the
wealthy, for the very system which crushes them. The military is
disproportionately filled with minorities. It's a sad reality but for many of
them it's a way out and leg up. The fact that such a 'way' is at the expense of
other people deemed of lesser worth and race is a point few of them seem to
grasp. Others see it but refuse to reckon with it, biding their time so they
can get the most indulgent pension deal imaginable. Others destroy their own lives
after just a short period of 'service'. And yet our culture (and the Church
with it) teaches that the way out of despair is through affirmation of the
mission and its deeds. Learn pride and feel good about what you were part of! What
they need is to learn the grace of repentance.
As long as the system is able to keep finding fools to fight
its wars they can keep it going. I was of the most foolish variety. I
volunteered but later repented of it as I learned of God grace and quickly
divorced myself from the death cult that is the US military. I too was part of
the Balkan murder machine and the expansion of the US/NATO Empire, but the
Spirit wrought the fruits of repentance. I got out, repented and now denounce
it. Silveria continues to feed from the machine and has become one with it.
Christians ought to denounce this general but instead they
will praise him. The Apostate Church is led by blind guides. They aren't just
the Joel Osteen's or the Rob Bell's, but all too often they are also the
celebrities of the Evangelical and Confessional world. Bureaucrats and
partisans they defend denominational systems and institutions. They defend the
system upon which they feed and grow fat. Truth is all too often of secondary importance.
They are happy to teach lies, affirm the world and participate in the
idolatries and myths of Western Christendom (so-called) and the American
Empire.
While they praise General Silveria and affirm the American
system they painfully demonstrate that they have forgotten the lessons of Luke
16.15.
It's a lesson Evangelicalism cannot learn. It is at the very heart of what it is and what they
are.