Living the Legend

We live in a society that is fair, where people need not to worry about protecting their freedoms, privacy or dignity, where Society can and will provide the necessary protection of basic and enhanced freedoms, education, justice, care; where no one needs to be offended by the words or actions of others; where we all have the same potential to become our President; where our future is assured by the inherent goodness of the human spirit, and so the legend goes...

America's ideal is to protect the life of our citizens, our freedom and our right to pursue happiness.  From that declaration to the assumption that those laudable goals have been reached and now they describe an existing reality on the ground, there is a big stretch.

People who feel entitled to an environment where their happiness is guaranteed and any person, action or situation that makes them 'feel' unhappy (offended, disturbed, uncomfortable, etc.) are living the legend they chose to believe, and worst off they are making the rest of us paying the price with their incessant whining and demands.

America is the greatest nation on earth, but even we can't guarantee that in a match between two teams, one will win and one will lose.  Their 'feelings' getting hurt are not a violation of our social compact, the design of some evil people or an unfortunate exceptional event that should be promptly corrected back to normal. 

The legend tells us that people are inherently fair, not just here but the world over.  If we treat them fairly and with respect, they will correspond in kind.  That is the natural way, in their minds.  What they need is not to read this opinion or a lecture on sociology, psychology or history, but to tune into the National Geographic channel for an hour or two, and observe first hand how nicely the remaining 99% of nature deals with each other and the environment.   Mother lion lovingly feeds her pups with the carcasses of gracious gazelles' pups.  Big fish swallow cute and colorful little fish. A volcano naturally devastates and environment flush with all forms of life.

We are better than that, claims the educated, sophisticated and ethical inhabitant of his legendary world.  The problem here is that the rest of the natural world does not bear witness to that statement and there is no independent third party to confirm it.  We are the defense attorney, jury and judge, deciding on our superiority over the rest of Earth.

A close test for the validity of this legend is everywhere in the history of mankind.  Even with the PC revisions and rewrite of our history to make it fit the legend, the raise and fall of civilizations can't be refuted.  They cycle is: a starving nation out of desperation resorted to whatever means were necessary to survive at the expense of another nation. The predator had nothing to lose, so they stop at nothing.  Considerations such as ethics, principles, scruples did not even crossed their minds, so hungry and desperate they were.  The prey: a nation content that grew confident in the status quo, their values and principles which provided them with a sense of security, confidence on the higher evolution attained by mankind which rendered all past atrocities between people and nations, a thing of the past... 

It is often said that great civilizations did not collapse as a result of a foreign action, but that they committed suicide.  Probably their decadence did not end in suicide but provided the opportunity for predators to make them easy prey.

This scenario repeated time and again, but it is so disturbing for those living the legend that they conveniently re-write it, sanitize it or simply ignore it.  If that could keep history from repeating, it would be self-fulfilling and marvelous!  But again, reality as told by history and nature have a way of bursting our ballon.

America has real enemies.  The tendency as of late has been not just to ignore it but to rename them something other than what they are.  Further, our President attempted to appease them all with nice words, resets, declarations that although they have the destruction of America (if not all of the West) in their foundation documents (their own constitution we may say), we should disarm, lower he guard and help them.  How did they respond?  All of them redoubled their rhetoric against America, speeded up their arms race, threatened our friends and us.

The idea that we need to be feared is not consistent with the legend many of us chose to live in.  It is simply too ugly.  We have to be better.  The problem is that our enemies design calls for us not to be, at all.  They are acting on those designs and we are scaring our friends instead, pushing them to chose sides to the strongest and most decisive: our enemies.

Nations admire America because of the moon landings, the iPhone and HipHop, but they fear (therefore align with) the strong and decisive, since they will decide who lives and who dies at the end. 

The world is arming and an alarming rate: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, while we extend a frank and open hand of friendship and cooperation, exalting the values of Freedom, Democracy, Cooperation.   We ask Afghans to help us beat the Taliban while we tell them we are leaving them to deal with our enemy on their own in a few short months.  We arrest enemies, put them into club fed in Guantanamo or give them for the Afghans to keep in custody (soon to escape).  The Taliban beheads their enemies.  Taliban will be there, we won't.  Who would you side with if you were the average Afghan?  That is what we do the world over.  Is this a recipe to win?

If as a liver of the legend, this reality sounds just too horrible to tolerate and you chose to fall on your own sword rather than living in such a world as the world is, that is your decision, but please do not decide for the rest of us.  Reverend Jones decided for his followers, not for you or me; even he had limits in his madness.