Hey SuperForesters!
Truthy DeFrog here with a little squirt of reality juice for your brain hole. Last night I watched the Kony2012 movie and I couldn’t believe my amphibian eyes. I hopped back to my pond and blearily wrote this. I hope you like it.
Peace!
-Truthy
“So Right it’s Wrong…
Having just watched and consumed a highly effective piece of propaganda I find my passions are inflamed and I am restless and sleepless and moved to write this. I just watched the
Kony2012.com movie and am struck at the energy and the heart that has gone into it. There is something about it that disturbs me greatly, and that is the need to perpetuate and continue the cycle of violence by “othering” yet another human being. That list of tyrants and dictators was pretty long. Is it not unreasonable to suggest that in the vacuum created by the removal of Joseph Kony, another opportunist will simply take his place? The template for living like Caesar hasn’t changed since the days of Caesar. Use violence to both repel and attract, make a living out of death. Check, and check!
The Joseph Kony’s of this world are not the disease, they are the symptoms of the disease. The disease is the idea that human on human violence is acceptable in any form, unless terms are expressly agreed upon by both parties, i.e. sports. That would include the slow-motion violence of forcing human beings into economic slavery. And the violence enacted on all humans beings by destroying the ecosystem that supports us in the name of “profit.”
This is the disease that is killing the human race. The need to perpetuate the cycle of violence. Are we any better than Joseph Kony? I hate to ask that uncomfortable question, but I must. Are we not complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents people? Are our hands so free of blood that we can afford to spill more? Are we so sinless as to afford to be casting stones? What are the death tolls of Iraqi and Afghani civilians? Cambodian? Vietnamese? Must I go on?
If we are going to go after Joseph Kony, may I suggest that next we go after the heads of the United States military industrial complex, whose products make warlords like Kony possible? Should we not also turn our scornful gaze on the very men and women, American mothers and fathers and sons and daughters, whose livelihoods depends on the weapons that we create and sell? And what of our army? Slayer of civilians, murderer of millions. Should we not also shut that rattling apparatus of destruction down? And when you get right down to it, are all of those destructive things not… us? They are indeed. The army, the war machine, the media that supports it, that’s all us. WE make up those systems. We live within and tend to and support those systems. We raise our children to respect and worship those systems. We are the war machine. We are all Joseph Kony. We worship and adore the very factory that produces the Joseph Kony’s of the world. Witness our school shootings. Witness our war on drugs. Witness our war on the poor. Witness our angry music. Witness our hateful movies. Witness every aspect of our violence-drenched culture.
“They” is us. We are our own enemy. Scapegoating yet another person when the enemy is within is tragically missing the point.
I love the passion and the energy but if the Kony2012 movement is simply another giant pointing finger, saying that the enemy is outside of our own hearts, then this force which touts itself as a force for good is simply another oppressive warlord. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Oh hell, fine! We can go after Kony. But you have to promise me something. First we get Kony, then we go after the head of McDonnell Douglas. Then the heads of Boeing, Haliburton, Alcoa, DeBeers, and every advertising guru who ever worked for these guys. Then every American president since Eisenhower. This is the road that this movement is taking, and I don’t like the look of it. It’s too easy. It’s too packaged. It’s too dependent on cute kids, and sobbing Africans. We have misery and violence a’plenty in the United States. We have warlords and killers and murderers of our own to deal with.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t help Uganda. I am saying that we’ve got to clean up our own backyard FIRST and then start bitching at the neighbors to rake up their leaves. We are a society of killers and death worshippers now taking umbrage that someone is doing it and making it look more fun than we had ever thought to. Get him! String the f—–r up! How dare he out-violence us!?
Sorry to play devil’s advocate, but my god, the irony. An American, calling for the end of violent oppression, in Uganda? Am I missing something? Is it not like Rambo calling for an end to murderous ex-Green Berets?
You cannot compare a Joseph Kony to the destructive power the United States and its citizens have wielded over the globe since the end of the second world war, when despite President Eisenhower’s demand to repeal the standing army, the military industrial complex, aka America’s central nervous system, was allowed to become the primary economic breadwinner that it is today. Our country’s main export is weapons and our principle role in global geopolitics is to start and support wars. To treat ourselves to the moral high ground over Joseph Kony is to invite a cognitive dissonance too great for the logical mind to stand.
We are Americans for Christ sake! Our entire country is based on slavery and a genocide that far outshines Joseph Kony. Remember the native American population? The entire race of people that were here when the white settlers got here and began slaughtering them? Remember Columbus? The first guy to take slaves in the new world? He who imported syphillis to America? Are those Native Americans any better treated today? Are things all squared away here in the US? All sorrys made? All wounds patched up?
Oh wait, no… No, not even f—–g close.
So then…
Take a long hard look at yourself, America. The children of today and tomorrow are asking for a change, in this misdirected joust at some blatant little bush tyrant. We have no moral highground from which to condemn this man. I’m sorry, but we don’t. Masterfully edited and beautifully shot propaganda is one thing, but a slick glossy call for a scapegoat that uses the power of facebook to hoodwink yet another generation into believing that violence and revenge is a worthwhile pursuit, is a diabolical and needlessly vindictive use of the medium. Waving banners and shouting slogans into the camera is fun. But goddamn…. Don’t mistake it for what’s right.
If you want to stop not only Joseph Kony, but all Joseph Konys forever, then first we must agree that what makes the Joseph Konys of the world possible is resource scarcity and the manufacture and sales of arms. So if you’re serious about making the world a better place for all life, we, the United States, must first stop making and selling arms. Secondly, we address the question of resource scarcity. Since resource scarcity is the engine of the capitalist model, then capitalism must be replaced with something that works better. Permaculture works better. Let’s use that.
When capitalism (aka debt slavery, false scarcity, and the destruction of the environment) is replaced with permaculture (aka earth care, people care, fair share) AND the US stops making and selling arms, then we can go after Joseph Kony, m’kay?
God f—–g damn, people. Who does your thinking for you?
Okay… Okay… I’m sorry. I just got a little worked up… Look, you know I love you. It’s just when you do these stupid things I get a little hot under the collar. It was the banner waving, and the white t-shirts with the big black x’s on them. Those got me a little hot. They are just sooooooo Fourth Reich!
So, yeah… Violence is within. Solve it there first. Then help your friend’s and family do the same. Then your neighbors. Then your neighborhood. Then your town. Then the city you live in. Then your state. Then all adjoining states. Then the United States.
When the United States stops enslaving it’s people, brainwashing them into serving the destructive system that they hate, stops selling arms, does right by the native americans and the poor and the elderly, and women, then we can scapegoat our little hearts out. Yay!!!
See you on the other side, motherlickers.”
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