Pacifist Resistance

Make that "men and women refuse to fight"

Why won’t you join the military, son?

‘Fraid of getting killed? No, sir, 

I said, ‘fraid if I joined I’d kill

Somebody, and that’d be wrong.

No, you got it wrong, son. You’re

Not committing murder. You’re

Defending yourself when you kill

Somebody who’s out to kill you.

Why would he want to kill me

If I clearly didn’t want to kill him?

You’d be carrying a gun, son. Rest

Assured he’d want to kill you. But 

I wouldn’t be carrying a gun. I’d 

Be no threat to him, like a medic.

Then join and be a medic; you 

Wouldn’t be killing anybody.

Can’t do that either, sir. Medics 

Ultimately help send soldiers 

Back to kill. Couldn’t do that,

Sir.  Sure sounds to me like you’re

Afraid of getting killed in combat.

Like I said earlier, I’m afraid of 

Killing in combat, or helping others

To kill in combat. Driving a truck?

Nope, that’s helping in the killing.

Clerking in the office? Nope that’s

Helping in the killing. Breaking codes

To save our men? I think you know 

What I’d say. Where’d you get such

Crazy ideas anyway? In church.

Jesus said not to return evil for evil.

Vengeance is mine, said the Lord.

You see what they did to Jesus? 

Not directly, sir, but I read about the

Crucifixion. You want them to do

That to you? No, sir, not at all.

You want them to do that to your

Brother? No, sir. To your mother?

No, sir, that wouldn’t be right. 

But I don’t think it’s necessary to 

Kill anybody. Look at the First 

World War, killed millions, didn’t

They? Yes. Didn’t have to. Huh?

Ever hear of the Christmas Truce

Of 1914? Yes, where the Germans

And the French sang Christmas 

Carols on Christmas Eve and 

Played football on No Man’s Land

On Christmas Day—no shots,

No shells for better than a whole 

Day? Yes, but the war started right

Up the next day. Didn’t have to.

What if they agreed to have a

Christmas Truce for the whole

Twelve Days of Christmas? By

Epiphany they would have realized

They could put off the war altogether

And return to their wives and families

In safety and there would have been no

Millions killed. Well, young man, 

That sounds all fine and good but

If you didn’t resume the war we’d

Have to shoot enough of you until

You did start shooting again.

You’re right, sir. Pacifists accept 

They’re likely to be killed in a war.

But you couldn’t kill us all. Either you’d

Get sick of your killing, or others

Would stop you long before you

Got to the millions. 

c. J.S.Manista, 2017         

Fashion 2017

Lifestyles

Clothes

Perhaps it is only my quirky

Desire to live as a monk 

In simple clothing or perhaps

It is my being a man that 

Makes me bristle at the fashion

Industry, that whole "worry 

About what you wear or what

You shall put on" way of life. 

I know these people need jobs.

I know it requires their bountiful

Creative talent. I realize even I

Love and desire beautiful things.

But here my inner Puritan rages

Forth like a lion. When we are 

Foisting war, famine, and death 

On so many nations in the world,

When we are shattered by returning

Images of stricken starving children, 

Seared and bleeding bodies,

When we see our ruin of societies

We don't understand, can our

Hardened hearts afford to give

A single flying fig 

For the lures of fashion?

c. J.S.Manista, 2017

20170521 Would ending war end our "Lifestyle"?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-american-way-of-war-is-a-budget-breaker_us_5911d17de4b0a58297df7f59

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to ask, “Is our ‘lifestyle’ worth anything, if we can keep it only by preserving war?” Do you think for even a second the people dying at the end of our missile strikes care whether our vainglorious and self-indulgent culture deserves to persist if it can do so only by a periodic purge of the lives of other nations?

A similar question could be raised, “Will American men still be able to be boisterous, outgoing, and filled with self-confidence, if as a body they are required to forego any and all manner of rape?” It is far more important that men end their aggressive dominance over women than whether as a result of assuming responsibility for control of their urges somebody thinks they’re less manly.

So as far as I am concerned the economic feasibility of giving up war is a non-issue. Whether we are financially better off or worse has no bearing. We have to give up war. We have to give it up so sincerely as no longer even to prepare for war.

How will a capitalist society manage if it cannot seize the minerals and resources of other nations? It will manage. Just as the buggy whip makers adapted to the rise of the automobile, war workers will be available for other needs. I will not speculate here what those needs will be nor how we will meet them, but if we can have the wisdom to turn from wantonly killing, surviving and caring for each other will be a far easier problem to overcome.

We know the earth cannot sustain the total exploitation involved in our “lifestyle.” If somehow everyone worldwide would be jacked up to American consumption levels the air would be unbreathable in days. There might be enough iron available to give each of the 170+ nations a dozen aircraft carriers to plough the oceans menacingly, but not enough time to train their sailors, or sufficient uranium to stoke their reactors. The concept is so brainless yet many Americans think we can continue being rich as Croesus forever, always wealthier than others.

Giving up war, its hellish waste of all that is good in the world and in us, and living sustainably without question is our only course. We could get back to the things that are true marks of human civilization—education, health, meaningful work for all, and living in peace and mutual respect for our brothers and sisters over the whole world.

c. J.S.Manista 2017

20170504 War makes us monsters

UN Poster for Peace 2016 - disarmament

If it were possible to calculate the costs accruing to the world in terms of reduced agricultural output, damaging weather, loss of quality of life ranging from no water to drink or higher costs of air conditioning, etc., from each additional ton of CO2 produced, so as to allocate fairly to industries, farms, NASCAR races, etc., those damages which society as a whole could collect from given offenders, it is conceivable that laws passed to effect such environmental “taxes” might make corporations (and citizens who barbecue on backyard grills or profligately use decorative natural gas consuming lamps and fireplaces) think twice about using fossil fuels.

Such a system might change behavior if, as economists hold, people are creatures of reason naturally unwilling to incur added costs. But what can we do about the unaccountability for war’s destruction of the environment and society? Victors try passing the costs onto the vanquished but we know what future enmity results from that (WWII born from the agreements following WWI).

I wouldn’t ask Americans who in truth came away relatively unscathed from WWII and who know only the devastation they can visit on others with impunity (see Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.). The nation as a whole picks up the tab and figures it into the costs of an unquestioned military-industrial-congressional complex. Noteworthy is the fact that the Department of Defense is the only body of government which cannot be audited year after year despite laws mandating it should be. 

These costs, including the opportunity cost of things which could have been done but for the war and war provisioning, however severe they may be, pale in comparison to the damage we inflict on our moral selves and on those with whom we fought. Together we each forsake the notions of civility, nobility, and intelligence to remake ourselves as mindless barbarians who know no limit to brutality in our quest for the good that we previously treasured. This tax falls upon us all. And we are expected from this depraved state to rise from the ashes to forge a new, more just, more lasting comity among the nations?

We have no choice anymore. Foreseeable conflicts will destroy us all. Better to turn from war altogether–even defensive war–than risk accomplishing our moral demolition. We can start with unilateral nuclear disarmament to demonstrate that we will threaten other nations no more and can ask other nuclear powers to follow our example. 

We can pull back from our present conflicts, bring our soldiers home, refit our aircraft carriers for international emergency service, step back from our worldwide military bases, destroy all chemical/biological/radiological stockpiles, and revise our public purpose to become a generous aid to nations in difficulty and remake ourselves to be nobler members of a courageous and hopeful community.

c. J.S.Manista, 2017

20170502 There'll be nothing left to save if we first don't end war

Almost every comic's favorite standup, George Carlin delivered a wonderfully timed set on "Saving the Planet."*

George Carlin, whom I revered for many reasons, was an environmental skeptic. He’d joke, “Why worry about saving the planet? The planet is going to make it. It’s huge. It’s been around a lot longer than we have and it will be around a lot longer than we will.” But George was wrong.

We now face two certainly effective ways to end the planet: thermonuclear conflict and total environmental collapse. Either will summarily rid us of those tiresome buggers, humanity, who will decide which way wins (or loses).

Should we place all our dollars and hours into one big fight many fear cannot succeed? Aye, there’s the rub. People disagree massively on whether humanity can permanently end war. They offer, “At least we’ve had success on laws protecting air and water. Oh, yeah? Let them talk to any of Dump’s idiot cabinet. 

Like Rex Tillerson, economically, they know only one solution: Growth. Growth will save us. It has before. It will always save us. These are not farmers who let one third of their fields lay fallow in yearly rotation. They have no concept of the overgrowth which is poison.

Mine, fish, plant, speculate until the earth, the seas, the ground, the markets cease to yield anything of value—then take from your neighbor. Comics reproach, “Why did God put our oil under their sand?”

Now, as many have-nots comprehend how they came to have nothing, and desperately envision a future they will likely never see, countries of disappearing and depleted resources have nowhere to turn for relief than to the fictions of murderous dictators, who assure them of an abundance at least beyond death which they cannot deliver on earth. 

Is there a hope the wealth of the industrialized countries will be selflessly invested in such under-developed countries? Without establishment of an unprecedented reign of justice it won’t happen. In the past investment has occurred only in an extractive strategy as a political or economic colony. Consider most nations where oil has dealt them a “resource curse,” where companies made agreements to share profits with the government. 

How much of that wealth became Mercedes, Bugattis, and McLarens, for the families of the governors, Western educations and lavish homes for their playboy sons (but not daughters), and multiple palaces for themselves instead of schools and hospitals for their citizens, or worse, into paid bodyguards, armies with every weapon on the market? The severely oppressed will find a way to free themselves and they will remember who first helped produce their chains.

Today there are operative in this world too many maniacs, too many disputes, too many weapons of far too much destructive capacity, for us to conclude reasonable people can afford mounting two campaigns—one to save nature and one to prevent war? The risks almost guarantee there will again be wars of untold violence, destruction, maiming, and death.

This presentation then comes down to the question, “How do we want to die? Inhaling radioactive dust? Or starving, when no food can be grown, and dying of thirst because all the water is poisoned?” I can say this for certain: If we take no action first to end war, it will make no difference. There will be nothing left worth conserving.

c. J.S.Manista, 2017

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

20170428 (natural monopolies)

Profits accruing to competitive package delivery services all could have been the province of the US Postal Service were it not for the political limits placed on what the post office could legally do (in total opposition to what should have been its "natural monopoly"). You should know all private package companies place their packages in the mail when they cannot deliver at a profit.

Monopolies actually make sense

In that they are the economic

Perfection of that system in 

Which they serve or produce.

But when they are owned or

Governed by human beings 

Susceptible to greed, then

Monopolies lose that efficiency 

Which made them acceptable.

A greedy owner can use the

His unique control to benefit

Himself over his customers, 

Suppliers, and workers. Thus

Thought John D. Rockefeller

To perfect the oil industry’s 

Efficiency by eliminating his

Competitors. Very truly why have 

Two refineries supplied by 

Separate sources when his one

Could handle the output of

Both fields? Indeed, why two

Pipelines when his one could

Absorb the competition too?

The savings derived from 

Opportunities of scale could

Be passed on to his customers

(Ha!) or go directly to his pocket.

Often enough he bought up the

His competitors’ equipment at

Bargain basement prices to be

Reborn, baptized into his system. 

However, once his empire was

Found to be gouging wildly 

Without opposition, government

Finally took steps to limit, if

Not totally undo, the damage.

Theorists, however, have argued

That there are natural economic

Monopolies which society can

Manage politically to provide

Optimum economic benefits, 

For example, water and sewer

Utilities. Other industries once

Regarded as natural monopolies

Include electricity, telephone, 

Broadcasting, mining, and most

Recently the internet. Postal 

Service has lost its natural monopoly

As profitable package delivery

Has been allowed to various

Competitors, and its unique

Delivery of paper-based information

Has been buggy-whipped out of

Primacy first by telegraphy,

Then faxing, and finally internet

Messaging. But privatization 

Has a checkered record. Consider

Broadcasting: once companies

Have leaped the hurdles to 

Licensing they produce untold

Fortunes for their operators

With little to no benefit for the

Listener/citizens, their owners.

Mining has ripped whole vistas

To garbage dumps and given

Very little in return for their

Plunder of the surface. Were it

Not for the actions in Flint and

Other piracies now occurring

In many suburbs I would have 

Said that the water monopoly

Was too sacred, too universally

Necessary to succumb to

Exploitation. How wrong I was.

But most particularly today

The internet is about to be

Carved up by wealthy media

Conglomerates for their own

Benefit, again to shaft the little

Guys (taxpayers) who paid for its

Development as a military

Necessity, for the moment,

Still available equally to all.

Tragedy of the Commons,

A play we see on the public

Stage all too often. With Dump 

At the helm, the public stage

Won’t be here long either.

c. J.S.Manista, 2017