Ammon Hennacy, Dorothy Day and
others seated in protest of civil
defense drill, 1956 Two observations one from TV and one from the movies stand out in my mind tonight. Late last night or early this morning I was watching the Charlie Rose show on T.V. He was interviewing Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Egyptian diplomat and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an inter-governmental organization under the auspices of the United Nations. After talking about his role in the popular uprising in Egypt, Rose asked him about his new book “The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times”. During this discussion he mentioned that whoever was the source of the deception that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, like it had nuclear capacity, should be held accountable for the illegal war in Iraq, the ‘pulverizing of nearly a million human lives.
When Charlie Rose tried to get him say if he meant that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld should be held accountable before the World Court for crimes against humanity. He wisely said that he was not saying who was responsible for the deception and how they should be held accountable, but if we are going to keep integrity we need to investigate how this war was launched and someone should be held accountable for this ‘war crime’.
Tonight I watched at the local University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee the movie “South of the Border” by Oliver Stone. It was about the revolution underway in South America. Oliver Stone sets out on a road trip across five countries to explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media’s misperception of South America while interviewing seven of its elected presidents. In casual conversations with Presidents Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), as well as her husband and ex-President Nėstor Kirchner, Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba), Stone gains unprecedented access and sheds new light upon the exciting transformations in the region. I have heard and experienced bits and pieces about this movement in South America to ban together and take ownership of their countries from the USA and other Western powers but have not seen how these countries, represented by indigenous Presidents, are connected and work together.
What this TV and movie say to me is simple and complex: The US needs to move
away from the attitude “We are number one”, we rule by military might, we can do what we want, even a preemptive war based on deception and are not accountable for the consequence.
It is simple to say what our role should be in the world but how to structurally change the institutions that promote this militaristic mentality and how to change the hearts and minds of the people in the USA.
A good example of how militarism is integrated into our world view happened tonight during the NFL football draft. The commission introduced representatives from every division of the military. They were met with great applause as they should be. But almost immediately people in the crowd started to change “USA is Number One.” This chant reinforced many persons belief that our ‘exceptionalism’ in the world is based on our military might.
I do not know how to change hearts and mind. But tonight when I sent three positive comments to my posting on Way of Cross? to two friends one responded with this insight: “And we will continue changing one person at a time.”
This reminds me of the “One Person Revolution” of Ammon Hennacy and the Catholic Worker as well as Gandhi. Maybe we cannot change anyone but ourselves. But an individual with a change of heart and mind can help create the environment where it is easier to be good and for a true revolution of human dignity.
Comments
(:commentboxchrono:)
