Do you deserve to die for own bad government?If you are a progressive, says Van Jones (a progressive), you should be offended by various policies of Iran’s government, and therefore you should accept the need to drop bombs on Iran. At no point on this smoothly paved highway to hell does Van Jones stop to marvel at his own mental transition between a nation’s people and its government. Nor does he stop to ask himself whether the proposition, “If a nation’s government and some of its people hold ideas that you disagree with, you should go to war with them” may be flawed. Nor does he end this speech by volunteering to have his own home blown up by Iranian soldiers as penance for the various detestable beliefs of the Trump administration. Odd.
…
War, as people experience it through the news, is a matter of proper strategy, a video game, a chess match between governments to be followed from afar, and critiqued tactically.
...
The way that war is covered, the way that we are all asked to ignore the most important things about it and focus solely on far more frivolous distractions, is like watching Hurricane Katrina drown New Orleans and saying, “We’re going to have nonstop coverage of how this will affect the NFL’s upcoming season.” If someone attacks you in the street and breaks your legs and puts you in the hospital and your friend hears the news and says, “Let’s talk about how this will affect Tuesday’s mayoral primary,” they would not be your friend very long. This is the media’s approach to war.
On a meta note, I feel this way about a lot of what I write, whether I put a lot or little effort into it:
I’m sorry for writing a too-simple thing today.
But it feels like extremely basic things need to be reviewed all the time. I find
need to review them, too.