"Ahab is forever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders."
-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick
"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."
-- C. S. Lewis, author's preface, 1962, The Screwtape Letters
American history can only accurately be described as the story of demonic possession, however you choose to understand that phrase. Maybe radical "evil" will suffice. But right from the start the American colonizers were involved in massive killing because they considered themselves divinely blessed and guided, a chosen people whose mission would come to be called "manifest destiny." Nothing stood in the way of this divine calling, which involved the need to enslave and kill millions and millions of innocent people that continues down to today. "Others" have always been expendable since they have stood in the way of the imperial march ordained by the American god. This includes all the wars waged based on lies and false-flag operations. It is not a secret, although most Americans, if they are aware of it, prefer to see it as a series of aberrations carried out by "bad apples." Or something from the past.
Our best writers and prophets have told us the truth: Thoreau, Twain, William James, MLK, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, et al.: we are a nation of killers of the innocent. We are conscienceless. We are brutal. We are in the grip of evil forces.
The English writer D. H. Lawrence said it perfectly in 1923: "The American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer. It has never yet melted." It still hasn't.
When on August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States killed 200-300 thousand innocent Japanese civilians with atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they did so intentionally. It was an act of sinister state terrorism, unprecedented by the nature of the weapons but not by the slaughter. The American terror bombings of Japanese cities that preceded the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- led by the infamous Major General Curtis LeMay -- were also intentionally aimed at Japanese civilians and killed hundreds of thousands of them.
Is there an American artist's painting of Tokyo destroyed by the firebombing to go next to Picasso's Guernica, where estimates of the dead range between 800 and 1,600? In Tokyo alone more than 100, 000 Japanese civilians were burnt to death by cluster bombs of napalm. All this killing was intentional. I repeat: Intentional. Is that not radical evil? Demonic? Only five Japanese cities were spared such bombing.
The atomic bombings were an intentional holocaust, not to end the war, as the historical record amply demonstrates, but to send a message to the Soviet Union that we could do to them what we did to the residents of Japan. President Truman made certain that the Japanese willingness to surrender in May 1945 was made unacceptable because he and his Secretary-of-State James Byrnes wanted to use the atomic bombs -- "as quickly as possible to 'show results'" in Byrnes' words -- to send a message to the Soviet Union. So "the Good War" was ended in the Pacific with the "good guys" killing hundreds of thousand Japanese civilians to make a point to the "bad guys," who have been demonized ever since. Russia phobia is nothing new.
Satan always wears the other's face.
Many Baby Boomers like to say they grew up with the bomb. They are lucky. They grew up. They got be scared. They got to hide under their desks and wax nostalgic about it. Do you remember dog tags? Those 1950s and 1960s? The scary movies?
The children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who died under our bombs on August 6 and 9, 1945, didn't get to grow up. They couldn't hide. They just went under. To be accurate: we put them under. Or they were left to smolder for decades in pain and then die. But that it was necessary to save American lives is the lie. It's always about American lives, as if the owners of the country actually cared about them. But to tender hearts and innocent minds, it's a magic incantation. Poor us!
Fat Man, Little Boy -- how the words echo down the years to the now fat Americans who grew up in the 1950s and who think like little boys and girls about their country's demonic nature. Innocence -- it is wonderful! We are different now. "We are great because we are good," that's what Hillary Clinton told us. The Libyans can attest to that. We are exceptional, special. The next election will prove we can defeat Mr. Pumpkin Head and restore America to its "core values."
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