Okay, I surrender to the ghost in this machine and refuse to fight the edit blog post battle any further today. While I’ve narrowed down the search for causes of earlier frustrations in blogland to this specific computer at my end, the reasons for such remain elusive. So instead of trying to force the program to do its editing duty properly, I’m just going to yap in this post instead.
Yes, it’s been very quiet in my blogcasa since round one of “Breakfast Special.” I confess that I’ve been wondering if further courses of “Breakfast Special” might be of interest to anyone wandering by. Would anyone care to put in an order?
Frankly I think I’ve ranted, vented and held forth over time on most items broiling in my brainpan. Yet when Dirk Kirby’s documentary “The Invisible War” aired on my local PBS station via Independent Lens last night it supplied some motivational electro-shock therapy which prompted my earlier attempt at a blog post regarding the rape epidemic in the U.S. Military. I’d been aware of this issue for several years, but had no idea of the current ongoing scope and depth of the issue until viewing Kirby’s film. While I’m aware that the violent crime of rape is widespread, under-reported and under prosecuted in America, I’d had not any idea just how callous the entire U.S. Military’s attitude is towards the crime in its own ranks. Is this a logical consequence of the innate nature of the military itself as a vehicle for training people for combat that requires the death and destruction of other humans? Perhaps it is.
If so, why would any parent who puts forth the effort to raise children to be decent, caring, intelligent adults ever encourage their children to enlist in any military force? Why would parents want to have their children destroyed by a system which does not value human life?
I am at a loss for any rational answers to those questions and the host of others I have in regard to the specific issue of rape in the military and the institution in general. It appears that being an “officer and a gentleman” is nothing more than illusion created by smart uniformed propaganda images.
Rape outrages many people when news of it surfaces in the media. The rapes of women in India have garnered world-wide attention. People are appalled by rapes of children. Rape is recognized as a war crime. No one seems to condone rape. Yet it is a widespread violent crime which knows no social, political, economic nor religious boundaries.
Does the U.S. Military view the victims of rape within its ranks as simple collateral damage that is an acceptable byproduct of their own culture of acceptable violence?
Is this just a military problem or is it a human nature problem? If it’s human nature working out its dark side then what does it say about US?
Considering the recent issues regarding the Violence Against Women Act I wonder if we live in a culture which somehow deviously nurtures the act of rape.
Such is the current state of my brainpan stew. This is more or less the gist of the content which inexplicably vanished from my earlier post when I hit the “Publish” earlier today.
Anyone have any answers?
om mani padme hum jewel in the lotus wahupa qi prana universal life energy
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