Blaming the messenger

Subject: Blaming the messenger. 

Why are we not allowed to have enemies anymore. Why do we have to convince ourselves that everyone deep down is the same and if it weren't for environmental differences or cultural differences we would all live in close harmony. 

The Bloody Sunday trials in Northern Ireland, the Amritsar massacre, (which is remembered today), the concentration camps in the Boar War, the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya are all events which are meant to remind us of our de civilising tendency when in power, particularly our history during the period of Empire and colonisation.

What is usually missing in the discourse, is the part played by the opposition, the people on the other side who wished to get rid of us, to defeat us and who would normally be described d as, 'the enemy'.

 In war it's easy to distinguish who is the enemy. In both the world wars Germany was the enemy because a political declaration had been issued which said so, but the mere taking up arms is, it seems insufficient to declare a war and therefore the term 'the enemy' is cloaked in misunderstanding. 

A soldier will tell you who the enemy, they are the people who are threatening you and given the chance, would take your life. The sheer belligerency and the size of a crowd can determine how fine the balance is between winning and loosing, and remember in these situations it's often a 'thin line' which holds the outcome.

With our withdrawal from Colonialism and the need to give up for political reasons, our 21st century urban society is easily convinced of the ethical arguments which are current now and happily transplant them into the hot house of historical fact. 

There's not a 'subaltern' amongst the highly paid, high powered media commentariat or the people from the social think-tanks who wash our dirty linen in public each day. Not for them the Queens shilling to do their best, far from home lost in the enormity of political wrangling of which they are excluded from having an opinion.

There's a difference of course between the journalist / media celebrity and Julian Assange the mouth -piece of the whistle blowers, Bradly Manning and Edward Snowden. His crime is to reveal the crimes of our democratic governments, to reveal how depraved our governments can become when deemed necessary. These political decision makers are not the foot soldier facing a mob of hysterical nationalist, or the fire of the IRA sniper firing from behind the security of a crowded street. Instead these are the authority which wages war by drones from thousands of miles away in the security and comfort of an office environment in that building just down your street.   

It seems to me that we can barely distinguish any more who the enemy is, especially if we get picky and try to distinguish them from the inevitable collateral damage in the surrounding area of the strike zone.

So, on the one hand we demand apologies for things which happened over 50, 100, 150 years ago but when the 'establishment' is revealed in its own covert arrangement of indiscriminate killing we blame 'the messenger'. Somehow to me the plaudits of a well oiled self serving media machine, decrying Julian Assange seems sanctimonious, at the very least.