WORDS: 939 — Huh? There’s death with context? Does that context make any difference in the absolute-ness of death? It certainly matters not one bit to the person who died. People die because that’s life. What more context is required? Might we be talking about the “reason” for a death? Does that in itself help at all the person who died? Nope. Then we must be thinking that possibly we want to make sure the same reason for the death doesn’t befall us. You mean, there’s a priority in death?
I was in the funeral industry for five years so I have a far better understanding than most in understanding the after-effects of someone dying, on the living. I made a living around death. Arranging funerals, veterans… removing bodies from accidents… all ages, all manner of death… the gross… the macabre… the disgusting… the whole works. It’s important to understand that I in performing that work I did not experience SEEING death occur… in all its randomness and varieties. That emotion is far different. I did cause a death (a family member no less) in a lapse of judgement while driving my car. That in itself sobers up one’s moral perspective very quickly. I broke no traffic laws… violated no rules of the road. Timing and bad judgment. My father died from a heart attack, my breath being his last while I tried to resusitate him. Years later at my mother’s bedside when she breathed her last from cancer. I am fortunate in that I have been able to pigeon hole my “death” experiences without sinking into an emotional abyss. Other than my career in the funeral business being a bit different, my other experiences are more or less similar to what many other people experience in life so I don’t claim experiencing anything unique… just that it all can add up to a developing perspective as they occur through life.
I present all that “inside” experience with death.. a self-experience… to illustrate that we also experience “outside” death experiences. Meaning, that which occurs to others in life outside our personal bubble. What we hear in the news… victims of life’s sad encounters… crimes of passion… soldiers at war… civil violence… vehicular accidents… airplanes… the list is infinite. In one way or another we all experience some fleeting moment with a mental sigh.. to a loud screaming… emotional response. It’s often reflective of the war in Vietnam that Americans got numb to the daily and weekly body counts being reported on the evening news. It wasn’t a matter of being numb and uncaring. It was simply a matter of emotional priority. It’s the mind compensating by… “Yes, I know this is going on… but I cannot personally shut it off from continuing.” Realizing death… is a matter of simple priority. It’s an extraordinary human hypocrisy…. of the many that make man.. man.
Where’s The Hypocrisy You Ask?
Let’s start here…. January 6th… Over 100 police injured, some critically. But let’s not count them.. they didn’t die. Deaths? 5 as a direct result of the insurrection, 4 police later by suicide. In total.. 8 plus one rioter. Who garners all the national attention (primarily from the far Right)? The single female rioter, shot by a plain clothes Capitol officer. You can see it there… the death PRIORITY is Ashly Babbitt. And her death is any more or less important on a moral level than the rest? It’s a priority because of politics.
Let’s try another example.
American service members killed in Afghanistan through April: 2,448.
U.S. contractors: 3,846.
Afghan national military and police: 66,000.
Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states: 1,144.
Afghan civilians: 47,245.
Aid workers: 444.
Journalists: 72.
..and four days before our military finally departed Kabul 13 service personnel were killed by a suicide bomber.
Taliban and other opposition fighters: 51,191. (We don’t have to count these people because they were the enemy and had to die; moral justification.)
You know the death priority here, right? Let me help… out of this entire list, it’s the 13 soldiers who died 4 days before our departure. In fact, we are demanding investigations, resignations, firings, prison time, heads rolling. These service people were simply part of the total killed in the Afghan war. Why would their deaths be any more or less important than all the other GI’s who were killed over the last 20 years? The death priority is for politics.
Let’s keep going with another example… on the day those 13 service personnel were killed Covid killed 2,213 Americans here in the States. And of that total nearly 95% were not vaccinated and would have lived. Who got the nation’s death priority… 13 soldiers killed in the line of duty 4 days before the combat ended.
One more…
How many were killed at Sandy Hook? 20 children, 7 adults.
How many killed at the Vegas shooting? 58 people
The Orlando nightclub shooting? 50 people.
The death priority in all those events? The imagined preservation of the Second Amendment
Yep.. hypocrisy abounds when we celebrate death outside of our personal worlds.
Add up all the death totals we’ve chatted about on this post alone.. all sides, all categories, all reasons… and very likely they all individually fell into someone’s personal priority bubble. Collectively, the vast majority of all these deaths were just forgotten in the public priority of selecting only the few to be important enough to remember not for their lives but for what their deaths represented to the political narrative. It’s appalling the value of a human life we hold here in America. At least here life isn’t cheap like you might find in Third World countries. Here your death just might be of political value… in context, of course.
You know I was an EMT for a very long time, and death was a daily part of my job, in all its imaginable forms. But I completely get what you are saying here, and it is something I have noticed on the news reporting for all of my adult life. One recent example that summed this up was when an Indonesian plane crashed into the sea in March this year. The TV reporter read out the news of the event, stating “130 people are believed to have been killed. None of them were British”.
Best wishes, Pete.
Doug,
There is another issue king Solomon observed about the saddest aspect for a person who dies because of theirs or someone else’s foolish decisions.
Anyone who is among the living has hope —even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! (Ecclesiastes 9:4)
As for why the news centers on only one issue is because of timing of events that lead up to emotions instead of wisdom of your questioning.
Our vanity won’t allow us to focus on the root problems that lead to sad occurrences in our lives.
That is because we humans just can’t seem to wise up to the main point of the need to teach wisdom to our children. That is to stop repeating the same follies we experienced before in previous generations.
In other words, until we start teaching wisdom to our children there is never going to be any hope we will ever wise up when we become adults and repeat the same follies that lead to death of ourselves and our communities.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
.
Ah yes.. as an EMT you certainly have seen it all, Pete. Yeah… “None of them were British.” As if it were ok to breathe a sigh of relief… and to the rest, too bad, so sad. On with life.
Good points, but I think reasonable people can discuss and find common ground between mitigating senseless deaths and irresponsible foreign policy…….and securing our Constitutional and civil liberties against those who would erode them.
For sure.. but were not the senseless deaths also those over the last 20 years? In essence, isn’t all death due to warfare senseless? I realize you are a Libertarian, Jeff, and we can certainly discuss those concepts… I absolutely agree regarding the need to challenge government in making foreign policy that puts Americans in danger like Iraq and Afghanistan. As for “protecting” the Constitution itself.. I see it more as keeping to the faith of it.. and that then protects US.. which was the design from the beginning. I would see it as not “protecting from those that want to erode it”, but maintaining a “vigilance” to challenge when appropriate… much like what the ACLU does.
Certainly not all deaths, though some will find it so. Death in the service of defending our country [which we tangibly haven’t done in a very long time] or a sacrifice to save a fellow Citizen(s), is not senseless, in my opinion. Tragic yes.
I’m not sure about ‘protecting our Constitution’, or what that would entail…..I specifically said ‘securing our Constitutional Rights’….because I believe many of them to be under assault by certain domestic parties [often both major parties simultaneously] intent on eroding or nullifying them by specious means.
Interesting your fist paragraph hints at something I’ve been wanting to post about but was giving it more thought. It’s the idea that we haven’t truly been “defending the country” pretty much since WW2. With the departure from Afghanistan we are seeing a myriad of feedback from former military who did serve there and came back with various permanent injuries, and they are now wondering what they sacrificed for. Family members of deceased military also expressing the same concerns… but it seems important for those handicapped by war not to be depressed into suicide.
Now.. to me that would suggest that somewhere during basic training we should be preparing our new troops that their future deployments will not be so much that they are defending the family farm back in Nebraska from some “enemy”… but they are defending American interests as it relates to our foreign policy. Those 50,000+ killed and thousands more crippled in Vietnam were not one bit “defending the our country” from Commies threatening to take over the world.. and the family farm in Nebraska, as much as it was carrying out policy of the day. It’s the nature of the military to always prepare to WIN.. defeat the enemy… go home a hero or a KIA to be remembered in ceremony. Our former military from Afghanistan see our leaving as a military loss to the Taliban… and it’s not one bit surprising that they feel complicit in that loss. We really need to adjust the military mindset in order to give the soldiers a focus to their devotion to service.
If we really wanted to be honest with new Soldiers, we’d let them in on the dirty-little-not-so-secret about corporate interests and how that has steered foreign policy over the years.
I get a little shudder every time I hear or read about someone in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, etc……”fighting for our freedoms”. I get why people internalize the rationalization that our men and women are fighting and dying in countries that many couldn’t find on a globe before it hit the news cycle, and even fewer knew anything about the culture or our history in that region.
I in no way trivialize or defend the heinous attacks against us on 9/11….but Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” should be required reading in every school district across the land.
I had long forgotten about that letter.. looked it up and re-read it. While it certainly illustrates the radical part of Islam.. so does Mein Kampf as it relates to Nazism. Yes.. historical pieces that reflected hate that ultimately changed the course of the world. Not sure stressing those things as required reading in the elementary years.. but certainly later when minds would not be so “inspired”. 🙂
I watched the CNN special last night about or effort in Afghanistan for the last 20 years. It’s being re-run this coming Friday.. I recommend it. Obviously from there you can decide for yourself what you wish to believe is fake news or not. But you are hearing the words direct from the former commanding generals themselves.
@Doug – The letter may represent the most radical parts of Islam….it also represents why we were attacked. That’s been the fundamental problem with our society since 9/11, “we” assigned motivations to the attackers. If someone cannot see how misguided that is, they really have no business commenting on this joke that had been the ‘war on terror’.
I’ve already read much of the transcripts of the CNN special, and it has only reinforced my opinion of all of the US/ISOF commanders…..some good, some horrendous.
Death is terminal. Sorry for me dead is dead regardless the circumstances. Side note….reading multiple comments is difficult to read….I am an old fart simple is a necessity…LOL chuq
Multiple comments are difficult? Is there another option? Sometime threads can go quite long with lots of comments. Is there a setting somewhere? maybe Pete knows