Pointing the finger but ...

… three are pointing back at ourselves!

The problem, as I see it, as that we always see ourselves as so virtuous, so very angelic, so very right. We always see ourselves as God’s gift to humanity, as our way of life as being so good and our political system so perfect it must be forced on the pagans in their darkness and unbelief.

Our culture, based for many centuries on the Bible and Judeo/Christian values must prevail throughout the world.  It alone is true and every other faith and way of doing things is plain false or, at least, less than the best.

And, then, when the Lord says go into all the world to make disciples of every nation, this gives us further reason to get every other tribe and nation to renounce/repent of their false faith and their incorrect way of doing things and to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ and democracy and education for girls.

Knowing this, it is hardly surprising that the Christians see Islam as another false faith and regard godless Communism as also evil - both to be defeated by a belief that the ends justify the means.  Therefore, as that born again believer, GW Bush said when President in 2001, in the wake of 9/11, the righteous West must conduct "a crusade" against the forces of darkness that is all things Muslim and Islamic.

First, it was thoroughly nasty Nazism that came out of a democratic and Christian nation; then Communism that came out of a totalitarian and oppressive loving nation; now, it is vicious Islam that speaks of violence and of killing as many unbelievers as they have time for (or, so we mistakenly think!).

Yet, what is our track record like when it comes to being ever onward Christian soldiers marching as to war and, far too often, actually to war?  Absolutely abysmal … !

Humanity is such a disgrace on the face of this poor planet that the sooner the ecocide madness we are indulging in is concluded the better!  The planet will go merrily on its way without the burden of 7 billion people all fighting each other for supremacy and domination of the other, for the remaining resources, water and fertile land.

Bringing freedom, democracy and Western culture to those who don't know better

There is nothing wrong with us all (very nearly) voting for the war parties (doing it and fueling it) while our votes keep the war well away from our shores.  While we don't get killed, we must carry on supporting our heroes when they return in either body bags or upright, regardless of how many they have killed in defending us in foreign lands, on distant shores, thousands of miles away.

Let them carry on sorting out these weak, war torn and sorry countries so that they take on board our right and good way of doing things.

Of course, the West won the war against Western Nazism, next we won it against Soviet Communism and got them to introduce our capitalism.  We never beat Chinese communism but we just got them to introduce capitalism, anyway.  And, without bringing our capitalism down the barrel of a gun, like Mao tse Tung tried to do with his revolution!  Now we are winning the war against those Muslim terrorists who think they can challenge our Western, Christian presence on their holy Muslim soil.  We pay their masters good money for making much better use of their gas and oil than they would ever do!

It simply boils down to the fact that what we do - violent or not - is always morally right and our enemies violent opposition is always morally wrong.  We are the virtuous West against the Islamic terrorists.  The West just can't help being the winners, all along the way - at the expense of the rest of poor humanity!!

The West is simply best.

Skyfall-ing in

The most spectacular and the most impossible to nod off Bond film ever.  In the process, perhaps, the film with the world's worst driving!

'Skyfall' underlines the status quo, so that the next generation is brought up 'right'.  It passes on our society's established values, attitudes and beliefs, over recent centuries, that are not the most worthy - of getting our way by coercion, force and, astonishingly, the slaughter of the innocents (this latter is not in the Bond films).

I think the films reinforce our Western predilection for such things that has been at the heart of too much European life for centuries of going out to conquer and dominate other countries.  All this, even after the Europeans' world wars that finally brought them up short to unite in peace between themselves.  Such a pity that the European's non-violence between themselves did not spread to leaving other countries well alone, too.

We had twenty children killed in Connecticut a few days ago;
twenty thousand children in our 13 years War of Terrorism;
even, many more than that, in the War on Communism in SE Asia between 1945 and 1975.
The Bond films nurture our Western ways for such things, to ensure they are passed on to the next and succeeding generations.  The general media message is: enemies are essential but, making and keeping friends with those who do things differently from us - other cultures, religious beliefs, political systems and traditions - is not so essential.

The film glorifies and promotes behaviour that we are not meant to indulge in - from speeding over roof tops breaking every imaginable speed limit, even sending old ladies flying on pedestrian crossings, to blowing up a beautiful old and isolated Scottish mansion.  It also continues the silent, imperceptible, so easily absorbed indoctrination of us all that we have very dangerous enemies of the State and that attack, aggression and violence is the only way - to get them before they get us.  Therefore, we cannot possibly abandon our love affair with guns and grenades, rifles and bombs - even when the sky falls in on the New England families of the latest killings.  We are subconsciously inculcated with this drivel via entertainment, of which fifty years of Bond is the most popular.

 It is totally incomprehensible for us that our invading, attacking and occupying of other countries might make them so ungrateful that they turn into our enemies and try and hit back.  Indeed, quite outrageous for them wanting to harm us.  We can't have them defending their lands and resources from us.  Or, of letting them be so un-Christian (or un-Muslim) as to show revenge on us.

Never mind - "Man is God's greatest work."  (Sister Wendy Beckett on Desert Island Discs 16.12.2012.)  She could not possibly have meant the nation's greatest role model.  Could she?  What does Sister Wendy make of 007?