Climate of the Innocent

From Independent headline: Cheney 'created climate for US war crimes'. "A leading aide to the former secretary of state Colin Powell has accused Vice-President Dick Cheney of creating the climate in which prisoner abuse could flourish, and implied that he might have committed war crimes."

As much as I dislike Dick "The Sneer" Cheney the above sort of headline and story disgusts me as much. No one man "created a climate" for "abuse to flourish." You wanna know what has produced this abuse/torture kill kill criminal mentality? We the people.

Decades of an educational system that does no more than draw funds for a population of teachers who want only a steady paycheck and days in Wal-Mart. Not to mention teachers who seduce students or convince them to murder a husband who has become inconvenient. A federally funded warehouse with babysitters, where smoking dope and the kids having sex on the school bus are ignored by the driver because he feels he isn't paid enough to care that much.

Decades of parents who think parenting includes doping the kids as society says it's okay. Children who will slaughter classmates or the rest of the family for a little attention, or to see if they can feel anything beyond the numbness of too much of nothing too often, which mom and dad work so hard to give them.

Decades of desensitization through the media. Decades of children exposed to print and video violence (and often violence at home). Decades of dry-f*cking, prime time, late night, daytime, programming and ads - so endemic one would have to be dead to escape the feel good do it message.

Communities pretending they offer everything but are all show and no substance, where neighbors can lie dead for days before anyone notices. Neighborhoods where success is measured by making someone else look bad. Employers and employees who don't hesitate to get over on one another because they feel they deserve whatever they can get away with.

A society more interested in the latest manufactured pop celebrity or the pinched pursed lips of Bruce Willis posturing on Iraq. Group think, where too many think seeking truth is finding other mules braying the same theory, to validate whatever head-in-ass concept they adopted this year. Everyone convinced they're well-informed, because they have a 6th grade reading level and tune in to Fox, CNN and the internet.

Cheney alone didn't "create the climate." A sadistic, shallow, self-absorbed nation of rotten kiddie-adults living on their urges did, and did so lucratively, knowingly, and willingly. But what the hay, if the country can believe Cheney "created" the climate, we the people, as usual, are not responsible. Dick made US do it.