Justice and Peace -- Where Can America Go Now?
by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

I am writing this only two hours after President Biden’s Inauguration. I feel hugely relieved that the long waiting game is finished, and that there is no need, starting today, for us to form into two opposing camps. We can think fresh thoughts!

We’ve had three terrible presidents so far in the 21st Century. All of them (Trump not excepted) were controlled by someone higher up, to whom they yielded our birthright.

Please believe me when I say that most Americans do not know that. Being in denial has been the response to “fear itself” ever since 9-11. Maybe that can now lessen.

To start, let me apologize for speaking of Americans as if they are saviors of the world. We are not very good saviors, judging from the record. Still, many around the world have looked to us for inspiration. And with good reason – we had a lovely “I’ll ride my high horse to victory” mentality.

I still have that mentality. When you get it before the age of 12 you can’t get rid of it. Moreover, I sharpened it up later by ransacking a thousand sources to find any support for ... um...er... “goodness potential.”

Justice

The benediction-giver at today’s inaugural ceremony, Rev Dr Silvester Beaman, spoke – or should I say shouted – about a goodness future. Thank you, Rev Beaman. It’s ‘down to you,’ as we say in Australia, that I penned the words “Justice and Peace” in this article’s title.

That’s a new one on me! I almost always start with the concepts of law and power -- that’s my prejudice -- law is great and I love to see law smack power.

“But let’s face it, Mary, besides being a prejudice, it’s also your limitation. It takes your eye off of personal relations and many other human feelings.”

OK, OK. I get it. So what is justice? Instead of thinking of a “court” meting it out (as my ready-to-be-sloughed off prejudice leads me to do), we can bring it down to the level of emotions. You just know when someone has treated you unjustly. Your body reacts. “It’s not fair!” “He’s being mean.” “I don’t deserve that, after all I have done for her!”

There is plenty of injustice around. It is inherent in the human condition, apparently. But in recent decades, it got to be a game for its own sake. Gaslighting is policy! (Tavistock policy type thing.) Indeed, causing people to be hurt within the family is also an inflicted policy, as anyone familiar with Family Court knows.

Injustice also happens in prisons, perhaps simply because no one is looking. That is to say, meanness is readily available in the human repertoire. Still, there are many situations in which mercy and love are the dominant themes. That is to say, humans are caring and kind.

Dr Day’s Daydreams

Can we make kindness more prevalent than meanness? Don’t worry, I am not going to say “government will do it.” But government could stay its hand from the Dr Richard Day program, could it not?

Dr Day, emissary and reaction-tester from Rockefeller headquarters, said bridges would be built sloppily to cause injury – what a cheek! He said crime would be arranged so as to create slums. We can put paid to that -- it’s ridiculous.

Dr Day famously warned “Everything is in place and nothing can stop us now.” Nonsense! Balderdash! Mouse excrement! Dr Day graduated from med school; he shouldn’t have been such a nitwit. Sixty-one years later everything is blatantly NOT in place.

And the covert-operators, on whom Day depended, have become outstandingly substandard. Only a few are persuaded by psy-ops anymore. Witness the Capitol psy-op of January 6, 2021. Zheesh!

Witness the naked Tamerlan Tsarnaev, after Boston’s Marathon bombing, prancing around on a CNN screen at 1:05am after he had been killed (not to mention dragged by a car) at 12.35am. Their efforts are pathetic.

Dr Day predicted in 1969 that little girls won’t use baby dolls anymore (implying that Rocky’s contacts at toy manufacturers would see to that). I guess Day was never a little girl himself, or even a young female monkey, or he’d know that they can pick up any object, or just air, and pretend it’s a baby.

Honest, how silly can these billionaires be?

Let’s just believe in the love part of us, and not fall for the stories that we are Destined For Evil.

By the way, for those who are still thinking Donald Trump is a nice guy, consider his willingness to go against the pleas of millions of decent persons worldwide, for clemency for whistleblower Julian Assange, and yet pardon the Blackwater contractors who had mercilessly killed Iraqis.

What about Peace?

I have randomly opened to a page in the 2006 book, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, by the late historian Chalmers Johnson. He quotes a Japanese editor Koji Taira:

“Okinawans have learned the built-in weakness of Japan through endless failed or ignored petitions for the reduction and eventual closure of the US Military bases in Okinawa. ...The Marines believe they are above the law and can do anything with impunity.”

That was page 171. By page 173, Johnson moves onto the way we damage the environment when we build bases. (Note: we are currently wrecking Melville Bay in Australia’s Northern Territory). He quotes US commander Gen BB Bell responding to complaints in South Korea about dumped munitions polluting a river. (Reader, you’d better reach for a barf towel here). The General announced:

“It’s fair to say that we loved this land and its people enough to die for it. [OMG, OMG]. To state now that we have been irresponsible stewards of Korean land ... is a charge that hurts my heart.”

We don’t have to do that, you know. It’s not set in concrete that the military will ruin land. Even stateside, this happens a lot on bases, and if a whistleblowing soldier yelps, he gets punished.

And folks reject him. We don’t have to do that either. It is not an Iron Law of Physics that a decent culture, as the US presumably is, has to despise truth tellers.

See? Same as with the baby dolls. We can let nature takes its course. People actually love to gossip and it’s extra fun when it pins blame. We should get over the mental restriction that makes us stop gossiping if the wrongdoer is our government and/or our military.

Let’s have a national Sorry Day (how about May 20 -- nice weather). On that day, any American citizen who feels so inclined gets up on a soap box and apologizes for all the pain we cause overseas. Easy peasy. Go on, try it.

Note: I portray a “citizen” on that soapbox, not an official. Canada and Australia have made full-blown parliamentary apologies to Indigenous peoples, that were far from sincere. (I do think there’s an Iron Law of Physics against international “sincerity.” See my 1990 book, Morality among Nations.)

Killing the World’s Heritage

The above items about putrid behavior by the US in Japan, Australia, and Korea, do not even touch upon the horrors of war. Is it asking too much for the folksies of ‘Murika’ to let it be known that we don’t want war?

The people of Japan used to be able to be a force against violence. India has a long cultural tradition of comity with other nations. In the UAE, there is a Minister for Tolerance. Our Marines hymn actually says “First to fight for right and freedom and to keep our honor clean....” Whew.

Now for a word about a side-effect of war – the destruction of civilization’s landmarks.

Academics in the US value the world’s store of old books, ancient works of art, and treasures found in archaeological digs, right? Here is another quote from Chalmers Johnson’s 2006 book. In the used copy of Nemesis that I bought, this page (p 46) seems to have been more frequently caressed than others:

“[There is] the world's patrimony. Before our invasion of Afghanistan, we condemned the Taliban for their dynamiting of third century A.D. Buddhist statues. [The] barbarism involved in their destruction blazed in headlines and horrified commentaries in our country....

“The best-known of the civilizations that make up Iraq's cultural heritage are the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Sassanids, and Muslims. On April 10, 2003, President Bush acknowledged that the Iraqi people are ‘the heirs of a great civilization that contributes to all humanity.’

“Only two days later, under the complacent eyes of the U.S. Army, the Iraqis would begin to lose that heritage in a swirl of looting and burning....

Peace, As in Actual Peace

What does the word ‘Peace’ conjure up to you? Turning one’s back on war?

I almost never write on the subject of peace, as I think that portrayals of one nation warring against another are false. I accept the extremely cynical position that, since perhaps 1770, wars are arranged secretly by a few top individuals, globally. National leaders, either aware or unaware of that fact, may go along with war-making.

Thus, I haven’t encouraged people to “feel peaceful towards other countries,” as I don’t see that their loving input would matter. But today’s Inauguration speech by Rev Beaman made me flash back to my recently deceased friend Trish Fotheringham, who was forever trying to explain to me that what the individual does has a worldwide effect.

I now capitulate to Trish. The United States citizens, melting-pot creatures that they are, can “emanate” peace. They can intensify it as a value. And of course they can articulate the unacceptability of supporting a cruel bombing spree.

They can say No to the wiping out of a city such as Fallujah, or the torture of prisoners of war. The latter is something that we are now very famous for -- Americans are the ‘champs’ of torture, thanks to Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

I am not sure Trish Fotheringham’s method will work – but two other factors are already working to some extent. One is the fact that soldiers don’t want to do that sort of thing. It’s morally repulsive. Their own lives get destroyed by it, they say.

The other helpful factor is the recent education of the public, via the Internet, as to the aforementioned global control of war. That should make Americans resist taking the blame for much of the carnage that the world now blames on us. Our men and weapons
are being used by unaccountable forces.

Love, Peace, and Self-Interest “We’re All in It”

Finally, there is a new avenue for change. It is now plain to many people that the Lockdown for Covid could only have been organized from the top. Even if a citizen has never heard of conspiracy theory, he or she would make some kind of mental note about the similarity of protests occurring in London, Berlin, and Melbourne.

Sure, the plan is for us to buckle under to One World Government and thus be “equal” to all people in the world. But that is not attractive to anyone, since the buckling down means you will be impoverished, demeaned, and controlled.

A different reaction is that of solidarity. This is already happening. Doctors who disagree with the pandemic are reaching out to one another across the seas. Hence, a few Top Bosses of the world can’t continue on the basis of only a few resisters in each country. A universal force is rising.

Uneasy lies the head that wears the biggie, biggie crown. And if that person has bodyguards galore, who’s to say they will be faithful?

Amnesty

There is one subject Rev Beaman was not going to touch with a ten-foot pole, or as we say in Australia, a 40-foot barge pole. Namely, the guilt of many of the people who were near his podium or elsewhere in the bleachers. Boy, are they guilty of many horrible sins.

The Rev did use the word ‘reconcile,’ which is very important. I also heard him say that it apples whether you are left, right, liberal, conservative, “or from any political Party.” It rang so true at this particular Inauguration. It was quite moving.

I recommend we (citizens, not DoJ personnel!) start to set up a scheme for amnestizing anyone in government who wants to turn over a new leaf. You know there’ve got to be many of those.

Where can America go now? It can go back to its own ideals of justice. It can be caring and open to what others need. It can stop collecting arrows to sling at the other political party. (Talk about a waste of community energy!)

Our dear nation can experience the relief of issuing some forgiveness.

Hey, why not?

--Mary W Maxwell lives in New Hampshire and writes for GumshoeNews.com in Australia. Pleasse visit her website for free book downloads: ConstutionAndTruth.com