2005-05-01
Fraudulent Labeling
Many of us in this country seem to require a simplistic view of events or ideas in order to be able to make decisions regarding those events or ideas. We must be presented with black vs. white choices in order to make up our minds. Nuanced choices are too confusing for our non-abstract minds to handle. We can only think “one thing at a time” and have great difficulty making generalizations from one event or idea to another or in seeing similarities or differences between various events or ideas.
To make things easier for ourselves, we assign labels to events and ideas. Those labels soon become substitutes for the events and ideas themselves and any shades of grey are transformed thereby into black or white, right or wrong, good or bad, wise or stupid.
It’s so easy to be simple-minded. It saves one the bother of thinking. You just have to follow the labels without any further thought. Better to vote Republican or Democrat because your father did, than to think about issues or principles. Thinking in terms of “ragheads,” “gooks,” “kikes,” “wops”, “dagoes,” “spics,” “jesus freaks,” “frogs,” “niggers” and “krauts,” gives us more time to enjoy the better things in life such as killing, raping, plundering, cheating, and going to the ball game.
Labelling pervades our lives in much subtler ways also. I remember being on the Standing Committee of a church, a liberal Unitarian church, at that, and having a discussion about salaries of the church employees. When it came to discussing the salary of the church organist, one of our group piped up “oh, we don’t need to worry about her salary, she’s an introvert.” Meaning, of course, that being an introverted person, she would never ask for a raise.
Labeling is insidious. It operates subtly, even at our most basic levels of discourse and even among relatively perceptive people.
Here in Massachusetts, the governor, Willard Romney, has become locked in a debate with challenger (2006 gubernatorial election) Attorney General Thomas Reilly about the death penalty. The front page of the Boston Globe (April 30) has an account of their differences. As in other localities, “death penalty” has become a label used as a “shortcut” for describing a prison sentence. When we think of “death penalty,” we think of prisoners incarcerated for murder.
Also, in Massachusetts, as in most states, “right to life” has become a label synonymous with the “sanctity of the unborn.” When we think of “right to life,” religious and moral judgments concerning abortion and terms of pregnancy come to mind.
Returning to the Boston Globe, on the same front page mentioned above is a large photo of damage wrought by one of several bombing attacks in Iraq (April 29) that caused the deaths of up to 50 people.
Looking at that page, I wonder how many Globe readers confronted with that particular page made any mental leaps from the Reilly-Romney death penalty debate - to the right to life conundrum - to the bombings in Iraq?
Surprise quiz inserted here for ordinary citizens, college sophomores, high level government officials and interested clergy:
1. Describe the similarities and differences between being an innocent person imprisoned for murder and possibily facing the death penalty and being an innocent resident of Baghdad and being faced with the possibility of death from a bomb, whether from a terrorist or from forces of an invading country? Discuss death penalty and “right-to-life” issues involved. Focus on “labelling” as it applies to this question. 30 min. 33pts.
2. In America, we have a significant number of people who for various reasons (religious, moral, rational) support the “right to life” of the unborn and who also voted for the war in Iraq. Given the fact that the war in Iraq has resulted in the deaths of over 1200 American soldiers, the injuries of thousands of other American soldiers and the deaths of as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians, discuss the religious, moral and rational aspects of the “right to life” of the already born as compared with the unborn. Discuss labelling as it applies to this question. 30 min. 33 pts.
At this time, another labelled issue that has profound moral implications and is circulating on the Internet but not in the popular media, is “depleted uranium” or “DU.” [Sheila Samples, one of our Participating Authors, discusses this topic at greater length in her article in this issue of FiatluxRedux.]
Briefly summarizing from Samples’article, DU:
* is radioactive waste left over from manufacturing nuclear fuel and bombs
* is 1.7 times heavier than lead and has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
* is given free to weapons manufacturers to incorporate in bullets and bombs
* burns intensely and releases Uranium Oxide in form of microsize particles that are inhaled or ingested from air or dust
* gets into lungs; one particle is equivalent to having one X-ray per hour for life
* is impossible to remove from lungs; individual is gradually irradiated
* effects can be transmitted to children in form of still births, birth defects, leukemia, damaged central nervous systems and other cancers
* kills and maims. Of 580,400 US Gulf War I soldiers, 11,000 are now dead. Currently, more than half of those who served in Gulf War I have permanent medical problems.
The same Tush administration that has been denying that there is such a thing as global warming is now also denying the terrible effects of DU on humans. Other nations have outlawed DU, but the United States apparently is willing to sacrifice its soldiers in order to satisfy the insatiable demand of Bush and associates for oil. Meanwhile, the effects of DU keep adding up. Now, our children, led by their noses to war by the government’s propaganda machine, and, often, by parents who should know better, not only are at risk from all kinds of enemy gunfire and bombs, but also by DU given to them as part of the very same armaments they have to protect themselves. The kids can’t possibly win. They can win the war but lose their health or even their lives and the lives of their children yet to come to DU. The effects of the DU particles inhaled by our sons and daughters may not become evident for years, but when increased birth defects start to occur with increased frequency among the children of the Iraq veterans who do return, it will be too late to do anything about it. It is already too late for those who have been exposed. And the government will demand more, given its insatiable yearning for the bodies of our young. We know well of late the results of insatiable desires by old men for the bodies of our young. Apparently both war and religion light the fires of greed and lust.
This leads us to our third and final quiz question:
3. Go to the World Wide Web and find everything you can find about Depleted Uranium. Summarize it. Then, given what you now know, discuss in detail the moral implications of using DU in weapons and relate this to the religious concept of “Right to Life of the unborn” and the concept of “Right to Life of the already born.” Discuss the moral contradictions, if any, between a person’s believing in “right to life of the unborn” while, at the same time, advocating war and the use of DU by our already born soldiers. 30 min. 34 pts.
Bonus points will be awarded for neatness.
