Casey's+Reflections


 * America and War: **

It is difficult to find a time in history when America was not involved in some sort of war, whether it be the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam, or Iraq. One would think that after suffering through so many that America - or at least more people living here - would begin to have an aversion to war, to be more interested in finding peaceful solutions to both internal and international solutions before resulting to violence. And yet it seems to me that through the ages, war has remained in the eyes of many an acceptable, even necessary, part of the human condition. I simply ask: why? America, and the world, have seen a countless number of wars and armed conflicts that have brought destruction, despair, and death to millions, if not billions of people, wars that often ended in stale mate or resulted in creating more problems than originally existed. While everybody seems to agree that war is bad, very few, especially those involved in the government, the war-making machine, ever seem to question the necessity of war. Every year, billions of dollars are poured into military spending, invested in ways to make killing and maiming cheaper and more efficient. The amount of money that has been poured into the unjust Iraq War is equivalent to the amount that one would have if he spent $4 million every day since Jesus was born. While I refuse to consider this outlook on war and military spending an acceptable one - indeed, I am a pacifist - I sadly see very little to indicate that there will be any type of national shift even slightly toward a pacifist mindset anywhere in the near future.  America and (Corporate) Greed:

While greed itself may be a normal human trait that is not restricted to Americans, there is no other nation in the world that has earned itself such a notorious reputation for consumerism, materialism, and greed as America. When many of us think of greed in the context of today, we probably think about all of the corporate scandals that have surfaced in recent past years regarding CEO's and top executives stealing billions of dollars from their companies and employees. In a society where the economy is in shambles and foreclosures are destroying people's lives, it is sickening to think that men who stole millions of dollars from their companies and employees to literally build a golf course in their back yard are getting off with little or no jail time. While compared to the entire American population, the number of individuals guilty of such greed is almost nothing, the amount of wealth that they have stolen and the amount of damage that they have caused to the lives of their employees is unfathomable.

 America, the First Amendment, and the Outside Agitator:

One of the most indelible traits about America is its stance on freedom of speech and the right to protest. Despite America's said dedication to the First Amendment, it seems that every time in history when the First Amendment was really tested that America failed to protect it. The government did everything it could to quash protests of the Vietnam War in the 60's and 70's. The trend that I noticed regarding the First Amendment throughout America's history is that the greatest and most important elements of social change almost always came as the result of a minority who the government attempted to stifle because their view was different from the social norms of their time, and so I did my best to choose quotes and images that I thought exemplified this pattern.

America and Religion:

America has always had a love affair with religion, namely, Christianity. Religion (not only Christianity, but the entire existence of religion as a whole) has done more evil to the world than any other institution in history. Despite the fact that some people may find religion a consoling thing to help them get through life, any amount of goodness it has actually done is nothing compared to the amount of death and destruction that has resulted from religious conflict since the beginning of time. There is supposedly a separation of Church and State in this country, and yet the Pledge of Allegiance includes the words "one nation under God." The founding fathers themselves almost unanimously agreed that religion as an institution was completely detrimental to mankind. The phrase "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. If we hold the founding fathers in such high esteem, why when it comes to religion have we so blatantly disregarded everything they said on the topic? The founding fathers believed that blindly following religion would lead to the total stagnation of society, and yet there are many American politicians who advocate for mandated school prayer. Donald Rumsfeld cited the Bible in justifying the war in Iraq. Today, Religion is used as a cloak for bigotry - we see this playing out especially in the issue of Gay marriage. When the founding fathers wrote the Constitution, they had no intention of the United States becoming a Christian republic, but today it seems like we are dangerously close to travelling down that path.