Warzone
It came to me over dinner tonight that there are, in particular, three kinds of people one finds in warzones which one ought to think of shooting. (A warzone is an area of lawlessness mixed with autocratic defeatism disguised as authority. You see them in places like Iraq and Lebanon.)
The three types are, in order of moral reprehensibility:
1. The Scavenger. This is a looter, a ghoul, a despoiler of what isn't locked up, tied down, chained together or possessed by an armed and alert owner. The scavenger is someone who realises that the environment is chaotic and makes use of the situation to hide just out of the corner of the authorities' collective eye, using his quasi-invisibility to find and appropriate that which belongs (or used to belong) to others. No respecter of property, he might make the ideal Marxist, except that even the Marxists would shoot him for taking that which he does not deserve.
2. The Profiteer. This is the misanthrope who enhances his position at the expense of the suffering of his fellow-men. Perhaps 'misanthrope' is the wrong word though, since he loves his fellow-men as a source of ready revenue. He hoards and calculates and helps others only when he can levy a tax which can bring significant gain. If there are people working under him, it isn't benign supervision they're getting, but a bootheel across the neck or a lash across their toiling backs. Some people would call him a Fascist. The Fascists might disagree - violently.
3. The Warmonger. This one is the chaosbringer, the stormcrow, the instigator of bloodletting. Unlike the other two, who benefit from the economics and sociology of the warzone, the warmonger is bent on increasing the size and intensity of the madness. Sometimes, this is deliberate; some warmongers are also profiteers - especially those of the military-industrial complex. Some are researchers looking to make their name by describing and formalising the nature of chaos. Some are politicians. All are Capitalists, some without realising it.
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Sometimes, warzones appear too close to home.
The three types are, in order of moral reprehensibility:
1. The Scavenger. This is a looter, a ghoul, a despoiler of what isn't locked up, tied down, chained together or possessed by an armed and alert owner. The scavenger is someone who realises that the environment is chaotic and makes use of the situation to hide just out of the corner of the authorities' collective eye, using his quasi-invisibility to find and appropriate that which belongs (or used to belong) to others. No respecter of property, he might make the ideal Marxist, except that even the Marxists would shoot him for taking that which he does not deserve.
2. The Profiteer. This is the misanthrope who enhances his position at the expense of the suffering of his fellow-men. Perhaps 'misanthrope' is the wrong word though, since he loves his fellow-men as a source of ready revenue. He hoards and calculates and helps others only when he can levy a tax which can bring significant gain. If there are people working under him, it isn't benign supervision they're getting, but a bootheel across the neck or a lash across their toiling backs. Some people would call him a Fascist. The Fascists might disagree - violently.
3. The Warmonger. This one is the chaosbringer, the stormcrow, the instigator of bloodletting. Unlike the other two, who benefit from the economics and sociology of the warzone, the warmonger is bent on increasing the size and intensity of the madness. Sometimes, this is deliberate; some warmongers are also profiteers - especially those of the military-industrial complex. Some are researchers looking to make their name by describing and formalising the nature of chaos. Some are politicians. All are Capitalists, some without realising it.
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Sometimes, warzones appear too close to home.
etched with acid at 3:45:00 am
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