Everything was going along just fine — until the Europeans learned how to build boats. For the next 300 years, they sailed around the world being total dicks to everybody. They’d show up uninvited at various pristine locations and start cutting down the trees and peeing in the rivers. Then, when the locals, who were invariably running near-utopian civilizations — tidy, peaceful, and cultured — calmly suggested they stop, all hell would break loose. The Europeans would go for their guns (products of the early Military-Industrial Complex) and start shooting people and stealing their best stuff. Somehow, this always came as a complete surprise to indigenous peoples — even though the pattern was repeated over and over for 20 generations (1492 – 1776.). (It should be noted that, although women have always made major contributions to the world, they had absolutely nothing to do with this nasty business and only concerned themselves with the good parts of history.)
In 1776 (although nobody knew it at the time) there was a major shift in world power when a bunch of rich, Virginia farm boys decided they didn’t want to be Europeans anymore: they wanted to be something even nastier – Americans. They succeeded beyond their wildest expectations – but more about that later.
In the rest of the world, things were pretty much status quo. Europeans were running around raping, pillaging, raiding, plundering, exploiting, kicking widows, spitting on orphans and staying awake nights, thinking up other horrible things to do to the planet and the people on it. Eventually, they came up with the Industrial Revolution. Wow! What a game-changer! Suddenly, raping, pillaging, raiding, plundering, exploiting, kicking widows and spitting on orphans wasn’t just a hit-and- miss proposition anymore; it was part of the system. And here’s the nastiest bit! The sneaky bastards called it “capitalism” and convinced the entire world it was a good thing. Anyway, the Military-Industrial Complex loved capitalism the way a French pig loves truffles, and that kicked both systems into high gear. Pretty soon, Europe was spewing arms and ammunition like a freshman at a frat party. But it was a case of too many weapons and nobody left to kill. By the 20th century, Europeans had already fought everybody — including the Maoris, the Nepalese, the Bhutanese and the Ethiopians. There was only one thing left to do: fight with each other. Which leads us to World War I, World War II and Adolf Hitler – the meanest man in history.
But wait! There’s more!
Remember those Virginia farm boys? They’d been hiding out in North America, quietly practicing their own brand of nasty on anybody they could get their mitts on for 150 years. They took one look at the Europeans going at each other, thought, “Hey! Here’s our chance! That Charlie Chaplin lookin’ sucker can’t be that tough.” and proceeded to kick his ass. Suddenly, nasty had a new Numero Uno: America.
So here we are in the 21st century, the peak of human knowledge and social understanding, with a bunch of problems created by dead Europeans and America is busy making them worse.
The End
Disclaimer: Folks! – please! Before you send me that email questioning my knowledge, my ancestry and my sanity, remember: this is satire! It’s meant to lampoon simple interpretations of complex problems.
We can win the War on Terror but, quite honestly, I don’t think we have the stomach for it yet. Remember, we live in a society were mere discussion can send us scurrying for our “safe space.” A society that issues warnings on innocuous television programs and needs trigger words to alert us to the possibility of distasteful conversation. We live in a society where the most heinous crime of all is offending someone. Personally, I think we’re quite content to battle evil with flowers and teddy bears and candlelight vigils in some sort of sad celebration of a moral victory. It’s ’cause we believe moral victories are the bestest ones and that the institutions which guarantee us the leisure to celebrate them (or whatever) are unassailable. These are adolescent assumptions and they’re wrong. So until we grow up and deal with terrorism like adults, the body counts are going to mount. But what the hell — maybe somebody’s listening.
There is no “why” for the murderous violence in Paris. I’m sick of the excuses. No amount of poverty, unemployment, Islamophobia, neo-colonialism, “he hit me, first,” corporate greed, cheap oil or anything else ad infinitum, can justify this crime against humanity. It’s like trying to find out why a rape victim was asking for it. No, there is no pie-in-the-sky “why.” There’s only the reality. And we, in the West, better start living in the real world or our children, and our children’s children, and their children are going to be mopping up blood on the Rue Mouffetard, de Kalverstraat, Hackescher Markt, Times Square, Piccadilly Circus etc. etc. etc. forever.
WD Fyfe 