Shedding Blood for All the Right Reasons

Dear George,

One of the more telling differences between the Left and the Right is the nature of their barbarity. The beauty of the institutionalized paranoia that has been the bedrock of America’s foreign policy since the end of World War II is that it has been a bipartisan effort.

What distinguishes the violence perpetuated by the Left from that of the Right is that the Left needs a humanitarian patina to justify its slaughter, while the Right needs none. The Left kills to advance freedom; the Right kills to expand and secure markets.

In the end, a dead child is dead, no matter how noble or base the motive that dropped the bomb.

Both Left and Right need perceived threats to kill. The Left believes its monsters are real; the Right, in its heart of hearts, knows that its monsters are bullshit.

The Right understands that your Global War on Terror (GWOT) in nothing more than an exercise to continue lining the pockets of America’s Defense Contractors. The Left believes it to be a “just war.”

The Right is infatuated with naked power, the left, with virtuous power. The color of the blood spilled by both is the same. However, virtue gives the blood spilled in its name a nobility not found in the blood spilled for profit.

The beauty of aggression, be it of the Left or the Right, is that it provokes resistance that can be labeled “terrorism” or “insurgency,” or with whatever “label of the month” has traction.

The biggest difference between the two is that the Left tries to bring the benefits of civilization to the native. The Left kills to make the native a little Whiteman draped in brown skin. In other words, the Left does not hesitate to destroy the native in order to save him. Salvation has always been a wonderful rationale for slaughter.

The Right, on the other hand, is satisfied as long as its raw materials continue to pour out of the conquered land.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones