Re: upheavals in England, 1640 - 1848

[malecki@xxxxxxxxxx (Robert Malecki)]

>
>Rahul writes (truncated version):
>
>>Still, it
>>doesn't take much perspicacity to discern that certain attitudes are
>>prevalent in some societies, rare in others. Obviously, it's an
>>environmentally determined effect, not a genetically determined one. An
>>American is much more likely, in my experience, to try to justify an act of
>>butchery committed abroad by his government than a citizen of almost any
>>other country. I state a fact. One can speculate about the reasons for that
>>fact, the most obvious of which is government propaganda, but any
>>explanation which invokes only the coercion of the elite and not the
>>compliance of the masses, is only a half-truth.
>
>If you mean that certain societies, for some unspecified reasons, are
>incapable of commiting heinous acts in parellel situations where certain
>conditions are present that provoked similar heinous acts by other
>societies, then I would have to disagree.    My own family, on my mother's
>side,  is descended from the Possomoquoddy Indians (originally from
>northeastern Canada).    They migrated into northern Maine several hundred
>years ago, driving out or killing or enslaving the original inhabitants.
>Three hundred years later, the English and French did the same to them.
>What's the difference?   This was replicated hundreds of times throughout
>the Americas, from 500 AD through 1890.
>
>Brutish acts in brutish societies have their parellel, to a greater or
>lesser extent, in all societies.   Hitler intended the deaths of millions of
>people to accomplish the ends of German national imperialism.    The US has
>always accepted that millions of deaths were necessary to promote its own
>interests worldwide.    We have a much more sophisticated elan to our
>killings (along with a wonderfully compliant media).  They give us our cover
>to commit our crimes for the sake of altruistic ends.    The Possomoquoddys
>originally killed off their elderly by pushing them out to sea on ice
>floats.    The European's more gradual methods of elimination, through
>starvation or disease,  were arguably more humane.    Yet the same ends were
>met.    Did this make them more humane?   I suspect not.
>
>It is not the brutality of this or that society that can be isolated,
>singled out and condemned, any more than it is the "offensive" or
>"defensive" character of a war or conflict;  it is the nature of the change
>being sought and resisted.    All societies, yours and mine alike, have the
>drenching blood of untold masses on their hands.   It is, in my view,
>pointless to define this or that society as causing more or less pain to
>more or less people, resulting somehow from racial or cultural differences.
>Similar conditions will produce similar results.    Our tasks as Marxists is
>to study and define societies as they heretofore exist and the historical
>processes that will lead to a more facilitative, humane society where the
>premises for much of mankind's brutality will be erased.
>
Godena, I agree with the above...

malecki in exile

Stop acting like a knight in shiny armour. It exposes you on the women,s
question....




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