Human antipathy to murder is hard-wired.
Consider murder mystery novels, TV forensic dramas, sensational
news stories, and political murder (assassination). Discovering
and prosecuting the guilty, "bringing them to justice" is the goal.
Exploring and analyzing antecedents and psychopathology may be
undertaken by a few, typically writers and intellectuals. When noticed
at all by the public, such critics tend to be summarily marginalized as
apologists.
Combined with this antipathy, murder satisfies the human animal's
instinctive "blood lust", the desire for revenge, scape-goating, and
means to legitimize murder itself (for example, war patriotism).
The curse of Cain, Freud's bestial Id, the Oedipal complex, the
survival instinct, all of these touch upon a need to escape mundane
existence.
Survival mechanisms, developed in homo sapiens over
evolutionary millennia, are frustrated by civilization. The theme of
murder and its tribal taboo provide highly useful sublimations. The
very phrase, "murder will out" has persisted in our literature
since its Chaucerian 14th Century inception.
Thousands of men and women were murdered on September 11, 2001.* The
adjective, "innocent", significantly added, results in "innocent men
and women". This serves to convey and reinforce a message that, unlike
the eagerly anticipated fate of the guilty murderer, their demise was
undeserved. Justice and revenge become inseparable in capital punishment.
When times are financially tough and government fails to provide
goodies, citizens in a democracy simply fall prey to new demagogues
who repeat the invocation to "good" government. This pendulum swings
back and forth as politicians pander to their constituents, lie,
promise, and behave expediently, sacrificing long-term solutions for
short-term personal benefit. Mencken sarcastically
found this spectacle "incomparably amusing" although his sadness was
palpable.
At least four-fifths of humanity lacks both interest and ability with
abstractions and, therefore, has very little grasp of political
philosophy and economic theory. Consequently, most citizens are reluctant
to propose systemic changes. However, what they can grasp easily,
emotionally, and with vicarious enjoyment, is cold-blooded murder. The
terrible video images of human beings falling to their deaths from upper
floors of the World Trade Center buildings can never be erased mentally.
Persons, having been conditioned to look toward government for material
benevolence, will never grasp the chimerical nature of good government.
However, as the banker-run U.S. government fails to maintain minimal economic
stability and is also shockingly discovered to be the real 911 murderer,
Americans will demand that the government be systemically replaced.
As new government is inevitably created we may work for term-limits,
criminalization of bribery (lobbying), elimination of private monetary
control (federal reserve system), restoration
of civil rights (Amendments 1-10), decentralization of authority (Amendment 10), repeal of the abusive personal income tax,
and separation of political and commercial control of the public's mainline media
(TV and newspapers).
The truth of 911 is the catalyst to re-launch on our continent Jefferson's
currently failing experiment in self-government.