The dictionary defines brave as ’possessing or showing courage.’ We all should know that any soldier, placed into a situation where imminent death is possible, must be looked upon as being brave, no matter what the circumstances. Thus, in this writer’s mind, however terrible the action or motive may be, soldiers of an occupying army can and do exhibit bravery . . . by just having to be in that hornet’s nest. Of course, the people that are being occupied and decide to ‘fight back,’ against great odds, must also be deemed to be brave. This conundrum has never and will never go away.
Is the local police officer, who must enter a dark doorway where shots had been fired a few minutes earlier, braver? How about someone like a Bradley Manning, who risked not only his career but his very future as a free man to let the world know of the lies and crimes that our leaders have perpetrated? Eric Snowden, is he braver as well, to once again let the treachery out of the bag? Go back to Daniel Ellsberg and his whistleblowing of the lies and dirty deeds about Vietnam, was he braver?
Then we come to a man like George Zimmerman, who carried a loaded weapon while pursuing a 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Was he braver, knowing he had this deathblow residing on his hip as he scuffled with the youth? Was it braver of George Zimmerman to fire the deadly bullet into the heart of the teen, perhaps, (I say perhaps because no one but Zimmerman knows the real story) the kid was getting the best of him in a fair fistfight?
We live in a society whereupon our moral compass has been totally skewed. Our nation used preemptive means to attack and then occupy a sovereign nation, an action that to many was both illegal and immoral. We destroyed not only Iraq’s heart and soul, but that of its citizens through our smart bombs which devastated Iraq’s infrastructure and its drinking water, medicine, nutritious food. Our young military personnel are celebrated as heroes and liberators here back home. When some of them conduct overkill and random acts of terror upon innocent families . . . Our media and most Americans simply look the other way. Is not that what the Sanford police did as the dead body of young Trayvon Marin’s laid there for hours after the fact? They released George Zimmerman because he said it was self-defense. No witnesses came forth to either agree with or repudiate Mr. Zimmerman’s claims . . . so . . . Let him go home. How brave he must have been to disregard the instructions of the police dispatcher and continue to follow his ‘suspect’ as he called young Martin . . . All with his loaded gun in his hip. How brave a man was George!
The warrior mindset is alive and well in America . . . Especially in the Deep South!
Philip A Farruggio is son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He is a free lance columnist (found on TheSleuthJournal.com, Information Clearing house, Op Ed News, Dandelion Salad, Activist Post, Dissident Voice and many other sites worldwide). Philip works as an environmental products sales rep and has been an activist leader since 2000. In 2010 he became a local spokesperson for the 25% Solution Movement to Save Our Cities by cutting military spending 25%. Philip can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net.
Good points Philip! Trayvon’s death won’t be in vain, it’ll be examined and reexamined for many years to come. I also give many thanks to all the Mannings’, Assanges’, and Snowdens’ coming forward at this time, doing their soul driven work. We’re in the Age of Revelations, and people will have more and more abhorrent truths revealed to them, from all angles, and walks of life…whether their ready or not. I’ve never been a flag waver or burner; I believe in good will towards all men, women, and children…regardless of the geographic location of their birth; blind obedience to a piece of cloth, absent of an individual moral compass…IS DANGEROUS!
There were no eyewitnesses. They were both career punks who played a cat-and-mouse game that ended as such. The jury had to pick one or the other. End of story.
Good article. Excellent points on bravery. Several of my friends and co-workers in the 1960s had come back from COMBAT situations in Vietnam. They were the ones who understood the meaning of guts, and the hypocrisy of flag waving, unlike the many military vets who “served” without ever facing the prospect of danger, and who now hold up their medals in rah-rah pro-imperialist demonstrations. Or how about the types who wear camouflage uniforms while on leave, as if armed enemies wait in ambush on the streets of New York City or Chicago? Muy macho, eh? But it takes REAL guts to stand up to the Empire’s war machine, ala the NLF.
By the way, the Zimmerman trial was decided when an all white jury was empaneled in Florida. Listen to the comments of the unconsciously racist juror interviewed by Anderson Cooper, especially when she pities Trayvon and the young lady with whom he conversed on the phone just before his murder. She refers to black youth as those people who don’t even know how to talk correctly. She had her mind made up that Trayvon, with his hoodie, was dangerous, and that “Georgie” was doing the right thing to accost him.