02-21-2024, 07:56 AM
Humans are hypocritical assholes and have been forever. Anyone believing there is real freedom of the press is either low on IQ power, morally compromised, painfully naive, or some combination of these. Let us consider a quick example from an era past, when "freedom" was so patrioticallt waved like a flag by most Americans in the purported land of the free.
Back in my days at military school we had a staff member, commander Duncan, who'd fought in the Pacific. He was retired navy when I knew him and always struck me as a solidly good and admirable man. I've known many veterans of that war - well enough to know that they tended to talk very little of their experiences of those days - so when one would open up about something, we tended to listen with great care.
So one day several of us were hanging about by the little gymnasium where we would form up for muster during inclement weather. But this was a fine day and commander Duncan was there and we all got to talking. Viet Nam was still swinging and we were asking about going to war and what was it like, and all that sort of thing. Out of nowhere, the commander broke into a short story about a thing that happened one day late in the war. I don't recall the battle, but I think it may have been Iwo Jima. Duncan was 19 and piloting a landing craft. At some point, his boat was filled with Japanese POWs and his CO then had him raise the ramp, at which time he was ordered to stand to attention, face aft, and that whatever he heard he was not to turn around. He turned after which he told us there was a great fusillade of small arms fire. He was then ordered at ease and turned to see his boat was then filled with dead Japanese soldiers.
That was an act of murder in gross violation of the Geneva Conventions; the sorts of act for which we Americans hung several hundreds of German officers with all manner of self-righteousness being waved about as if we were saintly people dispatching evil pursuant to Divine command. And yet, had a journalist been privy to that act, perhaps in possession even of photographic evidence to the fact of it and had his press published the fact, what does anyone here think would have happened? He'd have been lucky to escape being killed no only by "government", but by about ten million Americans... you know, the lovers of all that is right and decent... all the time.
But more likely he would have been taken up on some sort of charges such as aiding and abetting... anything to keep him bottled up at least until the war was over, after which perhaps he would have been quietly released with the unequivocal warning that his life, much less his freedoms, now hung by a very thin thread.
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