To the editor:

How is it that a social environment that makes murderous violence commonplace is accepted as inevitable, but the murderous violence itself is then practiced by the society’s professed leaders?

Pre-emptive war is the hypocritical practice of what the Vikings used to do openly: raid and plunder. Now, the defense industry gets billions of dollars in contracts from their agents who hold the people’s purse strings and pose as our representatives in government. They make sure their pals get “reconstruction” contracts where magic screwdrivers sell for $800. Foreign resources are then plundered at the expense of thousands of innocents.

Meanwhile, the cud-chewing American public swallows the disingenuous fodder of exceptionalism which says, “We’re Americans, our robbery, plundering and murder isn’t really a crime, it’s pre-emptive war; it’s liberation!” This fodder is poisonous, and the consequences of being wrapped in the jingoistic pallor of this false consciousness will likely be high.

Doug Harvey,

Lawrence