Ask Bil Anything

Gillem asks,

Please, people of the USA, stop considering yourselves the masters of the world, in the style of the citizens of the old SPQR (the senate and people of Rome). First put peace and justice in your own country, then you can think about influencing the many countries that you invade and dominate. This is an old, retired schoolteacher from the island of Mallorca (Spain), which was subject many centuries ago to the Roman Empire, asking you of this. (Translated by Gillem and Bill into English.)

Gillem has been a longtime reader and has even translated a few of my blog posts into Castilian.

I do understand when Gillem calls the United States “masters of the world.” As world travelers, my wife and I have seen the ugly American in action, and it isn’t pretty. Often, Americans present themselves as better. (We aren’t!) We can act like know-it-alls and that everything we do is great. We seem to conveniently forget how violent and cruel some of our history is.

One time, when we were in northern Vietnam, we entered the American Museum (really, an anti-American museum) and saw photos of our troops doing horrendous acts to local people. One photo shows a picture of smiling soldiers in a Jeep laughing at a man whose foot was tied to a rope while being dragged around the streets. I was embarrassed to even be associated with our country.

It’s always interesting when I see the United States government pointing a finger at all the atrocities going on in Russia and China, for example, criticizing their inhuman treatment of people, all while ignoring the three fingers pointing back at the USA—the brutality of so many of our police, our Black and Brown ghettos, and our inhumane prison system, for starters.

I don’t mind the pointing of fingers at others, but I do mind how our police brutality gets worse, our ghettos never receive decent housing, or our schools still have such dilapidated facilities full of unmotivated teachers and staff. The latter were lousy when I was growing up in the 1940s, and not much has changed.

However, it gives me a ray of hope when I read about how one of our most horrendous prisons, San Quentin in California, is now being reconverted into a rehabilitation center for folks who have been incarcerated. Treating our fellow human beings like mad animals and locking them in cages simply exacerbates crime. Giving people, regardless of their crime, an opportunity to start over and become productive citizens is what democracies do—living the concept of “liberty and justice for all.”

I was hoping that in our war with Afghanistan, our country would develop a prototype of the twenty-first-century military. One group of soldiers would be soldiers, while another group would be involved in building schools for boys and girls, especially in remote areas, providing infrastructure, helping construct homes in cooperation with the locals, and bringing technology to all. Helping people move forward seems to make much more sense than killing them.

I am proud of our country for trying to broker peace in Israel but thoroughly disgusted with it when it supplies weapons to a nation committing genocide.

I agree with you, Gillem: peace and justice are the answer, not war and injustice. Unfortunately, human beings are given free will, which too often results in war, violence, and injustice.

The bottom line is, you and I, two unimportant guys, must keep promoting peace and justice within ourselves and make it contagious. Remember that unimportant pesky peasant Jew from Nazareth? He changed the course of civilization!

Do any of my readers have any suggestions?

PeaceLoveJoyHopeKindness

Bil

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P.S. People often ask me provocative questions about current events, both religious and secular. I have found that some of these questions are being asked universally. I’ll be periodically alternating regular articles with one of those questions and my answer. I invite you to send me your question to bilaulenbach@yahoo.com.