Random Thoughts

8 Mar 15

While enjoying a soft spring like day by trolling through the Internet I ran across two “news” items that are joined by the narcissism of the actors, but are otherwise unrelated.

It seems that America’s most inept fugitive is not happy living in the workers’ paradise that is modern Russia and has applied for political asylum in Switzerland. Edward Snowden would “love to live in Switzerland”, but after being rejected by the 21 other countries he has requested asylum I suspect that his latest desire will be frustrated by the reluctance of yet another government to welcome a self-aggrandizing fugitive into its space. Mr. Snowden is reluctant to return to the United States because he claims he would not get a fair and open trial. My feeling is that he would get a most public and open trial (and one that is as fair as the legal system allows) but that he knows that if he does return to this country he would not get out of prison for many years.

The other news item concerns the continuing quest by the militant Islam State, the self-styled Caliphate to destroy anything they proclaim to be modern and contrary to their religious viewpoint. In addition to messily executing anyone they feel is even a minor threat to their squalid existence they have now taken on the task of destroying artifacts of civilizations that predate by millennia the “religion of peace” they claim to follow. After destroying Assyrian statues in a museum in Mosul they set their sights higher and are now destroying the large (by ancient standards) city of Hatra. A city that was founded in the 13^th century BCE, about 1900 years before Mohamad even thought of repurposing a nomadic moon god as the center point of a religion he created as part of his efforts to build a personal empire.

But ISIS doesn’t care that all of today’s people and cultures are built on the successes of past people and cultures. In their narcissism they seek only to destroy that which they cannot claim. I also find it interesting that they are using explosives and bulldozers to accomplish their goals. Their level of civilization is so far removed from societies of today (including other Muslim cultures) that in order to be true to their belief system they should be using stone hammers to batter the past into oblivion.

The common thread between Snowden and ISIS is that both are so self-absorbed that they fail to see that humanity views them as unworthy of respect and good only for the dustbin of history. Unfortunately it looks like tossing both into the past will be a long and painful process.