Hiding behind words

It is so disengaged, remote, coldly clinical, the descriptions 'surgical strike', 'precision targeting', 'terrorist threat', 'neutralising a real risk', but setting aside the contrived and deliberate detachment of the words, the end result is still the same, a person, a human being, is to be killed. A person with parents, relatives, maybe a spouse probably with their own children has been selected to be killed.

Man facing man with comparable weapons it could be seen as, almost, a glorious and honourable trial of strength, both with an opportunity to overcome the other and to be the victor. But we have moved a long way from man against man. The weapons have led to increasing distance between the men confronting each other. Now the opposing men do not even see it other and it has been, for a long time, not a matter of one man skills pitted against another, but simply who has the best weaponry and tactical support.

Now a man sitting in a room three thousand miles away, in front of a bank of screens can control a drone that picks out it target and then kills it. No chance to retaliate, the target probably even unaware of their imminent death. Back across the world the man goes home to hugs with family, settles infront of TV with a cold beer and life is very normal. Selective targets with known terrorists links, only picked out for death after the most serious of cross checks and only after Presidential authorisation. This not a casual killing campaign but very carefully premeditated and double checked. Sure there is the odd co-lateral damage. That is to say unintended bystanders, men or women or children also are killed but that is their risk for associating with known terrorists. It is essential for the security of the USofA that these people are killed without further risk to American personnel. Except there is a higher overriding concern. Justice.

Our system of Justice, flawed and rough edged that it is, has evolved over centuries to balance all the complexities of human actions with that need, by us all, that the guilty should be exposed and shown for what they are. The Justice system recognises that you cannot not simply take one side of the argument. It has to be challenged by the opposing version. It is not even simply totting up all the incontrovertible evidence on one side as against the other. Even evidence can be skewed, depending on your point of view. It is not even who is the most believable and presents the most likely account of events. It is all that plus the intangibles, of people, how we as an individual perceive and have a sense of their trust and worthiness. That is why in the more complex cases we bring in twelve decent men off the street and leave the outcome for them to decide. Flawed because even unimpeachable evidence can turn out to be just wrong and seemingly good decision can be eventually shown to be wrong. The wrong person judged to be guilty. There simply are no absolutes, guilty or not entirely depends on your point of view, where you choose to place the emphasis, where you decide credence of truth best fits. At least, with the abolition of the death sentence, it is possible to make retribution for those persons who suffer the rough edges of our Justice System.

The Terrorist is our later day Witch where the ducking stool has been replaced with a death drone and all the hi-tech mumbo jumbo wrap arounds to reassure any waverers that this is all clinical, precise, beyond doubt or question. Except it is still based on 'Prove you are not a Witch/Terrorist' on pain of death. Except the selected target is not give any chance to protest their innocence. At least when the executioner looked the condemned in the eyes he was able to reassure himself, by the demeanour of the condemned, that they accepted their fate and guilt. Not with the remote controlled drones. The victim is killed without any chance to protest, to set out an alternate chain of events to the ones assembled by his judge, jury and executioner. All is fair in the cause of a 'War on Terrorism'. As if that expression defined a tangible cohesive body of people who were united, armed and seeking confrontation. Just as in the War of Witchcraft, it justifies all means and ends. History tells us otherwise. For all the hundreds of witches slain for failing to prove they were not witches, witchcraft was not eradicated. Instead their pursuers were besmirched by their abandonment of all basic rights and restraints. Evil continues on as ever but just pops up under another label with other objectives.

When Mr President of USofA next reviews the daily list of people to be killed by the death drone, he would do best to pause for thought. Is this justice I am administering here or just sanctioned slaughter?

Waiting to Die

We are just too good at keeping people alive. Our baby boomer generation is now approaching those critical final years as the body systems begin to shut down or wear out. Gradually as the body systems weaken then fail so the support needs increase. As we approach the nineties we become increasingly dependant on support carers to make all those necessary daily living tasks possible, of sleeping, washing, dressing, eating, defecating and waiting for the day to end. Each further intervention requires giving up precious independence and loss of privacy whilst having to accept and rely on the goodwill and timing of others. Medication struggles to offset contradictory systems failures, weak hearts, water retention and a general inability to mobilise. Relieve one symptom at the direct jeopardy to the other. By the time we are well into our nineties, if we are lucky, we are housebound, physically and mentally confined to an ever shrinking world, scarcely able to break out of the containing walls, drained by the effort to manage those few physical task not yet delegated to others. If we are lucky. If not, we may be drifting in an out of mental confusion unable to make sense of what little conscious thought we retain or hooked upto to machines with every function monitored and controlled with no escape routes left open to the mind.

The elderly have no natural place left in our society. For many reasons their families cannot accommodate or give daily support for them. Their views and experiences are old worldly and not only are seen as having no relevance but actually derided for being so out of touch. The best the state can offer is to offer low paid carers from the bottom of the employment market. Even then the rising costs of supporting all these elderly mean that budgets are constantly strained with more limitations placed on what can be provide under which ever meaner circumstances. The medical profession is harassed and time constrained without the tools to ease their elderly patients and lacking time to empathise with their patients deteriorating condition. We as a society, having made some provisions, refuse to recognise the enormous indignity we subject our old to nor have sufficient generous hearts, in recognition for all the sacrifices they made, to allocate time, with costs, to help them enjoy their last years.

So our grand elderly, who have led extraordinary lives with so many rich and varied experiences are left trapped within their weak and feeble bodies and minds, trapped in an ever closing in world. Waiting to die.

Philosophy of Death

You do eventually reach a point in your life when death is no longer that distant abstraction but a reality coming up over the horizon. It make you think and you take time to reflect on this and that aspect of life, it meaning, purpose and for this particular blog the manner of death. I have written an advance directive as to the how and what of my care in the event that I am incapable of agreeing to any planned treatments. What we as a Society are struggling to come to terms with is our technical skills are keeping people alive for much longer. One consequence is that more and more people are experiencing a lingering, distressing, humiliating and undignified existence before death finally relieves them. A gradual loss of physical control is one end and the other end is a loss of almost all conscious control. Even the gradual creeping infirmity of old age is so badly handled in this society of ours, robbing them of any self-respect and side-lining them into oblivion. An inconsequential shell that has to be serviced to a minima 'quality of life' until it expires. Not a very flattering view of the end game ahead.

Until the twentieth century the older generation were held in respect. They had carved out a way of life that enabled their genes to pass on, and provided sufficient shelter and sustenance for those gene in tum, to make their own way. All the while they were the depository of the collective and received wisdom and experience of their own life but also the life of the genes that bore them. They were a point of stability and a continuum that could provide assurance and direction in all of life's hurlyburly. Nowadays the role is reversed. Having provided the initial resources to enable the genes to be passed on, their continuing life is now a draining and diverting of resources away that would be better placed with the successor genes. Their cumulative wisdom and experience can longer keep up with rate of change and progress of the society around them, so as to be irrelevant. Any residual possible common ground of a deeper insight into the ways of man gets tossed aside along with all the other 'so called' outmoded insights.

So the older generation is left to reverie to its own age group about the past and how it was and have nothing to offer about what might be that anyone considers worth giving any attention. It is only a matter of perspective and creating time to assimilate, but as it happens those are the two missing ingredient in today's headlong rush. Robbed of the historic role in society, what is the point of living on? It terms of contribution into the family and society, nothing in reality. An offer of a historical viewpoint when the preoccupation is grasping and managing the change all around? The old really do not have a role to play. Sure, if they are lucky they are familiar worn fixtures, a cosy habit to accommodated, enjoyed for old times sake, providing they don't get to be too demanding. Not really significant.

What I see ahead is a gradual decline in my faculties and nothing ahead to make the increasing struggle worth the contemplation. One horror scenario for me would be to live to be one hundred. Why, what for? The only reason is the absence of options. Yet this is the fate ahead for increasing numbers of the present baby-boomers, like me. So the question I am circling around is, if we cannot choose the manner and timing of our death, why accept remedial medical interventions? The interventions offered are the 'easy cures' to reduce the risk of mortality. Take way death by causes that can be easily cured and you are left with death, because that is inescapable, by some incurable, hard to treat cause. A cause more likely to rob you of that dignity we all want in the final stages of our life. Until such times as assisted suicide becomes the norm and accepted, for me, the answer is to refuse all interventions and let life roll whatever dice is my lot. I am not looking for it, not seeking it, more than content to continue as things are but I don't want mankind trying to play God and intercept death dice rolls, even if it is nice and easily preventable with minimal consequences. I'll take my chances. Any one got spare tickets for Switzerland?