by Marklar

12160.info

March 20, 2012

The iconic American painter Norman Rockwell delivered an idealized vision of life in the United States. The American dream was put to canvas in a way that resonated with the innermost hopes and dreams of his fans, even when the real world around them didn't quite succeed in meeting such lofty expectations.

This is, after all, what a great artist does. By eliciting an emotional response within the viewer (even if not the intended response), whether that be awe, joy, anger, sadness or any other emotion the artist puts the viewer into the proper state of mind for reflection and thoughtful examination both of the self and of the world around them. Norman Rockwell always played to the best in us at the extreme edge of the spectrum of emotion. Other artist tend towards the opposite end of the emotional spectrum to elicit fear, revulsion or sorrow in us, and most works of art fall somewhere in between such extremes. There is a place in the world of art for all of these.

The press, however, is not the art world and when the main stream media endeavors to present only the most Rockwell like vision of the United States while the U.S. is engaged in aggressive imperialist wars of conquest, when the people of a nation are sold the warm and fuzzy feelings elicited by a Rockwell painting in regards to war and war crimes a visceral disconnect is created that allows the public to sleep well knowing that any horrors being committed in their name are all for a "good cause". Once such a mind set is established within the public it becomes inevitable that people will get the wars that they prefer, clean, neat, sterile, wrapped up in a neat little packages and delivered via sound bites.

How often are we ever given an usanitized look at the wars we are involved in by the main stream media. Many of us have now heard the name of Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, the supposedly lone gunman who murdered 16 men, women and children in Afghanistan. How many of us though have heard the names of his (and in the end our) victims. How many of us heard their cries of anguish as they died, or the voices of their surviving family members. Have we seen their faces in family photos as we would when any tragedy befalls Americans?

Of course we haven't and we are quite unlikely to. That would just be too messy, too untidy and would interfere with our comfortable sense of American exceptionalism. Instead the main stream media focuses on the possible blowback that the incident might cause and the battle stresses that caused this poor soldier to "snap". After all he is the real victim here and what really matters is how this will effect us, the good guys,... right?

Norman Rockwell never painted this picture

For the record here are the names of his (and by all credible accounts 19 unnamed others) victims:

The dead:
Mohamed Dawood son of  Abdullah
Khudaydad son of Mohamed Juma
Nazar Mohamed
Payendo
Robeena
Shatarina daughter of Sultan Mohamed
Zahra daughter of Abdul Hamid
Nazia daughter of Dost Mohamed
Masooma daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Farida daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Palwasha daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Nabia daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Esmatullah daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Faizullah son of Mohamed Wazir
Essa Mohamed son of Mohamed Hussain
Akhtar Mohamed son of Murrad Ali
 
The wounded:
Haji Mohamed Naim son of Haji Sakhawat
Mohamed Sediq son of Mohamed Naim
Parween
Rafiullah
Zardana
Zulheja

Surely the fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles and friends of these victims are people who might look upon a Norman Rockwell painting and see their own aspirations and dreams for their children captured there though the time and the place depicted are not quite in synch with them. It's better not to have to think about that though, because if we knew their faces, their names, their hopes and their dreams we might well have to look inside ourselves and examine why it is that we have encouraged such atrocities with our apathetic acceptance of U.S. imperialistic fascism.

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