In trying to reach goals, each of us operates on a foundation of causes that we accept as just, important, and noble. If the goal places us in contention with others, the intensity of our belief in the cause determines the intensity of our efforts to reach the goal. Of course, determining what is just, important, and noble is largely a subjective matter. I’ll go out on the proverbial limb to say that some causes, however, meet one or more of those qualifiers in the minds of many people. Liberty was a just, important, and noble foundational cause behind the eighteenth-century revolutions in America and France. But what of today’s motivations? What are the causes at the center of actions? Well, they seem to range from legalizing drugs to prohibiting the use of fossil fuels, from maintaining or gaining political power to advancing “gender agendas” in elementary schools, and from unrestricted opening of borders to unrestricted opening of prisons. Within these causes lie sub-causes too numerous to mention save one: The quashing of conservative voices.
While the brouhaha over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter ruffles the feathers of the Hollywood and Journalistic Elites and generates in their most vociferous representatives wrathful proclamations derived from fear they might suffer loss of control over conservative voices, more damaging ideological causes are affecting lives in places far remote from the generally affluent lives of those elite. I find two of these causes to be ignoble.
Take the October 29, 2022 bombing in Mogadishu as an example of ignoble cause. Fanatically worried that western influences might attract Somali youth away from Islam, specifically away from Sunni al-Shabaab, fundamentalist Salafi jihadists’ beliefs, the terrorist group set off bombs in Mogadishu that killed over 100 and injured more than 300 innocents. The cause caused the death of children who, ironically, won’t undergo any Islamic education. The bombing did not use up much ink on American front pages or electrons in mainstream media broadcasts because matters as important as a rich guy’s buying Twitter and the American election cycle’s mid-term high point (though nowadays, every day of every year seems to be the apex of the cycle) used up both the ink and the electrons. So, 100 humans lost their lives to a group devoted more to destruction than to creation, much like the Antifa groupies who destroyed property and caused injury and even death in the American Northwest during “the summer of love.” And in eastern Ukraine, the now well known “meat grinder” born of another ignoble cause has taken both Ukrainian and Russian lives in a conflict that has received coverage mostly because it has interfered with the world’s wheat market and energy supplies. And to what end, for what purpose, for what cause, and for whom? Could any of this information be more important than fighting over a rich guy’s buying a social media company? Not, it seems, if one is among the chosen elites of Left-leaning Americans.
Have we entered the Age of Ignoble Causes? Or, is every age one rife with ignoble causes, reasons for hatred, destruction, injury, and death generated by groups (e.g., American Left or Right extremists, al-Shabaab terrorists, Antifa vandals) or individuals (e.g, Vladimir Putin).
That those whose feathers Musk ruffled are concerned over their loss of censorship of dissenting conservative voices is probably nothing new in American history. Subtle and overt censorship of dissent has always been the modus operandi of the media—dare I say a persistent or continuous cause sliding from one generation to the next. The media’s coverup of the Hunter Biden laptop story, his dealings with the Communist Chinese, the Ukrainian Burisma company, and Russian oligarchs, and the Biden family’s growing rich through political connections that bespeak of selling influence reminds me of the 1960s that reminds me of the media coverups of the 1960s. With the exception of Ted Kennedy’s involvement in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick in 1969, very few Americans were aware of the Kennedy brothers’ extramarital affairs and shenanigans like the Bay of Pigs fiasco that a complicit Press refused to report negatively because they were motivated to protect the party in power. In the cause of politics, details be damned as Truth, like a wayward chicken, flees the coop. No example of this is a more telling than the Russian censorship of the word war with regard to the “special operation” in Ukraine. Pravda’s cause is Putin’s cause. The chicken of truth is pecking at seeds in the Russian countryside, where the locals “support” the war “against the Ukrainian Nazis who are puppets of the Americans and Nato” attempting to destroy Mother Russia. In the cause of defending the Motherland, the youth should willingly go to the meat grinder along the front. The Press—American and Russian, Brazilian and Burman, Iranian and Arabian—is peopled by reporters and editors with narrow political agendas, each a cause they support with only some exceptions.
So, Elon Musk vows to open Twitter to all causes. But can he do so without chaos? We already know that ignoble causes outnumber noble ones and that the former have relentless energy to destroy individuals and groups. Yes, those with noble causes might Tweet, but they will probably only get in a word “edgewise.” And part of the reason lies in the darkness of ignorance. Americans have been kept in the dark partly by our own lack of cosmopolitanism. From our insular setting, separated as we are from the rest of the world by oceans and paired with a similar country to the north, the causes motivating others around the planet seem unimportant. A bombing in Somalia by a group determined to quash cosmopolitanism among Islamic children is too distant for concern because Americans have to worry about Twitter’s future. Mogadishu’s bombing victims are not cause celeb in the minds of Americans concerned about maintaining political power and censoring dissent on a social media platform.
When we take the historical perspective to review the causes now as dead as the people who pursued them, we should be able to determine which were just, important, and noble. But our ignorance of the world around us is matched by our unwillingness to view any cause from a perspective outside that which motivates us.
I confess to being one of those unwilling and ignorant Americans, but I do so with some sense that I cannot determine that any of my causes is perfectly just, important, and noble. Although I find criticizing the causes of others easy, I realize that they can just as easily criticize my favored causes and that no cause is absolute save peace. Yet, even the cause of peace is open to debate as someone like Putin might argue that his goal is ultimately a “peaceful Ukraine” absorbed by the Motherland, returned through his efforts—and the deaths of tens of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians—to the womb of Russia. And those irate Leftist Twitter users probably want to achieve “peace” through an elimination of all conservative thought.
While the brouhaha over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter ruffles the feathers of the Hollywood and Journalistic Elites and generates in their most vociferous representatives wrathful proclamations derived from fear they might suffer loss of control over conservative voices, more damaging ideological causes are affecting lives in places far remote from the generally affluent lives of those elite. I find two of these causes to be ignoble.
Take the October 29, 2022 bombing in Mogadishu as an example of ignoble cause. Fanatically worried that western influences might attract Somali youth away from Islam, specifically away from Sunni al-Shabaab, fundamentalist Salafi jihadists’ beliefs, the terrorist group set off bombs in Mogadishu that killed over 100 and injured more than 300 innocents. The cause caused the death of children who, ironically, won’t undergo any Islamic education. The bombing did not use up much ink on American front pages or electrons in mainstream media broadcasts because matters as important as a rich guy’s buying Twitter and the American election cycle’s mid-term high point (though nowadays, every day of every year seems to be the apex of the cycle) used up both the ink and the electrons. So, 100 humans lost their lives to a group devoted more to destruction than to creation, much like the Antifa groupies who destroyed property and caused injury and even death in the American Northwest during “the summer of love.” And in eastern Ukraine, the now well known “meat grinder” born of another ignoble cause has taken both Ukrainian and Russian lives in a conflict that has received coverage mostly because it has interfered with the world’s wheat market and energy supplies. And to what end, for what purpose, for what cause, and for whom? Could any of this information be more important than fighting over a rich guy’s buying a social media company? Not, it seems, if one is among the chosen elites of Left-leaning Americans.
Have we entered the Age of Ignoble Causes? Or, is every age one rife with ignoble causes, reasons for hatred, destruction, injury, and death generated by groups (e.g., American Left or Right extremists, al-Shabaab terrorists, Antifa vandals) or individuals (e.g, Vladimir Putin).
That those whose feathers Musk ruffled are concerned over their loss of censorship of dissenting conservative voices is probably nothing new in American history. Subtle and overt censorship of dissent has always been the modus operandi of the media—dare I say a persistent or continuous cause sliding from one generation to the next. The media’s coverup of the Hunter Biden laptop story, his dealings with the Communist Chinese, the Ukrainian Burisma company, and Russian oligarchs, and the Biden family’s growing rich through political connections that bespeak of selling influence reminds me of the 1960s that reminds me of the media coverups of the 1960s. With the exception of Ted Kennedy’s involvement in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick in 1969, very few Americans were aware of the Kennedy brothers’ extramarital affairs and shenanigans like the Bay of Pigs fiasco that a complicit Press refused to report negatively because they were motivated to protect the party in power. In the cause of politics, details be damned as Truth, like a wayward chicken, flees the coop. No example of this is a more telling than the Russian censorship of the word war with regard to the “special operation” in Ukraine. Pravda’s cause is Putin’s cause. The chicken of truth is pecking at seeds in the Russian countryside, where the locals “support” the war “against the Ukrainian Nazis who are puppets of the Americans and Nato” attempting to destroy Mother Russia. In the cause of defending the Motherland, the youth should willingly go to the meat grinder along the front. The Press—American and Russian, Brazilian and Burman, Iranian and Arabian—is peopled by reporters and editors with narrow political agendas, each a cause they support with only some exceptions.
So, Elon Musk vows to open Twitter to all causes. But can he do so without chaos? We already know that ignoble causes outnumber noble ones and that the former have relentless energy to destroy individuals and groups. Yes, those with noble causes might Tweet, but they will probably only get in a word “edgewise.” And part of the reason lies in the darkness of ignorance. Americans have been kept in the dark partly by our own lack of cosmopolitanism. From our insular setting, separated as we are from the rest of the world by oceans and paired with a similar country to the north, the causes motivating others around the planet seem unimportant. A bombing in Somalia by a group determined to quash cosmopolitanism among Islamic children is too distant for concern because Americans have to worry about Twitter’s future. Mogadishu’s bombing victims are not cause celeb in the minds of Americans concerned about maintaining political power and censoring dissent on a social media platform.
When we take the historical perspective to review the causes now as dead as the people who pursued them, we should be able to determine which were just, important, and noble. But our ignorance of the world around us is matched by our unwillingness to view any cause from a perspective outside that which motivates us.
I confess to being one of those unwilling and ignorant Americans, but I do so with some sense that I cannot determine that any of my causes is perfectly just, important, and noble. Although I find criticizing the causes of others easy, I realize that they can just as easily criticize my favored causes and that no cause is absolute save peace. Yet, even the cause of peace is open to debate as someone like Putin might argue that his goal is ultimately a “peaceful Ukraine” absorbed by the Motherland, returned through his efforts—and the deaths of tens of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians—to the womb of Russia. And those irate Leftist Twitter users probably want to achieve “peace” through an elimination of all conservative thought.
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