veridical theophany

I am going to make an important admission. I have been following the Michael Jackson trial quite faithfully at Google News. The reason I have been so fascinated by these developments is my interest in the idea of reality. For instance, Michael Jackson, whether or not you believe he is guilty, lives in what most of us would consider a fantasy world. His home is a themepark, his best friends are children and highly pampered celebrities, and not only did he name one of his children Blanket, but he named another Prince Michael II.
Now he is confronted with another world, the world of the courtroom. The whole goal of a court is to discover the truth, and due justice to a wronged party. However, as a faithful viewer of Judge Judy, I know that oftentimes, the wronged party gets no conciliation, not necessarily because Judge Judy is a bad or unfair judge, but because they failed to establish themselves on the right side of a point of order or law.
Truth and justice are the most ephemeral of values. For instance, take this poor gentleman, Ahmed Omar Abu-Ali. This man was raised by people who honor the ideals of truth and justice just as much as any of us. He probably saw himself as a freedom fighter, striking a blow at the heart of the death star like Luke Skywalker. If he had volunteered for the CIA, and went to another country to try and assassinate their leaders, we would have hailed him as a hero, possibly, even given him a job as the National Intelligence Czar.
However, he choose to throw in his towel with the stateless types, and therefore, is a terrorist. Not that the things he is accused of are any less evil than the torture he endured in Saudi Arabia, but he choose to join a group that was rather impotent to protest his imprisonment, which means he is probably going to get the death penalty.
The thing is, the only thing that separates the neo-cons and the jihadists is a religion and a language. There is no moral high ground here. George Bush pays lip service to peace, but hasn't made any real sacrifices to make it. Even though the bombing pauses in Vietnam were probably a poor military decision, LBJ was willing to sacrifice his strategic position to make real peace.
People who are willing to sacrifice for peace are few and far between. Ask George if we should pay more taxes for peace? Ask the Palestinians if they would be willing to accept only part of their land for peace? Ask the Sudanese government if they would be willing to share power for peace?
You see, peace is the ultimate end. If you fight a war, there are only two possible outcomes. First, you could lose the war, and be dominated by a more powerful people. The only other outcome is that you win the war, and then you dominate a weaker people. If you can't meet your fellow human beings as equals on the same level, you are doomed to live a lifetime of violence.
This goes to Kim Jung Il, Saddam Hussein, and all the hard-liners in Iran as much as it does to el jefe in Washington. Saddam Hussein caused the Iraq War just as much as George Bush did. The problem is, the Iraqi people did not have the means or the education to know how to sacrifice for peace.
Plenty of people, white and black, had to die, just to integrate Woolworth's. However, these folks did not march into the south bearing weapons and blowing things up. The came in a spirit of non-violence. Malcolm X was wrong and Martin Luther King Jr. was right. We need peace by any means non-violent. What the liberals of today need to do, is to educate the peoples of the world in non-violence. It worked in the 60's, why can't it work today.