« say "shibboleth" | Main | abc: journalism is drudgery »

September 25, 2006

mel's bells

Mel Gibson, commenting at an early screening of his upcoming movie Apocalypto, drew a comparison between the morally horrific decline of the Mayans and present day American culture. "What's human sacrifice," he asked, "if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?"

As a writer/director who has tackled the subject of declining cultures, Mel Gibson shows surprisingly little insight on the matter. First off, the Mayans' form of human sacrifice is chiefly horrible because they sacrificed the imprisoned, the helpless, the innocent. Our military is all-volunteer, and they aren't standing in line to be slaughtered, they are highly-trained, active participants in the most effective fighting force in the history of the world. The Mayans' sacrifices were inspired by fear of the supernatural; they sought to appease their angry gods. Our soldiers are exemplars of courage daily engaged in fighting a lethal but human foe. Mayan leaders consolidated their power through a reign of terror. We have ended a reign of terror and now struggle to replace it with government elected by those it governs.

But most disappointing is the fact that Gibson, as a conservative Catholic, missed a more apt comparison which he should not have. If there is anything like human sacrifice of innocents happening in American culture today, it is the sacrifice of the unborn in the commonplace practice of abortion. If he is a Catholic, and believes what Catholics believe, then how can he, in a discussion of human sacrifice, raise the anti-war banner and keep silent about abortion? Perhaps if we knew everything about the Mayans, we'd find that their movie directors too, were sounding alarms about the wrong issues when their world ended.

Posted by joel at September 25, 2006 11:32 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.chezjoel.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/406

Comments

Posted by: Dabu Heebly at September 26, 2006 12:34 PM

Post a comment