‘I don’t care!’
Two of my favourite actors Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford starred in The Fugitive. Ford’s character falsely accused of murdering his wife; Jones the lawman sent to catch him. Ford pleads his innocence, Jones replies casually, ‘I don’t care!’ His job is just to arrest an escaped criminal.
On my hometown website, an old photo showed it as it was before a building boom changed its landscape. In the forefront a field where we played cowboys and Indians based on Hollywood movies we watched as children; the Indians were always the cruel warriors who attacked innocent white folk. It took time for Hollywood to admit that wasn’t always the case.
There’s a clip from Hell on Wheels a friend sent me during the Gaza carnage, a confrontation between two other actors I like, Colm Meaney and Wes Studi. Meaney and a US senator are pseudo-negotiating to move Studi’s tribe to a reservation. ‘We will give you a piece of land,’ says the white man. ‘We have our own land,’ the chief replies. ‘It’s not your land, it belongs to the US government.’ ‘Did they buy it; did they trade for it?’
That short dialogue sums up the attitude of occupiers who deprive without conscience and offer far less as compensation to the indigenous people they have mistreated and whose land they have stolen. The result of non-compliance was/is usually oppression or wanton massacres. The I/we don’t care stance is not past tense even though we see ourselves as civilised and enlightened.
In Homeland made years ago, we discover why one terrorist is so intent on killing as many CIA personnel as he can. The vice president of the USA and CIA members are screen-watching a hovering drone over a terror target, the strike is unanimously approved even though they know and consent to it happening, that collateral damage will involve a madrassa filled with school children. The target escapes, the blast kills 82 children, one of whom is the terrorist’s young son.
Collateral damage has become the norm, not real people just calculated, acceptable numbers, always finding reasons to excuse. When Hamas atrociously massacred Israelis, they must have known the vengeance it would bring on their people. When the IRA attacked civilian targets, they must have known their opposite numbers would retaliate.
Too often innocents die while those who plan or carry out ‘I don’t care if innocents die, we do what we have to do’ murders remain untouched. There are few governments or groups in the world innocent of committing some atrocity against another entity. The UK is now investigating alleged crimes by SAS forces in Afghanistan. Civilian buildings have collapsed or burned, killing numerous people because they were built with knowingly inadequate or dangerous materials. How many have served time for that?
What about able-bodied people parking in spaces designed for the convenience of the disabled ignoring the signs for their own convenience?
A group of volunteers in my hometown teaches children to forage for natural nutrition. The local primary school gave them land in the school grounds on which to teach their groups how to plant and grow vegetables; the youngsters loved it. Vandals twice dug up the plot under darkness and broke picnic furniture, uncaring of the hurt it caused the children.
The unloving, work-shy husband/father whose wife divorced him and gained custody of their two boys, who, when she asked him for help with their older son who was keeping bad company, she feared violence when she tried to reason with him, getting poor grades at school, glued to his smart phone for hours, replied with a shrug, ‘I don’t care, he’s your problem.’
People who care have a responsibility to speak out against crime of all levels at home or abroad.