The Brother In Law Is Death

There is a hadith (reported saying of the Prophet Mohammed) that contains this phrase.
An oversimplification of the context, without making your eyes glaze over, is basically that one’s brother in law is more likely than a total stranger to cause any number of family problems, from flirting with your wife, to trying to talk the two of you into investing in a dicey stock, etc etc, precisely because of the close family relationship and the fact that (at least 1400 years ago) he was around the house a lot.

Today, thanks to US policy, the brother in law is the greatest threat to US national security, and the reason that you are not safe, nor will you be safe.

Today, there are more people on earth who have suffered as a result of US policy than have benefitted or from it or been unaffected by it.

And even if they did not survive, or their limbs did not, they all have a brother in law.

Today, thanks to various technological advances, communication and travel are available to more people than ever before.

Where once it was possible for the US to go to say, the Philippines, and commit horrendous atrocities with few Americans knowing about it, or caring too much about it if they did know, today the whole world knows about it within minutes, at least some of it, and while mainstream America still doesn’t care too much, the victim’s brother in law does, and he is much less likely than his great grandfather to be living in some cave somewhere without lights. Even if he is, the chances are good that HIS brother in law is not.

As it becomes plainer to all those brothers in laws – and sisters in law – that their alleged leaders are not going to do anything but order up another case of Astroglide and make another bank deposit, more and more sisters in law and brothers in law are going to be washed out of the calm basin of pragmatism, resignation and fatalism, and into the bright adrenaline waters of realization that they also have children, and mothers and fathers.

Some will probably be moved by vengeance, but most will be moved by plain old self-preservation, and the even stronger species preservation, which may have been dulled and marginalized into irrelevance and non-existence in the good old US of A, but is alive and well and throbbing in the growing number of places where it is 911 every day, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

The President of the United States is sometimes referred to as a world leader.

Should there be any surprise then, to reflect on the millions into billions of sisters and  brothers in law who tiptoe in to watch their babies sleep and ponder the US president’s oft repeated exhortation to follow the money?