Trump weighs Khashoggi’s life and determines its value
A human life is priceless, they say, “they” being the billions of people with even a hint of a conscience.
The absence of a limit on the value of a human life stands atop the hierarchy of personal ethics and the myriad shared moral and religious philosophies.
That belief is easy to say, logical to accept, but often a lie. In the real world, people see life ranging from invaluable to equal the price of a bullet.
Dictators often order the death of those they believe threaten their supremacy. Spouses kill spouses for insurance money, muggers eliminate victims who may become witnesses with a shot to the head, and there are people who will murder anyone for a fee.
Scientists place the value of the human body chemically at anywhere between $3.50 for the skin and $1 for all the elements, for a total of $4.50 to $160 for the whole caboodle, a company called DataGenetics coming up with the latter. They say potassium is the most valuable element, suggesting that we could be worth more with a diet of bananas.
In Stephen Vincent Benet’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” a character sells his soul for “10 years of prosperity,” likely worth hundreds of millions; more if you throw in lottery winnings.
Employers set pay scales on their estimates of an individual’s labors and talents. I was worth $86 a week, before taxes, when I started in the newspaper business; much more as I climbed through the ranks, more, even, than I believe I deserved.
Hence, the value of a life becomes circumstantial, even though those with a high sense of kinship with living things, both great and small as the Bible says, hold dear the belief that we all exist for a reason and, therefore, deserve as much right to take up space as anyone else. It is a lofty and important concept. May it never die.
President Trump set the price of one person, a highly successful Washington Post journalist named Jamal Khashoggi, a frequent critic of the Saudi Arabian government, at $110 billion after he was murdered by a group of Saudi thugs by means too bizarre and too unbelievable to mention. This occurred in the Saudi embassy in Turkey.
Trump keeps finding ways to brush off that murder as inconsequential. The $110 billion was the cost of a contract, arranged by Trump’s son-in-law, for the U.S. to supply the Saudis with weapons. You’d have to be naive beyond reason to believe the Trumps, and likely their cronies, did not make a bunch of money for themselves in the deal.
A mentor of mine, Ben Maidenburg, the best newsman I’ve ever known now residing in that Big Newsroom in the Sky, once punctuated a discussion on newsworthiness by sticking out his right hip and pounding the pocket that held his wallet.
“It is all about this,” he said.
This was decades before Deep Throat advised Woodward and Bernstein to “follow the money” while investigating Watergate.
“Always,” Ben added. World events keep proving him right.
Who would you sell out for $110 billion?