catastrophe, and when you will recognize it

Spent a great deal of yesterday listening to Minnesota Public Radio on iTunes. I heard just about everything there is to hear as of now about the bridge collapse. One thing that really stuck was the statements from those who’d been involved in the tragedy. They were all reporting about how nobody got out and ran, nobody tried to seek safety before they had gone to the people in the cars around them to help them get out. At any moment, all your fellow motorists could instantly cease being assholes trying to kill you for a few yards’ advantage in the traffic and turn into your brothers and sisters making sure you are safe before they even know if they are safe. This is so. I’ve been in enough emergencies to know. And your skin color has NOTHING to do with whether you provide this help or receive it. Neither does your political party. When the chips are down, all living things matter more to us than what we think.

I have a friend who, ever since reading Childhood’s End (a science fiction novel about aliens who come and hover over Earth and subdue all our tyrannies by making clear their ability to annihilate us if we keep it up), can’t stop wishing for those aliens to show up. He looks to the sky and yells for them to hurry up. In the novel it turns out that these saviors of humanity are doing it for some nefarious reason or other (so that they could keep us as livestock, if I remember correctly) but not even this is enough to make him change his mind about wishing on the sky for the all-powerful aliens to fix this unholy mess. I try to convince him this is just colorful illustration of a determination to remain helpless. How could he prefer this to action? Does colorfully capitulating make the capitulation any less? Does it distract anyone from realizing your capitulation? Is that substantively different than the legions who decide to capitulate by avidly agreeing with the tyrants? I sure don’t think so.

It should be stated that Americans are acting just like Germans in the 1930s right now. We made them pay for that.

Wow, did we ever.

Bill Moyers had Clive James on the other night. I was happy to see James lauding the heroism of Sophie Scholl. As he pointed out, her heroism was possibly even more important than that of her compatriots in the White Rose, a German resistance group against the Nazis, because she could have avoided execution by renouncing the others, rejoining the enabling masses of German society. She would not. One very young lady understood that Germany was a bridge collapse and acted accordingly. If sufficiently more people had been unable to talk themselves out of the true nature of the emergency, Sophie would not have been executed, nor her compatriots. If any executing at all had to take place, it would have been Nazis beheaded instead.

Maybe it would be good for you to read their leaflets and contemplate how much better things would have been if the population had been awakened by their efforts.

You must know by now that Congress has extended wiretapping privileges to the administration, on top of the entirely too many other concessions against their oaths to the Constitution. What in the hell makes you believe this is any different than during the rise of Nazism in Germany? We have a million Iraqis dead already. Does calling the occupation a war confuse you? Is it that they aren't being rounded up to go die confusing you? What in the hell makes you think this is any different than the bridge collapsing in Minnesota? Is this all on too grand a scale for you? Is it only the clear and present danger of utter catastrophe that lets you SEE through your benighting conditioning? Do you think because you WRITE blog posts that dis the tyrants that you are helping your fellow motorists get to safety?

SNAP OUT OF IT... FOR CRAPSAKES SNAP OUT OF IT!