Crisis of Consciousness
I was all set to write about our trip to New Orleans--a place that K says fills her with a sense of impending disaster--and how the Charlotte airport, like all airports, is fundamentally alienating in the way that inspired me to start this enterprise.
But I can't get that photograph out of my head.
I can't stop thinking about how half of my countrymen voted for this. How they presumably think that such atrocities committed in our names are somehow making us safer and not what an American flag will come to symbolize to these children when they are old enough to fire a shoulder-mounted missile or get on the subway with an innocent-looking backpack.
I can't stop thinking about the utter inadequacy of language to name this madness.
But I can't get that photograph out of my head.
I can't stop thinking about how half of my countrymen voted for this. How they presumably think that such atrocities committed in our names are somehow making us safer and not what an American flag will come to symbolize to these children when they are old enough to fire a shoulder-mounted missile or get on the subway with an innocent-looking backpack.
I can't stop thinking about the utter inadequacy of language to name this madness.
posted by C. JoDI at 1:28 PM
2 Comments:
I know, my dear, I know.
Not to compound bleakness with more bleakness, but that photo was part of a triple threat in this week's news for me. Between that photo, the emerging reports of the use of fake menstrual blood in interrogating/torturing Guantanamo detainees, and the picture of Dick Cheney at Auschwitz (the one that, in the words of a Washington Post reporter, made him look like he was dressed for snowblowing), I can hardly bear to think of what we are becoming. The question is no longer how do we undo the damage done in our name, but can we?
Bakerina
re Cheney's garb: He was so embarrassing, and so clearly inappropriate that despite my Olympic loathing of the man, I had to construct a theory for his behavior that involved lost/mispacked luggage and closed-for-the-day shops. If he wore that ensemble by choice...
As for the menstrual blood, at first I was horrified in a way that is slowly becoming effaced with resignment each time we hear of the latest technique of liberation in Iraq prisons, but then I thought: Shit, why not confront someone with their bullshit religious superstition. In fact, I'd prefer that mindfuck to the electrified scrotum approach any day, if it had any chance to be effective (which I doubt). Much as I abhor the use of violence, abhor even more such fundamentalist mentality as holds that women are unclean, whether that superstition is founded in the Koran or Leviticus.
Post a Comment
<< Home