I've been reading the list silently and sporadically for a while, a lot of
unassociated work (redistricting studies), and a change of season but of
course there is something that makes all of this seem rather small now. On
Monday afternoon I was listening to a Quicksilver Messenger Service album
(the best band in San Francisco in 1966 ). They did Gordon Lightfoots song,
"Pride of Man" whose opening stanza is:
Turn around, go back down, back the way you came
can't you see that flash of fire
ten times brighter than the day
and behold the mighty city
broken into dust again.
Oh God, the pride of man!
Broken in the dust again!
(and then John Cippolina's wailing guitar)
On Tuesday morning at 6:15 a.m. my daughter called me from LA. "Did you
know", she said. "Know what?" "Turn on the TV." (Isn't that telling!) I
saw the flash of fire live, Later the song's prophecy was fulfilled. And
then I kept imagining the Tarot card: the Tower, with the bolt of lightning
striking it, and with the over and over and over repetition from so many
angles of the oh so well aimed what??? . . . the flash of fire, the city
broken in the dust . . . In my initial sardonic insulation from what was
happening, I kept thinking: Where's Mel Gibson, where's Sylvester
Stallone. But no, this was real. But what's the difference. I'd seen the
scene so many times. No not that specific scene. From a cinematographic
perspective, I think the actual footage of the destruction of the Twin
Towers was much better than anything Hollywood has produced. Not that
specific scene, but all of them that had come before. All of the bombs and
buildings blowing up. The people running down the street as an enormous
cloud of smoke and debris billows ever closer behind them. Jeez, that's
straight out of Godzilla. Isn't that from Independence Day? And the plane
smashing into the tower? That's old. King Kong. But I've seen spacecraft
crash kicking up enormous waves of dirt in their advance ("Men in Black")
and besdies someone always comes along, Arnold Swarznegger, Steven Segall.
But this, I knew was not a movie and so I watched over and over again.
Perhaps feeling like Phil Och's in his song, Crucifiction, about the
Kennedy assassination, : " . . . can you show me a picture of the pain." I
wanted to put my hand in the wound to know it was real.
And this is the feeling I've been getting from some young people who don't
know what to feel. The old patriotism doesn't sing in their veins, that old
patriotism that paints a line: makes it us/them, black/white, or as George
of the Jumble put it "we're good, they're evil." Maybe in the postmodern
logic of late capitalist culture, the pastiche and relativization, the
media-distancing, and the spectacle commodity has left my generation's
children bereft of the equipment with which to develop a patriotic fervor
(I'm way too optimistic I think). And it doesn't help one whit that we
can't identify the enemy with any country, or any ethnicity, or any
religion. Who then is the enemy? A shadowy network of terror known by the
name: Spector;. The people who've declared a war on Americans have a clear
advantage, they hate Americans. Americans are exhorted not to hate and
probably genuinely don't hate Iranians, Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians,
Afghanis, Pakastanis, Saudis, Moroccans, Indonesians, Gulf Arabs, and
besides are told that neither any of these nationalities nor their common
religion is the enemy.
Maybe this is one of the characteristics that leads bin Ladem to
believe and to encourage his followers to believe that America is weak, that
they, like Paul Atreides and the Fremen in Frank Herbert's "Dune" will rise
up from the desert and purify the universe. Long odds are being given for
those betting on the Mohaddajin. From this side however, this space, this
not-so-quick-to-jump-to-jingoistic-fervor could lead to that third reaction:
a reaction not of fight, not of flight, but of that other, most human abilty
for transformation and redifinition of the situation. But George of the
Jumble and all the motley crew of warmongerers are moving fast and already
have congressional authorization for unlimited use of force ( and yes it
seems they've made it very clear that they mean any weapon in the arsenal)
and 40 billion dollars without specific oversight and that's just the start.
Hell but I'm crazy! 90% of the Americans are willing to let the hawks
spread their wings. And so . . . Vietnam again? I'm sure that the groups
who have declared war on America (a war that America has been fighting for a
while but that Americans just woke up to on Tuesday) also recognize American
belief in its own invincibility (even after Vietnam!) to be just another of
its exploitable weaknesses. And think! the crisis is going to put George
of the Jumble right up there with all the great American leaders. What a
twist of fate. he just might get to down in history like Abraham Lincoln
or Teddy Roosevelt, not like Herbert Hoover or his own dad, be famous
forever, right there in the history books: just personable old George of
the Jumble dealing out world justice Texas-style and then going back to the
ranch for lemonade and a nap.
Tonight I went to a "candle light" vigil in the Arcata Plaza beneath the
statue of President McKinley. "he didn't do no wrong, just rode a train to
Buffalo, but didn't stay for long." (who actually came to Humboldt County
way back then and said, "this bud's for you!" and stands with his hand
stretched out like one of the rainbow people who seasonally migrate to
Arcata, "Spare Change?" But there ain't been no change. And it was sad.
Candles and flags and exhortations in the name of a thinly veiled Christian
god to provide the courage to do what was to be done. duhh. . . the power to
rethink the situation?? No, it didn't seem that this was the power the
speaker was referring to - - So my neighbor and I took one look at each
other and headed off to take McKinley's advice.
At what point does one begin to feel just like a bit of foam in a wave that
has rolled and grown for miles across the oceans and now hits land breaking
and rushing toward shore?
Paul H. Dillon
"An eye for an eye would leave everyone blind." -- Mohandas Ghandi
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