In the balance
This post was mixed in my thoughts with another post I am trying to write. I've extracted this single thought, to consider it fully for a moment. A week ago a young woman died in the Gaza strip. I know it hardly seems worth while to even type those words. It's like saying there was a gang related murder in Southeast DC. Like saying the sky is full of air. But this girl was an American, and a college student named Rachel Corrie from Evergreen college in Olympia Washington. That's where Courtney Love went to school, or say Calvin Johnson if your tastes run K records style. A person from a demi-monde I could, perhaps, relate to. She was run over by a bulldozer, twice, the driver running over her again moving his rig back out. She was part of a peace group standing in front of a Palestinian house that the local Israeli authorities had marked for destruction. There are some places you can stand in front of bulldozers and they will stop even if it's just to get the authorities to drag you away, and there are some places where the bulldozers do not stop. It does no good to point to legal authority, to some piece of paper with some ones signature on it. It is irrelevant, that signature did not authorize an execution. People just figure it did - but it does point to the very real difference between standing in front of an old theater for the sake of historic preservation in the United states and standing in front of a house in the Gaza Strip. What is happening here is violence and hatred to the point and purpose of extinction of human life.
My local paper [The Washington Post] put the story in the deep of Mondays paper with no flag or note on the front page. It was off message, it diverged, it went away.
Then it came back. Driven again into the public's consciousness by a thoughtless cartoon in the Diamondback , the student newspaper at the University of Maryland. I work at Maryland - though I try to avoid the Diamondback and didn't see this cartoon Tuesday, but I did see the stories later in the week as reaction to the cartoon emerged. Campus administration weighed in, usually they try to ignore the student body as best they can. I went looking for a copy of that issue and took it home with me . It was hard to be prepared for what I found a malignant ill-conceived scrawl masquerading as editorial draftsmanship and humor, a spray of bile stuck to paper, signifying the non-presence of a comprehending human heart in the fingers and persona that inflicted that thought into the world. Here there is no compassion, no pity, no empathy. It may be true as Rousseau says that this is a feeling obscure and strong in the savage man, developed but weak in civilized man , that reason engenders vanity and reflection fortifies it. (discourse on inequality). Let love of self grow too strong and reason will never rise beyond ideology and that faculty which connects each to others will be submerged.
I see this as being similar to an incident a year or so ago in which an art exhibit at a Palestinian college, recreated the moment of destruction from a suicide bombing which displayed, with colored plastic objects hung on nylon thread, body parts and [formerly] internal organs of shattered human beings flying through the air. I encountered this story in some variety in the media at the time and while the exhibit was usually portrayed as cautionary, the tone of its engaged viewers as they were interviewed was by the largest part celebratory.
Consider for a moment a room. In this sad desolate room lies a dead child amongst the toys of youth, murdered cruelly by your enemies and their single language of fear and terror in a savage attack. agonized torment grips you. A visceral spasm palpable - no different from a punch to the stomach. A weak swirling feeling like the long movements of the sea wash over you. Your breath comes back to you but slowly extending in lamentations bitter and painful to voice. Then rage. Rushing in, charging forward with banners of righteous hatred. Punishment! revenge! The dogs that did this have started something - let's have them see it finished across their own thresholds. Arm yourselves with weapons sharp and cold: with the spear that roars for blood.
Now, come feed your indignation, while the neighbors are out to gather vengeance with edged bronze and iron. Let me take you to second shaded room nearby. Here another lies dead. A youth of the others, brazen, already indoctrinated with the foul creed of their elders. Caught willfully engaged in defying of the right and beautiful truth. Pursuing their likely planned path of cowardly murder of the innocent. This time gloriously stopped before one death could be notched to their hilt. Here is victory! Rejoice and immerse yourself in the deserved suffering and death of our enemies and all those that oppose us. Let us spit on the body now and leave.
But wait there has been some mistake. I have gotten the rooms mixed up. We have just spat in disdain on our own beloved, innocent baby. We have left their soul un-consoled, their passing unmourned. Worse yet we have felt pity, heartbreak and pain at the sight of the broken body of the guilty. Grieved and wept at their lost beauty. The rage in us rebounds our remorse centers on the lost minutes of correct feeling. We sink to our knees devastated; with focused effort we bring our recollection back to the first room. This time we see the clear truth, the unmistakable hallmarks of the damnable, so obvious and even worse than appears to the uninformed deluded eyes of the fence sitters. We know how to feel now, there is no doubt. No consideration ought be wasted on them whatsoever. They should all die.
I have played a cruel trick on you; though, there is only one room and only one dead child. I have simply led you into that room, twice, through two separate doors.
11:54:41 PM  ;
|
|
