As liberating as it is alienating.
The Washington Post has put me on a train to Palookaville. They
didn't mean to do it, perhaps, but they didn't mean not to either. The
previous Sunday, several paragraphs into a long winded style section
story Backfire (about a women who burnt down a student group
house in North Carolina). I read this sentence: "a year after earning
her degree in business administration [she] was temping as a $12hr
gofer...Things were no better on the personal front." Do I even earn
that much copy catologing books for the state universities library?, I
thought. Yes, maybe even a fraction of a dollar more. A minor
offhand statement from the Post phrased indifferently fallen from the
writer to the page, passed on by whatever editors looked at that piece.
A sentiment that states more permanently and irrevocably than the
Washington Post's ability to explain or retract what its writers
editors owners and advertisers really think of those of us, living in
America at 30,000 or less a year. U.S. median income is around $31,000,
but to the Post there is little point seeing difference between us and
any other disturbed dying irrational thing. We are not creatures of the
light. We have neither real lives nor history.
I recall reading (probably in the Washington Post) that over on
Virginias Eastern Shore - Northampton, Southampton counties enlistments in the US military run to around 1 in 4 high school
graduates. To what degree do those people and their lives figure into
the Post's constituency and issues. The readers, the policy makers
whose first draft of history they dedicate themselves to writting. I
think none. To be sure - in an abstract way - they may consider the
lives of lesser unfortunate beings by turns and tones of pathos. The
underweal of history. They'll never consider us like they consider
themselves, or as really having an equal voice. As they sort out their
routine reporting on wars and politics, it's not as if they've been
called out to fight.
The sort of person who joins the military out of high school, as
I did. He or she will at least find some autonomy there. A certain
freedom. I know that must seem odd to say, I don't expect everyone to
understand. Perhaps though you can still see the irony - of
the Abu Ghraib and adjunct prisoner abuse scandals as they die down and
disappear. That with all the hierarchy of the military - layer after
layer of generals and majors, Defense Department Secretaries and Deputy
Directors - that responsibilty is the provence of the private and
non-com alone. No one else will go to prison, or be held accountable in
any real way for any of it. Not Rumsfeld, Just Lynndie England: Abu Ghraib's message for the rank and file. That's fine. Fish rot like that, from the head.
I see these yellow ribbon magnets on cars. Well, not cars so
much - SUV's mostly. I wonder; who are these for? They say "support our
troops" on them. I doubt that is their true meaning. That is to say
that I doubt an empty gesture can hold true meaning. What they want
from you, these troops, they already know you can't give them (this is
why the requisition forms merely ask for more ammo). A reason. A good
reason. A reason for being used. They don't really need anything from
you at all ; though. They will individually come up with their own
reasons in due time. An exercise as liberating as it is alienating.
11:41:32 PM  ;;
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