Protestors drawn to the mall this weekend included some normal people. Most of them, in fact, were normal people. Many of them veterans or even current military. There were some 100,000 anti-war protesters, according to some estimates, despite strange problems with Amtrack which just happened to have problems with all it's train lines on Friday and despite other obstacles to even getting their message out.
http://www.freep.com/news/latestnews/pm6221_20050924.htm
I watched the TV reports and they focused on G. Gordon Liddy the few "pro-war" protesters -- all covered with the colors of the flag and some of them very violent. They also focused on the radicals who held a seperate protest at Dupont Circle and then marched on the White House to join the main protest. Liddy acted like the wackos were the only ones to show up. He gave a speach in which he implied that the people protesting the war were bad for morale.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0539,ferguscd,68201,2.html
"Their rally drew only several hundred supporters to the Washington Mall, where they held up signs like "Freedom Isn't Free" and "Saddam Is a WMD" as they listened to speakers like Watergate thief-turned-radio-pundit G. Gordon Liddy, who accused Sheehan of "whoring the good name of her son" and carrying out a 'left-wing socialist agenda.'"
I don't think these protesters would have been bad for my morale if I were over there fighting. But if someone called one of my comrades mom's a "whore" I'd be fighting mad. The protesters (at least the main-stream ones) all had signs saying patriotic things like "support the troops bring them home" -- anyone who is sent abroad among nasty people to do the nasty business of fighting welcomes that message. What is depressing is the notion that all this fighting might not actually buy democracy and freedom for the Iraqis or any oil for home.
I agree with the characterization the village voice gave his words. What is depressing is that burglars and cons like G. Gordon Liddy are free -- well he did his time but he's definately not reformed -- and still able to stir up discontent and defame people on TV with adoring crowds hanging on their words. I especially don't like his moustache. It reminds me of a certain German who died in 1944. I wonder if it's on purpose?
But what drew me to write about this was some incidents I heard of (and have experienced myself). One of the vets at the protest saw one of the two hundred or so "pro-war" protesters and went over to talk to him. He said to the guy "you know Bush has been cutting veterans benefits and not doing anything for military people." The guy just gave him a blank stare. Two different worlds.
"Mine is not to reason why,
mine is but to fight and die."
Chris
When the Lion awakes
He spreads red across the sky
And then up comes his orange burning eye
His fiery mane flying all around.
He roars and yet I cannot hear the sound.
He burns, and yet never comes the night
He turns, I turn, I baste in his light.
I bake in his light.
And when I'm done, it's night.
Chris
I didn't make a post about New Orleans because, well, enough people were already talking about it. Truth is I was very concerned but forgot to post here. I did follow what was happening. The Times Picayune, one local fellow's blog, and various other blogs and news sources covered what was happening better than the newspapers and television. What was infuriating was listening to either Chertoff or that Michael fellow say that help was on it's way to those folks in the Louisiana Stadium and then not only not seeing them show up -- but finding out that FEMA was turning people away. Finally the President fired the head of FEMA and real help arrived. What a refreshing development!
The Feds were too slow in reacting to what was going on. The FEMA leadership acted like jerks. The President was on vacation. His deputies were incompetant. So what else is new? Nothing. But what was new was that the President actually admitted (well sort of) that he'd helped create the SNAFU. That was a first. I was glad when the cavalry finally arrived; a week late and billions short, but what can you say? New Orleans is a democratic enclave, but it's neighbors are all Republican powerhouses (and retirement sites) and so the locals haven't been totally messed over and maybe things will work out for them.
A lot of people I know actually helped in the clean up or went down there. The Air Force, the military, everyone who could help, wanted to help or actually did help. My cousin volunteered. Doctors I know volunteered. People raised funds. Funds are still needed. I hope this spirit continues.
I know one thing. The entire city should not be rebuilt unless they build it above sea level and with better levies and safe-guards. It's not a good sign that they are buying house trailers and cheating some people. When the politicians and accountants step in whily nilly nothing gets done right.
What are needed are risk assessments, damage assessments, and the use of technology to make sure this doesn't happen again. Where buildings have been destroyed, they need to be bulldozed or dirt filled into their lower levels, dirt trucked in and then rebuilt at a level above sea level -- if within New Orleans proper. The street level should be above the flood level for the entire city. And the levies need to be proof against a category 5 hurricane in the worst scenario.
Outside the city limits homes need to be built at least 10-30 feet above sea level. And nobody should be able to build a home closer than 1000 feet from a beach unless that home is built like a fort complete with 30 foot glacis, 30 foot wall, and armored shutters on the windows. Communities that flood once should be abandoned or rebuilt above the level they flooded. Communities should be surrounded with meadows, forests and marshes -- by law.
The Mississipi should be allowed to flow through those marshes during normal times and through the meadows and forests during floods. The mistake the engineers made was to try to fight mother nature instead of using her silt and muck to keep the area fertile and alive. The land sinks a little each year -- so keep it building up naturally by diverting water into it during floods. And in built up areas build it up naturally by paving the streets ever higher and requiring houses and buildings to either rachet their level up each year or else be abandoned and built over. Do all those things and there will still be natural disasters -- but they won't be so disasterous.
I just turned 50. Not sure how to describe the feeling. On the one hand, it feels good to still be around. On the other hand, well what the heck, it feels good to still be around.
I wish this world were a better place, but I'm content with doing my best to leaving it better than I found it, and barring that at least enjoying the effort of trying. I can't do much more than that.
Enlightenment is a nice goal, but it isn't "sustainable" unless somehow it is matched to "institutional" or "collective" memory. Doing well by myself is not enough. I might reach enlightenment, but I have no guarantee that "in my next life" the world I return to will be any better. Indeed "I" have a suspicion that "I" will just dissolve anyway. "I" will go on figuratively. But I'm going to forget everything. Even if there is such a thing as a soul, that soul, it seems, won't remember anything about this me who writes this blog. But that is a good thing -- a clean slate. What's important about "my" memories? If they are important I pray they be written in the "book of life" -- but beyond that. I don't know.
The talmud teaches that it is forbidden to even enquire about "what came before" and "what will come after." They are outside our scope. Literally unknowable. As if we were cartoons on a four dimensional paper. The cartoonist comes to the canvas to draw each day -- that is creation. Our time is not his time. If we are interesting enough he'll draw us in detail.
So Hurricanes, "interesting times", third world style leaders, and temporal politics are all important -- indeed life and death -- but not as important as how we "combat" the issues of our lives. Maybe we can do better.
Robin's been doing work I promised myself I'd do several years ago, but both didn't have the time and didn't have the inspiration of Eddie Chai's materials. I now have to go back to my website and revise quite a few pages to "fix" the material in them. I have some minor and a few major mistakes there.
http://www.geocities.com/chris_holte
I have to confess I haven't had the heart in it since my attitude changed and I no longer could excuse the exclusivist, triumphalist, chauvinist and hell-fire messages coming from my formerly beloved associations. I would levy my own hellfire and brimstone attacks on the results of hellfire and brimstone teaching; but it would be misunderstood.
I'm continuing my "with the elephants" sojourne and am enjoying praying in hebrew and studying the Jewish Sages.
It's, as Paul described it, a great privilage to be initiated into the teachings of those sages and the law as seen by them. Shame he had to start a fight with his own teachers that continues to this day. Earlier I read (under guidance of another teacher) about his break with his own teachers and how he converted to Christianity. I just re-read Thessalonians with context and saw that he decided to pick a fight with, and turn on, Jesus's brother James and the entire senior leadership of Christian succession over the issue of circumcision. We see his side of the arguments, but we don't see James's and Barnabbas defending themselves in the "authorized" bible. It appears that their disciples eventually went back to being Jews, died in the revolt against the Romans, or became the ancestors of the persecuted Gnostic, Nestorian, Syrian and other 'heretical' churches also persecuted by later Christians.
I prefer reading the Jewish Sages, who were writing in the aftermath of the disaster that resulted from the failed revolts of 70AD-170AD, later events and who had to deal with a, by then, completely non-jewish Christianity who had inherited the hostility this break engendered plus the hostility that Jews had been traditionally facing from Romans and Greeks. All fascinating stuff. There is a chapter called "forbidden lectures" I'm reading with particular interest.
I'm not interested in the mysticism. I'm interested in how to rationally practice religion and reconcile it with reality. Obviously Christians can't help me here, neither can most Buddhists. But those sages can, they were picking up the pieces of a religiously caused disaster and resulting holocaust.
Chris