![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabid1stWe live in interesting times. You can tell now why the Chinese consider that a curse.
Truthfully, there are so many things that interest me about America today. We are watching the collapse of a superpower...and that superpower is us. And I want to say, "We're too smart for this to happen. We're a nation of genuinely nice people. I'm a nice person...you're a nice person...even the radical fundamentalists I know are nice people." And yet...we are a nation that elected Bush (at least once) into office...a nation that cares more about the next material fix or entertaining stimulation than we do about real suffering. This why the death of a Supreme Court justice right now is such a tragedy. Because it is the American equivalent of a new show. We are all tired of the last one...the more honest of the shallow will say it outloud...so...now we have something else to think about.
Talk about Nero fiddling...WE ARE A NATION THAT MAKES A MUSICAL MONTAGE OUT OF TRAUMATIC DEATH! Yes, let's all feel a false sense of connection with the dying poor as we see their black, tear-streaked faces caught in tastefully photogenic pain...wrap an old lady in the flag...show old glory tattered but still flying...let's all hum along with the rousing choir as they sing an uplifting harmony. We all know what this is...we've seen it a hundred times...it's the last shot of the show...the part where we feel the poignancy of it all and we take away a little emotional message. And yet this, I think to myself, isn't a scripted drama...this is brutal and real. The people of New Orleans won't be back next week with new and more interesting stories to entertain us. They will be struggling with boring issues like joblessness, homelessness and PTSD.
Why doesn't it all seem REAL? Because we always turn tragedy into entertainment...we overindulge and then we push the plate away...sure that we've done all we can because we've felt so much. I thought it was ironic that Tucker Carlson didn't want to show us the dead bodies in the streets because that would be "distasteful"...which is a euphemism I think for "not entertaining enough and likely to make us change the channel." Isn't it a little MORE "distasteful" that the people are lying dead in the streets than that we had to see it? If my husband or brother or heck even I was shot down like a dog or abandoned to die...I would want the picture of it burned in the minds of ANYONE who might keep other people from dying.
Rae
knowing everyone cares but wondering if caring during an obvious life-changing tragedy is what we really need to turn this country around...the Chinese have another tradition about saving someone's life...maybe we are now ALL responsible for the people saved in New Orleans...maybe I am responsible for Chris' Uncle Al and will be for the rest of my life.
Truthfully, there are so many things that interest me about America today. We are watching the collapse of a superpower...and that superpower is us. And I want to say, "We're too smart for this to happen. We're a nation of genuinely nice people. I'm a nice person...you're a nice person...even the radical fundamentalists I know are nice people." And yet...we are a nation that elected Bush (at least once) into office...a nation that cares more about the next material fix or entertaining stimulation than we do about real suffering. This why the death of a Supreme Court justice right now is such a tragedy. Because it is the American equivalent of a new show. We are all tired of the last one...the more honest of the shallow will say it outloud...so...now we have something else to think about.
Talk about Nero fiddling...WE ARE A NATION THAT MAKES A MUSICAL MONTAGE OUT OF TRAUMATIC DEATH! Yes, let's all feel a false sense of connection with the dying poor as we see their black, tear-streaked faces caught in tastefully photogenic pain...wrap an old lady in the flag...show old glory tattered but still flying...let's all hum along with the rousing choir as they sing an uplifting harmony. We all know what this is...we've seen it a hundred times...it's the last shot of the show...the part where we feel the poignancy of it all and we take away a little emotional message. And yet this, I think to myself, isn't a scripted drama...this is brutal and real. The people of New Orleans won't be back next week with new and more interesting stories to entertain us. They will be struggling with boring issues like joblessness, homelessness and PTSD.
Why doesn't it all seem REAL? Because we always turn tragedy into entertainment...we overindulge and then we push the plate away...sure that we've done all we can because we've felt so much. I thought it was ironic that Tucker Carlson didn't want to show us the dead bodies in the streets because that would be "distasteful"...which is a euphemism I think for "not entertaining enough and likely to make us change the channel." Isn't it a little MORE "distasteful" that the people are lying dead in the streets than that we had to see it? If my husband or brother or heck even I was shot down like a dog or abandoned to die...I would want the picture of it burned in the minds of ANYONE who might keep other people from dying.
Rae
knowing everyone cares but wondering if caring during an obvious life-changing tragedy is what we really need to turn this country around...the Chinese have another tradition about saving someone's life...maybe we are now ALL responsible for the people saved in New Orleans...maybe I am responsible for Chris' Uncle Al and will be for the rest of my life.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 06:09 pm (UTC)I can't think of anything to add because you pretty much summed up what I was thinking yesterday night, when the news about Rehnquist came in.
And I want to say, "We're too smart for this to happen. We're a nation of genuinely nice people. I'm a nice person...you're a nice person...even the radical fundamentalists I know are nice people."
And yet... as a whole....
Are people going to wake up and smell what's really going on? What *has* been going on all along and the public was too busy staying blissfully uninformed (I dislike making generalizations like this because not everybody is ignorant of what this administration has been doing/not doing). Is this going to wake people up? I hate to be pessimistic and cynical, but it doesn't seem likely. People will slap each other on the back (kind of like what many politicians are already doing) and move on to something else.