20 April 04

Out There

I’ve been seething again. This time it’s because our local rag is angry about the Spanish pullout from Iraq, “leaving us in the lurch.” Lurch? What lurch? The lurch created exactly by WHOM? And how are the few departing Spanish troops—1% of the total foreign forces in Iraq—going to constitute leaving anyone in any lurch?

Anyway, part of what has been getting me all fired up is that I’ve just finished reading Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven.

Talk about the connection between religion and violence. I know, the Mormons are now almost mainstream America, almost lost in the welter of ordinary fundamentalism; they are pleasant, agreeable, and orderly, they officially ditched their less palatable doctrines a long time ago. And… they are spawning numerous ultra-fundamentalist offspring, many of whom are polygamists, all of whom regard the general state of affairs in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (let alone the United States) as rank evil, and most of whom are prepared to die for their faith if not kill for it. Instructed by their faith to listen to God, many of them have, and God seems to tell them all different things.

What EXACTLY is the Department of Homeland Security doing about homegrown terrorism? Is there anyone monitoring the likes of Timothy McVeigh? It’s so easy to blame everything on the outside. On the others. I wonder how history will judge this time: will we be seen to have been as blind as all this?

Posted by at 07:37 PM in Politics | Link |
  1. I carry a sense that the blocks that hold up the human world are teetering on the possibility of a piece breaking loose any moment now. It leaves me in a constant state of anxiety, and has been doing so for close to three years now. It’s getting to be too much. I make snappish comments, often about America and Americans, because I have no outlet for the huge outrage I feel. More than any other people in the world, Americans supporting the war (I always have to put in this clause because of how testy Americans get when you accuse them of anything) right now sound just like the worst of history’s ideological fanatics and lovers of violence. You can’t reason with them and very often you dare not speak up against them. I’ve even put off thinking of taking a spring vacation in Hawaii because of the outrageous hassles I will be subjected to at the airports. How much longer will this madness go on? The world’s people are really tired of America’s paranoia.

    Beth’s most recent post at Cassandra Pages does a great job at diffusing the anger, though. She has a way of finding the moral sweet spot.

    — butuki    21. April 2004, 06:56    Link
  2. Yeah, but I get so pissed off too. Sorry to be so late finding this post, Pica, it was a very good one and you made some really essential points.

    — beth    27. April 2004, 11:59    Link

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