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Tuesday, Sep 25, 2001
September 25, 2001
Mass Murder
Americans are discussing germ warfare these days. Some are afraid that their food or water will be poisoned. Some scoff at the possibility of such an attack.
I was searching my memory for precedents, and thought I had heard about Andrew Jackson using germ warfare during the Indian Relocation of the 1830's (aka Trail of Tears), in the form of blankets infested with small pox. During a web search, I found no references to Jackson using that particular weapon against Native Americans, but there is plenty of evidence of genocide by other means. Some apologists will say that Jackson was a man of his times, and thought he was saving the Indians from certain extermination by relocating them. The fact that Jackson kept human body parts as souvenirs undermines any image of benevolence.
While we struggle to understand why some people support bin Laden, Milosevic, et al, we might want to reflect upon why this nation heaps so much honor on Jackson, a man with the blood of thousands on his hands. How can we hope to understand other nations when we can't even make sense of our own story?
September 24, 2001
Finger Pointing
Seeing Jerry Springer on television in other countries distresses me. Is this the impression of America we want to give the rest of the world? But perhaps it does represent the truth about America. Our national attention span has become shorter and shorter, and demands more and more stimulation. The national media bounces from scandal to scandal -- O.J., Monica Lewinsky, Robert Blake, Gary Condit -- as if each new scandal is the most important thing on the planet. This national attention deficit disorder, predicted by Orwell in 1984 and Bradbury in Farenheit 451, allows revisionist historians free reign.
A colleague forwarded an article from the Boston Globe which discussed blame that should be assigned to the Clinton administration for their lack of adequate response to previous attacks. That sort of finger pointing just gets my ire going. If there is blame to be assigned, the target for that blame must be much larger than Mr. Bill. Below is a letter to the local weekly inspired by that Boston Globe article.
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I'm hearing talk about Clinton being soft on terrorism, and therefore this mess is his fault. But where were the Republicans during the Clinton administration? Weren't they were busy attempting the overthrow of a duly-elected president? The congressional Republicans, in particular, were
obsessive voyeurs fascinated by semen stains. And the whole damn country shared the fascination with this scandal, transfixed by trivialities. Perhaps this tragedy will help us understand that issues of life and death, pain and deprivation, truth and beauty are the rightful subjects of national fascination.