The Squandering

I am aware that I am writing on this auspicious day. Others this day have made the usual speeches of remembrance, have said the words that should be said. Let me say briefly the words that should also be said, but usually aren’t:

W and his administration squandered the goodwill of the world. But WE are to blame for letting it happen, for being blind and undemanding. W and his ilk might have taken the actions, but W(e) are responsible for the loss of sympathy, of the loss of support of most of the world. W(orse), we squandered the unity and communal fellowship we had with each other. Instead of building on the reality and meaning we found in the aftermath, we let ourselves be diverted. Many of us took the president’s words and “went shopping” to further fuel an insane and unsustainable consumer culture. Others got distracted by the very spectacle illusion culture Hedges is describing in his book. And we piled up debt to enormous levels, and in the process even triggered the near meltdown of the country’s and world’s financial system, and near-enfeebled our opportunities for healthily recovering. And we paid (and pay) homage at the feet of our Wall Street and corporate gods and beg for their benevolence, like lost souls begging for relief from their devilish tormentors.

So did this tragedy of 9/11 make us better off by our reaction(s)? By what measure could we say that?

All right, enough soap box for today. Time to attend to Madame’s words!

I meant to say “ripe” not “rife,” in the second to last sentence of my previous post. Oh, well, I corrected it, a week late! :)

Madame has analyzed well. And I have felt these permeating waves of unease you describe. I cannot tell you how many people—of all ages—say to me that they couldn’t sleep the night before. Again. The country is anxious, and as you said, can recognize the not so subtle signs of the road to doom. Yet isolated or in willing delusion most remain, unable to connect meaningfully, the awesome power of what is arrayed against them seemingly so daunting as to discourage to the point of near-despair.

Indeed, what then when we have entire generations who only know this “reality” you have described? Astute Romans asked the same thing. And got no good answers. Because their culture was so rotten by that point that there was no salvaging it, let alone renewal and new course charting. Is ours? I don’t know. It still seems to have an enormous reservoir of possibility, of latent strength. But it remains untapped for very much productive purpose. Each day we cascade down this mudslide of doom, and become a bit weaker. I do hope that when we finally put our arms out to stop ourselves that we will still have the strength to arrest our fall (and hope beyond hope that we even have the strength to reverse it!).

The Professor will return to his usual wordy self next week. I am pausing to gather my thoughts that are flying in a dozen directions right now…