THE SILENCE OF THE SPAMS
Ok.
Once again, I'm starting to get messages from you BarlowFriendz inquiring into the state of my health or wondering if you've been dropped from the list. It's strangely heartening, your assumption that if I'm not spamming at you, there must be something wrong.
Your concerns appear to have been sharpened by contemporary events. I've read so far about ten different versions of the following: "Why are you being so quiet? Surely you have something to say about what's going on at the moment..?"
Well, actually, no. Not exactly. I've been in outrage overload for weeks. I'm finding it hard to express myself these days with anything more articulate than gesticulations and sputterings. Lately I've been mute as Congress.
(Actually, not everyone in Congress has lost his voice. Senator Robert Byrd recently gave a speech too historic to earn notice in any mass medium but which has been so widely circulated on the Internet that I'll spare you the receipt of yet another copy. If you haven't read it, you may find it at:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/webreturn/?url=http://byrd%2Esenate%2Egov
It contains this utterly true line: "I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is 'in the highest moral traditions of our country'".)
Of course one wonders what purpose might be served by saying anything.
An estimated eleven million people marched all over the planet this weekend. (Check them out http://www.hyperreal.org/~dana/.) While this out-pouring, unprecedented in the history of civilization, managed for the first time to draw acknowledgements from Bush and Blair, they were dismissive at best. (Blair elevated non sequitur to surreal art form when he said that the million plus protestors in London were fewer in number than people killed over the years by Saddam Hussein.)
I have been dumb-struck by the Administration's sublime arrogance, their mythic hubris, their utterly un-entitled entitlement. What could I say that might detail their brutal expedience more boldly than their own actions? Mouth open, jawing thin air, eyes wide and staring, I've kept quiet.
Meanwhile, under conditions of "Orange" Alert, our streets now contain more machine gun-toting heavies per capita than I ever saw in East Germany, the wildly arbitrary TSA is randomly searching cars without probable cause as they enter airports, the Justice Department is introducing an even more unconstitutional addendum to the USA PATRIOT Act, and the predictions I made to you on the afternoon of September 11, 2001 are being realized more dreadfully than even I believed they could be.
Still. It is morally useful to remember that, no matter how certain, one might be wrong. If I am to condemn the Emperor's smug certitude, I must be mindful of my own. Thus, I've been attempting, in the back of my mind, to make a case for the Administration's behavior.
