(Credit to www.armscontrolcenter.org)
“Is it possible, finally, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?”
--Haruki Murakami
Two years ago next month I started writing letters on salon, which evolved, a year ago, into blogging on open salon.
Lately I've been wondering what does putting so many words into the webosphere mean, if anything?
And I have to admit that some of my angst stems from the events of this week. Not only Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan, but the fact that his reasons for doing so contain no more transparency, depth, or even vocabulary than the words the previous president gave to mark similar troop surges.
Because there has been no additional information from Obama it’s been discouraging to see his supporters try to guess on their own reasons for this troop surge, and to use these guesses to justify it. Some say, with a certainty and vagueness that Obama’s relative would find praiseworthy, that it is to fight “them over there so we don't have to fight them here.” Others say that it is to win the domestic election in 2012 that Obama needs to look tough on terror. I wonder if Obama would be charmed by the idea that some believe he is placing American troops in harm’s way, not to mention civilian lives, in order to guarantee winning a domestic election at home—and they're cool with it.
Just a few facts I picked up while perusing the internet: per UNICEF, Afghanistan has a literacy rate of 28%. At birth a baby born in Afghanistan has a life expectancy of forty-four years.
The 2009 U.S. budget assigns 54% of its expenditures to current and past military operations. (See chart at top). And since 2001 the money spent fighting terror has only continued to dramatically rise.
(Credit to www.armscontrolcenter.org)
Here is a chart to show the relationship of U.S. military spending to the rest of the world. The pink bar shows the U.S. spending, and the black and the gray bars show the military spending of the rest of the world.
(Credit to www.armscontrolcenter.org)
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Comments
Our mouths are going to gape wide at what is said and done, over the next while, by people we'd least expect to "hear" it from. The temptation to lie to ourselves is going to be huge.
I like the idea that open salon could be a launching place for progressives....will keep my eye out for such a launching...
thanks for reading.
Robin, thank-you. xox.
Lonnie, you're right & you're an inspiration for that. thanks for reading.
this blog is better to light one little candle than to curse the darkness
How much we lost.
Thank you, dearie.
waking, just posting that video made me feel better. I love that man.
thanks grif. glad to be not alone on this.
Peace and compassion are radical and dangerous ideas in this country.
Your words matter, even if you never see the positive consequences. Even if nothing really changes in our lifetime. The "butterfly effect" is real. I already feel better with this reminder that I am not the only one who sees it. Which makes me feel stronger to try and hang in there and survive the madness of my country, and keep writing about it. If nothing else we help give each other strength, and this counts for a great deal.
so glad you're reading.
but sometimes I think people are just so overwhelmed by how horrible it all is that they prefer to live in denial and pretend it's not true even though some part of them has to know it's real - willful ignorance is most unforgivable because it drags the rest of us down with them
thanks for the kind words about my "Dear America - WTF?" post!
(and congrats on getting that house)
lorri, I move one week from today.....and can't wait...thanks.
And yet, and yet .... for change to happen, don't we need to also be listening to each other? To be willing to change some of our ideas, perhaps, to come to a consensus? And we don't listen to each other. We talk to others who agree with us, bouncing the same ideas back and forth.
When S.I. Hayakawa, the semanticist, was President of S.F. State College, back in the day -- way back, when there were student protesters taking over college campuses -- he commented that he was struck by the fact that the protesters seemed unable to actually enter into a dialogue with him. They were right, he was wrong, he had to get out of his office until he changed all of his ideas. He attributed this inability to the fact that the students had grown up with television, which is a communication medium that allows only "on" and "off." Don't like something, turn the channel, because you can have no possible effect on the program. He compared that to a town hall meeting (the old kind, where things got done); you had to listen to other opinions than your own, and go over and over points to reach consensus. He felt the students had never had any experience of that.
And of course, computers are even more on/off than television. Interact with the computer exactly the way the computer needs, or don't interact at all (except for smacking it with a hammer, of course). And so write and write, and talk and talk, but rarely amend our ideas based on what others write and write.
Bob Herbert, in the NY Times, has been speaking the what I believe is the truth for awhile. To no avail, as far as I can tell, except to make me feel a little less alone. I have never read anyone indicate they've changed their ideas based on something they've read, or even on the situation in the real world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/opinion/08herbert.html?_r=2
It's a good question, dolores. I sit alone in front of my computer, thinking about it.
a picture says a million words in the case
thanks for this!