The New World
I just read a yahoo news story entitled "Cartoon protestors rampage across Pakistan."To paraphrase Tom Robbins for the second time in a week, if no one had taken Hitler seriously in his early days, as he was whipping up support in dark, crowded beer houses, we could have avoided quite a bit of pain and suffering. When I see anyone trying to be solemn, be they George W. Bush, a high school football coach, the CEO of my non-profit company, or catholic priest on his pulpit, my first instinct is to pelt them with donughts, sausages, and beer, and follow up with jokes about their hair.
What's wrong with people? Why do we have the need to feel serious and grim? Why must we be holy? What is it we're feeling when we smartly swing a gun barrel over our left shoulder, or salute a piece of waving cloth? What is going thourgh our heads when we listen to a voice mangeified by a microphone? Why do we sit crosslegged in a circle to pray, or bow before someone wearing a crown?
Are we that easily cowed? Are we that desperate to belong to something as arbitrary as country, kingdom, phile, family, religion, or whatever the hell else? How do you go from the innocent tabula rasa of your infancy to risking your life over a cartoon drawing?
Or. . . Are we so frustrated at our own human impotency, we must clutch onto any excuse to justify our expression of anger?
I don't know.
posted by Chris W. @ 11:51 PM
