I'm on break and posting, and do you care?

J. is off for the next few days to the city-state from which she hails and I will follow shortly. She joked that after my last post "all of your (my) friends in the states will know that I cannot throw or catch for nuts" That must be an antiquated phrase left over from British rule as I have never heard an American say that and I enjoy and use antiquated phrases. She admitted that she has no idea as to its literal meaning. Has anyone?

I have been reading "War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells--the school library had a copy. There's a very interesting passage early on in the text which cautions the reader from judging the Martians too harshly for their wanton slaughter of the inhabitants of Earth, after all, the narrator says, we are the same race who drove to extinction (or virtually did) the tribes of Tasmania and the bison of North America, how can we blame the Martians "for warring in the same spirit?"

Like any good work of Science Fiction the novel is allegorical and critical of the problems of our own times--written as it was in the late 19th Century (or early twentieth?), the comparison to earthly colonialism is quite vivid. His point, though made with only a few sentences, is resonant for me. Our own aggression often slips out of perspective while the aggression waged against is portrayed as the sole evidence of evil in the world. It seems we need to avoid the mirror as it catches our own transgressions lest our worlds become too confusing, or we realize that avoiding evil is difficult, difficult work--we may have to go without some things. There's also this Elvis Costello song called "new lace sleeves" in which the chorus is "you say, the teacher never told you anything but White Lies, still you never see the lies that you believe." I think that's true of us all in both our personal and political lives. In the latter we remain willfully in the dark on what actions have been made with our tacit (or enthusiastic) approval for our material benefit, or financial gain, or worse, for the vicarious glory that a public assumes when its leaders rally it to support conquest. [In a conversation over dinner with a man I once had the misfortune to be related to, I tried to use Rumsfeld's memorandum regarding the potential for the Iraqi occupation to make the world less safe as a means of bridging the ideological gap between us. After all, if Rummy were conceding that this was possible, why couldn't my Fox News indoctrinated dinner companion? The answer to that I will never know. He did not respond to my point in the slightest but said instead that he wanted the "terrorists" to pay. "But the Iraqis were not the people who attacked the US" I replied and he said, "I don't care." I wonder if we could have invaded any nation without his approval?] To bring this wayward point back home allow me to conclude that for some, the nation and national pride is a part of their identity. Their own sense of self worth seems to be contingent upon their belief that were born one of a chosen people.

As a substitute teacher in a class in a wealthy Minneapolis suburb last spring, I tried to speak about the earthquake near Mt. Merapi on the island of Java. Not one of these students had heard a thing about it. I went on and on about how we need to be more aware of the world around us and one kid said, "Why? America's the best, right?" Others nodded their approval. To openly disagree with them would have in their eyes marked me a traitor. In truth, there isn't a best nation in the world, different nations offer advantages and disadvantages. America is a lovely place to live if you are wealthy, if not, well... And to the wealthy, and to my overall point that is now drowning in an ocean of digression, how is it you are so lucky? Do you see the lies that you believe? The Costello song concludes thusly, "but you look so pretty in your new lace sleeves."