Hey Granny, cheer up. It's just our dreams going kablooey. Okay so we are being ground back down to earth. Twin Towers gone, no more Moon walks. Gangsta Rap filling the top 20. No "Imagine" by John Lennon.
But at least we haven't had MAD. In the good old days, people actually had fallout shelters [with some blast resistance too]. Now everyone is living above ground again.
Sure Osama, Saddam and Mugabe aren't the world's nicest guys, but they are rank amateurs compared with what our parents had to deal with. Heck, Mugabe is positively civil compared with the most ordinary thug of 30 years ago. Our parents had Tojo, Hitler and Stalin to deal with - they had serious talent at world-class mayhem.
Before that, the world was a seething cauldron of rank and file, warrior and samurai, red in tooth and claw. Filled with disease, pestilence and regular famine. Slavery was a kindly way of letting surplus people live. Genocidal conquest was the norm. With no contraception the prolific numbers of babies had to go somewhere. To the grave at a young age was the final solution.
The Columbia crash is from a people point of view little more than a bad car crash. Across the world, swarms of them have happened, not to mention a train wreck in Oz. As a geopolitical, technological, scientific and economic event, it's merely a glitch, drawing attention once again to the courage and talent of the USA to lead the world in so many ways.
Swarms of us from around the world invest in the USA, go to work there and otherwise look on the achievements as ours too. The Israeli, the Indian, the International Space Station crew, are all part of the same desire. They are ours too.
We just have to be like the Brits in the Blitz. Somewhat stoic.
If the Twin Towers, Bali and Columbia are the worst we have to deal with, we should not whine. No generation has had it so easy. We have to watch tv to see bad stuff. Looking out our window to see the mayhem or waiting for the door to be kicked in isn't part of many lives these days.
I suspect the financial softening up after the Y2K Nasdaq implosion has made a lot of people feel vulnerable too, so these things make it seem that stuff is coming from all directions.
Mqurice |
