re: refugees
Wonderful and understanding post, Steve. All of us survivors need to remember why we are alive, and descendents of many other peoples are not. I guess the reasons so few families have detailed memories stretching back hundreds or thousands of years is that the horror is too much to bear, or to inflict on children. In Japan there are millions of families that have detailed records going back hundreds of years. They remember their hereditary enemies and former eminence. I heard a descendent of the Ashikaga shoguns talk in his town (from which they tried to rule Japan) and show off the sights. He was reconciled to the triumph of Lord Oda Nobunaga, but did not conceal his pleasure of Lord Akechi's treacherous murder of Lord Oda which opened the way for the rise of the (Genji related) Tokugawa shoguns, who were much later overthrown by the Satsuma (and allies) in the name of the Emperors, and whose descendents are still thick on the ground. Some more humble nihonjin remember how much each village neighbor contributed to the building of the house 200 years ago, and how many kegs of saki and bundles of laths they should deliver to each neighbor when he rebuilds his house (no interest) to satisfy his on.
I remember tales of my families that made my blood run cold when I was a kid. Civil and Revolutionary guerilla wars, blockade running, mass miscegenation, deadly mountaineer feuds, expulsion from hereditary tribal lands and ancient feudal allotments, enslavement and the middle passage, autos da fe, with a continuing theme of involuntary flight -- and worst of all -- no possible revenge. I had a close childhood friend whose only ambition was to grow up, join the U.S. Army, and return to Germany to hang Nazis. It was my luck to compete with that monomaniac for success as JROTC cadet corps commander and the distinguished military graduate appointment to West Point. There are hundreds of millions of embittered, terrorized kids all over the world whose ambition is to give their lives crushing the Great Satan, or destroying Israel, or killing Russians, or nuking India, or pushing their own women back into the middle ages. But each of these peoples have but a small set of hereditary enemies. Any old-time heinzian American would have an impossible task of righting all hereditary wrongs. How do the Hem(m)ings kids avenge their great exp? grandfather's seduction or extended rape of Sally. I have reconciled my dead ancestors in my own mind. I understand my father and my mother, respect them, and recognize that they were very imperfect, but I am tremendously glad that they created me at exactly the time they did. I recognize that I am almost infinitely improbable. Almost everything that my ancestors did or had happen to them had to be exactly as it was or I wouldn't be what I am whatever that is, and I wouldn't have it any other way. As the Montressors used to say: "Tout ce qui s'est produit est bon. Remerciez le bon Dieu là n'était pas plus de lui!" (loosely: Only good happened is good. Thank God there wasn't any more of it!) I have had my assorted ancestors resolve their grievances against each other by simply shaking hands and recognizing that their descendents are okay and understand their problems. A tremendous increase in home schooling is not what I would recommend under these circumstances. I found that mingling in public schools and colleges and in the Marine Corps with the kids of hereditary oppressors and victims was a wonderful way to learn from our conquerors and subjects and to, at length, resolve these terrible historical injustices. Along the way, there were also many precious and treasured moments of kicking butts of Yankees, Anglicans, dogfaces, Presbyterians, gunnery sergeants, brig wardens, Southern Baptists, homosexual assailants, sometimes Southern Baptist homosexual assailants, Spanish Catholics, English landlords, Lallands lairds, improving landlords, before all differences were ultimately resolved with drinking songs and sippin' whiskey and truly terrible cluster headaches. |
