I keep wanting to write a speech about the situation in the Middle East. It would
begin with Shylock, and go like this:
"If you
prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do
we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"Yes, yes,
yes, and hell, NO! If we revenge ourselves upon madmen and -women by sinking to
their level, if we trade terror for terror, then we have lost those things that
gave us any claim to moral superiority. We have claimed to be a Chosen People for
two thousand years, and now it is our duty to live up to our traditions. Many of
us are tired of that yellow badge, and would claim that we deserve, and bear the
responsibility of only the common responsibilities of humanity -- but campaigns of
terror donŐt even reach that standard. We are, if we are nothing else, the people
of the Book, not the people of the bomb, and it is in our traditional strengths of
learning and teaching that we have our best chance for peace in our home lands. We
are a people of long memory; have we forgotten the lessons of Joseph, of dealing
kindly with the strangers and refugees among us? Do we remember only the episodes
of vengeance in our Book? Vengeance is not ours to practice, by the very teachings
of that Book as much by the common sense and common bond of
humanity."
Fortunately or unfortunately, nobody
is booking me to give any speeches on the subject. I could go on in that vein for
paragraphs. And in some ways, I'm not qualified to give that speech anyway; no one
I know is cowering at home, afraid to leave the house. No one I know has loved
someone they loved to an insane bomber. But by the bones of all the prophets of
three religions, how many people do you have to kill before you can see that maybe
there's a better way?
I could also write a rant about George Bush's
stance on Cuba; funny how those noble humanist ideals don't apply to China, or any
of the other places where we can make a profit. Must be because he doesn't have a
brother running Hong Kong. But one advantage of our quarrelsome two-party system
is that, when both parties agree on something, and it's not something that will
line their own pockets, there's a pretty good chance that it's the clear right
thing to do. Unless you've got a brother who will be looking for votes pretty
soon, anyway.
Uh, maybe "could write a rant" wasn't the right
expression. I think I just did.
We're in the homestretch of getting
ready for this weekend's regatta. We've got back and forth over it, but it looks
like our fourth rower will be back and we will be racing in the quad. I've also
got a race in a single and one in the double with Hardcore; Rudder has two in the
single and one in the double with She-Hulk. The imminent (do I mean immanent?)
challenge will be putting all three boats, not to mention four pair of oars, on
top of the Cherokee, and getting seven riggers inside. I will be following my
usual practice in these situations: stay out of Rudder's way except when he wants
help.