Filed under: Uncategorized
Upon my daily check of cnn.com, I couldn’t help but reflect upon the state of the world…and the state of the men who run it.
As I scrolled down the page to the stories underneath “Ground Troops Enter Lebanon” I came across a story entitled “Bush Expresses Frustration Using Expletive”. Apparently, the leader of the free world was heard to be using the “s”-word while speaking to Tony Blair about Kofi Annan and the fact that he’s not “doing anything” to help end the strife in the Middle East.
The irony of this story hit me on many levels. First, why is a man who is so intent to carry on the war in the Middle East to the last man, and is even eager to open up not one but TWO new fronts of this war, suddenly criticising another for not ending the turmoil in the same region? Could it possibly be jealousy because someone else got there first?
Secondly, I don’t condone swearing in the slightest, I think it makes the user of such words sound juvenile and uneducated, so why is it such a shock that the widely beloved Texas “s”-bomb came out of Bush? This man could nuke the world if he got frustrated enough and you’re writing about his frustrated use of the “s”-word?? Are you serious?
Thirdly and above all, I stand in awe at the state of the world as it is reflected in this story. It’s easy, I suppose, to feel inebriated when faced with such a daunting situation as the one we face today. Never before have I felt that answers are as few and far between as they are now. Never before have I felt that I am the one paying recompense for the mistakes of those whose lives led to my own being. Never before have I known the fear of ages and wept for a past that I didn’t see or live in and ask “how could they have been so blind?” Yet more and more I see my leaders feeling my own angst.
I see in our day the culmination of histories, and it is both fascinating and terrifying. What men say no longer accounts for much, which is why, I believe, the study of sciences, maths, and tactics have overtaken the study of languages and literature. I have no bombs to end my frustration, and I reiterate my no swearing stance to the end of my life…unless I mean to sound juvenile and uneducated. I simply wonder if I am witnessing a death I can’t stop. Perhaps the past is not what I should be weeping for but the blindness of men in my own day. Perhaps what is newsworthy is so beyond our comprehension that we fill our lives with what we can understand to make us feel in control and apart from what is around us at all times. Perhaps it is easier to blame the peacemaker than to face the mess you helped to finish. Perhaps meaning lies in what men do not say as opposed to what they do…it is, however, more difficult to quote.
