Much Ado about Everything

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the recent protests in response to the film, Innocence of Muslims, or whatever they’re calling that piece of inflammatory garbage.  First of all, those taking place in Cairo have been very small and limited to the environs of the American embassy.  There has been no widespread rioting.  I know this because I live in Maadi, a neighborhood located a few miles from downtown, where there have been no public expressions of anger, at least none that I’ve been aware of.  This means that those actually involved comprise no more than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of one percent of the eighteen million people (or so) who call this city home. 

On principle, I try to limit my exposure to mainstream Western news media, but I’ve been turning on my TV in recent days to watch France 24.  What I’ve been seeing has been somewhat disappointing.  At one point, the network put together a panel of experts to discuss the situation.  The group consisted of an American, a Dane, and two citizens of France, all of them rather WASPish in their background and outlook.  I listened carefully to everything that they said, trying to see if any of them had ever stepped foot outside their North American-European cocoon.  As far as I could tell none of them ever had. 

I can only imagine what’s being shown on American TV news.  For such an incredibly diverse nation, very few alternative perspectives are ever aired there.  Some would argue that radical Islamists are the biggest threat to America.  Forget that.  Groupthink poses the most potent danger to the health and wellbeing of the nation. 

Religion certainly has played a part in the recent embassy protests in the region, but so has poverty and American foreign policy.  I’m aware that many of my fellow citizens are bound to take issue with such a pronouncement.  What can I say to such people except that the truth sometimes hurts?   

I was born into a fairly traditional family in Texas, a traditional part of the United States.  While growing up, I was taught the old-fashioned lesson that “actions have consequences.”  This certainly has to be true for nations too, doesn’t it? 

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, gloriously marketed as “Shock and Awe,” many warned that such an action would radicalize many in the Middle East.  Of course, there’s also the continued occupation of Afghanistan to consider.  Lately, the use of drones, and all the “collateral damage” that occurs during such strikes, has been capturing the headlines in this part of the world.  I almost forgot to mention America’s longstanding, seemingly unconditional support of Israel, a nation that Jimmy Carter has referred to an “an apartheid state.”  Of course, this list is very far from being complete. 

Along comes a hateful movie and the outrage sparks off.  It’s impossible to look at all this anger, roiling so many different places, without suspecting that other deep-seated grievances are also at play.

I want to finish by sharing a really intelligent letter.  (I wonder if it’s gotten much airplay in Europe and North America.)  Additionally, this Thom Hartmann video provides a new way of thinking about the ongoing instability in this part of the world.  I’ll leave you to have a read and a look. 

Silver Lining

In 1993 I was living and working in Lubbock, Texas, a Great Plains city of 200,000.  Suddenly, in the spring of that year, at the conclusion of a very strange series of events, I found myself without a job and on the dole.    

Lubbock is the home of Texas Tech University which has a large, attractive campus.  When I wasn’t out and about, pounding the pavement to look for work, I would spend a lot of time at the school, often holed up in its library.  It was a great place to read and daydream and wile away the hours. 

One day, while I was sitting there and thumbing through a Time or Newsweek (or some such magazine), I came across an ad for the Peace Corps, an organization I’d certainly heard of and had always been intrigued by.  I read the thing all the way through and saw that the feds were looking to send people far and wide to do “the toughest job” they’d “ever love.”  I recall looking up from the page and staring off into the middle distance.  Shortly thereafter, my vision blurred and I could see myself (quite vividly, in my mind’s eye) living and doing charitable work in some exotic locale.    

Five minutes later I left the library and drove home at a high rate of speed.  I unlocked my apartment door, raced to my bedroom, and dialed the 1-800 number listed in the advert.  Before you could say “get out of Dodge,” I was knee deep in the PC application process.

To make a long story short, the American government ended up deploying me to Poland.  My first stop was a place called Płock, not far from Warsaw.  I spent the next three months in that picturesque city on the Vistula River, completing something “Pre-Service Training” with my fellow Volunteers-to-be.  By the way, I’ve included a photo of our group.  It was taken not long before we graduated from PST and were shipped off to the various towns and cities where we’d serve.  I can be seen in the lower, right-hand corner.  I’m standing behind the blond and smiling Bradley Jarvis, a Californian who had recently graduated from Cal-Berkeley.  

After PST, I was sent to Tarnów, down near Krakow, to teach at a small teacher-trainer college.  Two wonderful years ensued.  I can say, without any hesitation, that that experience transformed me in more ways than I can enumerate here, in this short blog.  As a matter of fact, to this very day, I think of Poland as my second birthplace.

Just before completing my two years, I was given a certificate of appreciation which I recently ran across when I was going through a box of keepsakes.