Friday, April 11, 2003 :::
I recently commented in email that I've lived through some history, most notably, I think, the fall of the Soviet empire. It's a bit of an odd comment; it's as though "history" is something divorced from our day-to-day reality, not something that actually happens.
This sense is part of the everything that was supposed to have changed a year and a half ago; we were reminded that our relative peace and prosperity don't isolate us from world events as different from our ordinary lives as Hitler invading France was. An element of our abstraction was supposed to have given way to a sober awareness of reality and a willingness to take it into account.
This war, too, is history, but again seems very distant; the local men and women who lose their lives are mentioned on the news and the television is overrun with coverage, but we need reminding, as Bob Scheiffer found in the deaths of well-known journalists, that it "isn't just something to watch on TV for those who don't like basketball".
It is not we alone in this country who suffer this disconnect; the Arab world laments the "embarassment" of an Arab thug's efficient removal, or at least that portion of the Arab world that did not suffer under his oppression does. They, too, are dealing in abstractions; the people of Iraq are rather lower on Maslow's hierarchy.
::: posted by dWj at 4:46 PM
