Miscellaneous Monday

Monday, October 14, 2013

Crisis Fatigue

Crap on a cracker I'm sick of politicians and their manufactured crisis du jour. I'm starting to skim over the articles in my RSS feed, because the continued and egregious misbehavior of our politicians is giving me high blood pressure. I don't understand why it's so difficult for these people to do their damn jobs. Well, that's not true. I do understand why, and it makes me apoplectic with rage. The subversion of our Republic for the sake of power and money is one of the great shames of my generation. Where's Tip O'Neill when you need him? Rolling over in his grave, that's where.

For a Friend's Love

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who contributed to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention fundraiser conducted by our dear friends Stacey and J.R., who walked in my beloved daughter's name. "Maureen's Marchers" raised $3,125.00 for the AFSP's programs.
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand." - Henri Nouwen

The Value of a Liberal Arts Education

My class this semester is entitled, "Working in Modern Society." We've been studying the sociological aspects of work in the United States and in the global economy, as well as the history of the labor movement. I'm almost done with the course, and I have to say it's really helped me make progress in seeing some of the inequities inherent in our economic system, both here and abroad. I hope that my education in this area will lead me to be more kind in my dealings with marginal workers, not only in my behavior, but also in my thoughts and opinions. I am so, so lucky, and grateful not to be living on the knife's edge of poverty.

Celebrating Bartolomé Day 

Today The Oatmeal points out that celebrating Christopher Columbus is a somewhat morally ambiguous proposition. The dude was a complete cretin, guilty of thievery, mass murder and the pedophile sex trade. So he recommends celebrating Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican Friar and a real stand up guy. Take note, Knights of Columbus, and consider a re-org.
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ETA: Brother Eric makes some excellent counterpoints in the comments section re: Columbus vs de las Casas, with an additional well-timed warning about simplifying history to the point where the narrative loses its complexity, and in doing so, its truth. Mea culpa. Thanks, Eric. 

2 comments:

Eric said...

I apologize in advance for having to do this, but I've been gritting my teeth since Inman posted that comic, and I love you too much to see you jumping on the cart. I'm really not intending to be a prick. But: de Casas was a dick and Matt Inman is doing the same thing with Columbus and de Casas that he did with Edison and Tesla--oversimplifying a complicated history and turning it into a two-color, "Rah! This Guy!" heroes and villains thing.

With the added wrinkle this time around being that there's extra tone-deafness since the whole history of observing Columbus Day (in the North and parts of the West--in the South, we call it "Monday") was never really about Columbus in the first place. Much of the drive to recognize it as a Federal holiday came from Italian-Americans who were trying to deal with prejudice and the problems they faced as a persecuted and despised immigrant minority (though something I just learned is that your own state of Colorado led the way in recognizing Columbus Day as a patriotic holiday--a celebration of America, not just of Columbus (n.b. that Columbus' role, for better or worse, in the colonization of the Americas and the eventual establishment of the United States is recognized in such things as the name of our national capitol).

I'm not interested in defending Christopher Columbus: he was a lousy navigator, bad captain, was dishonest, was quite possibly crazy, robbed and enslaved aboriginal Americans and gave them the diseases that wiped out their numbers. Genocide is pretty unforgivable. But the guy Inman holds up as an alternative (why do we need alternatives?) was an active participant in all of that up until the point he felt bad about killing, torturing and slaving aboriginal Americans--and decided to help boot up the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade as an alternative. With all the nice stuff that entailed, like, well, more genocide.

Sure, people are complicated, and de las Casas wasn't wholly villainous--neither was Columbus. History, real history, history as someone like Inman is incapable of dealing with, is full of complicated and messy personalities. The weight of our moral judgement may fall one way or another: we may decline to find anything in Columbus that outweighs the negatives, and perhaps some people choose to absolve de las Casas of his role in conquering the New World and enslaving Africans because he had second thoughts now and then and then later. (As always, wouldn't it have been nice if he'd had first thoughts before he helped set in motion the destruction of West Africa and the horrors of African slavery in the Americas?) But getting the Internet to recognize "Bartolome Day" is a charade, y'know? Screw Columbus. Screw de las Casas. Screw Matt Inman. You want to edge back Columbus Day, how about a National Day Of Remembrance or something like?

I preferred Matt Inman when he stuck to being a Grammar Nazi.

Sorry for the rant. I think I got carried away. Hope I wasn't a lousy guest.

Eric said...

A postscript to my rant: NPR ran a great piece about Columbus Day and Italian Americans, pointing out some other things I didn't know, like the first Federal Columbus Day event may have been a response to a lynching of 11 Sicilian immigrants in New Orleans, and that Colorado's Columbus Day was partly the work of the founder of the United States' first Italian newspaper.

Interesting stuff. I sympathize with a persecuted immigrant population wanting to celebrate itself in such a way, though I do wish they'd found another "hero"....