Cthulhu Must Have Rolled Over In His Sleep
12.28.04 (11:49 pm) [edit]We've all heard now about the tsunami killing (as of now's figures) 60,000 people. I saw a special on TV about tsunamis a while back, and it's one of those things that reminds me of how fucking small I am. Scares the living fuck out of me to think about it. I can't swim to begin with, and it appears that it wouldn't matter much if I did. No beaches for me this month.
But something in the news coverage disturbed me, and I hope I'm not the only one who feels this way. I saw a copy fo the New York Times tonight that made a point in its headlines to say that one-third of the victims of this disaster were children. Now, I don't get this. It's horrible that so many children died, but isn't it horrible that ANYONE died? Jesus H. Christ hanging ten, are all the adults just a bunch of scumfuck shitstains now? What is it with our fixation on children? I HAVE a child, and I don't understand this. "Oh, but what about the future they could have had?" So what? What about the future that 74-year old guy drinking rum on the beach could have had? Maybe he could have got a bunch of teenage girls drunk and had them all blow him. That's a fuckin' future. huh? Or what about the people with jobs and kids and fuck knows what else, who might have had a fairly shitty life but somehow enjoyed it anyway? Fuck them! Let's cry for the CHILDREN! It's like turning on the TV and seeing that an airplane crash in Outer Fuckistan killed 347 people but TWO OF THEM WERE AMERICANS! Oh fuck! Their lives mattered MORE! Didn't they? Well, of course they did. They're Americans. We matter more. You damn French! Stop your bitching!
We pay lip service to humanitarianism and "compassion", but most of us don't give two fucks about anyone unless they're cute or on TV. Which is why wars and natural disasters are so much fun. They select our victims for us. And we feel all good about ourselves because we got all emotional for five seconds about the plight of one fucking person halfway across the world, but didn't have to think too much about the other bazillion who got fucked too. How convenient. And for pointing this out, I will now be called a "bleeding heart liberal" by someone, despite the fact that I wished I was a high-ranking member of the NRA late Sunday afternoon when I had to sit in traffic for hours because every single motherfucker in town went to see the Bengals game. I'd gladly have shot every one of those cocksuckers. Somebody make the Ohio River jump up about 40 feet and knock out some of these assholes!
Love,
Dougie
posted by: mblog (reply)
post date: 01.04.05 (8:34 pm)
The difference between the adults and the children is that we are supposed to protect the children. We failed. Adults are supposed to take care of themselves too and failed at that, but blaming us for what we did to ourselves cannot be compared to blaming ourselves for what we did to others, especially when they were defenseless.
Most of this could have been prevented. Those tsunami specials on The Discovery Channel were nothing new. They were all out there before the disaster, but few paid attention.
I'd stand up and scream at the top of my lungs if I thought it would help, but nobody is going to listen until it's too late.
Before 1989, it used to scare the hell out of me to drive on the bottom level of the Cypress structure on highway 880 in Oakland. It just did not seem like a safe design. And the powers that be all knew that it would not stand up to a major earthquake. Yet, you can't tear down everything dangerous and start again, can you? The answer is that when you are in charge and you can make the decisions, not only should you, but it's your obligation. It will cost more later than now, only later is too late for those who will get killed. Those helpless voices like mine were like children. It was inevitable, and it was ignored.
Before 9/11, I found it perverse that some airport checkpoints had signs telling people how big the knives that they can take on airplanes can be. I pictured all sorts of weapons that could mutilate or kill, and I could not fathom walking up to the person with the X-ray machine, and saying, yes, it's a dangerous, murderous weapon, but it meets your rules so you have to let me and my buddies on. But if I had told somebody, would they have listened? After all, you can't inconvenience people with pocket knives.
Now they shut the front door. You can't get the weapons on the plane. You can't kick in the cockpit. And it's becoming harder to put a bomb in your luggage. But they opened the back door, and took just about everybody off the jobs of matching up luggage tags when you leave. So anybody can walk in the exit, plop some bombs near a baggage carousel, and nobody will think twice about an unattended bag over there. After all, they've been through security, right? In the mean time, somebody can take out five planeloads of people and destroy an airport, but will anybody listen if I scream? Not until it happens.
Which brings us to tidal waves. We know how to warn people. Science already came up with the tools. It would have cost a fraction of the billions we are now sending to set things up first. Yes, the property damage still would have happened, and perhaps hundreds of people might have died. We'd still need a big relief effort for the homeless who have no food or water. But the dozens of children who died in the wave would still have died because adults did the wrong thing.
posted by: mblog (reply)
post date: 01.04.05 (8:35 pm)
The difference between the adults and the children is that we are supposed to protect the children. We failed. Adults are supposed to take care of themselves too and failed at that, but blaming us for what we did to ourselves cannot be compared to blaming ourselves for what we did to others, especially when they were defenseless.
Most of this could have been prevented. Those tsunami specials on The Discovery Channel were nothing new. They were all out there before the disaster, but few paid attention.
I'd stand up and scream at the top of my lungs if I thought it would help, but nobody is going to listen until it's too late.
Before 1989, it used to scare the hell out of me to drive on the bottom level of the Cypress structure on highway 880 in Oakland. It just did not seem like a safe design. And the powers that be all knew that it would not stand up to a major earthquake. Yet, you can't tear down everything dangerous and start again, can you? The answer is that when you are in charge and you can make the decisions, not only should you, but it's your obligation. It will cost more later than now, only later is too late for those who will get killed. Those helpless voices like mine were like children. It was inevitable, and it was ignored.
Before 9/11, I found it perverse that some airport checkpoints had signs telling people how big the knives that they can take on airplanes can be. I pictured all sorts of weapons that could mutilate or kill, and I could not fathom walking up to the person with the X-ray machine, and saying, yes, it's a dangerous, murderous weapon, but it meets your rules so you have to let me and my buddies on. But if I had told somebody, would they have listened? After all, you can't inconvenience people with pocket knives.
Now they shut the front door. You can't get the weapons on the plane. You can't kick in the cockpit. And it's becoming harder to put a bomb in your luggage. But they opened the back door, and took just about everybody off the jobs of matching up luggage tags when you leave. So anybody can walk in the exit, plop some bombs near a baggage carousel, and nobody will think twice about an unattended bag over there. After all, they've been through security, right? In the mean time, somebody can take out five planeloads of people and destroy an airport, but will anybody listen if I scream? Not until it happens.
Which brings us to tidal waves. We know how to warn people. Science already came up with the tools. It would have cost a fraction of the billions we are now sending to set things up first. Yes, the property damage still would have happened, and perhaps hundreds of people might have died. We'd still need a big relief effort for the homeless who have no food or water. But the dozens of children who died in the wave would still have died because adults did the wrong thing.
posted by: eraserhead667 (reply)
post date: 01.06.05 (8:16 pm)
I agree with everything you're saying, but I was essentially asking why there is at least an implication in the coverage of these events that children's lives are more important than those of adults. They aren't. That's horseshit. It's manipulative horseshit at that. These news people don't give two fucks about those kids, they just know that their ratings are going to go through the roof if they show more pictures of them.
The sooner we stop rating people's worth, the sooner we'll get rid of the cocksuckers who think there's such a thing as "acceptable losses" in wartime, or who think that a few kids getting killed in a school shooting is worse than a whole goddamn town getting blown up by those fine upstanding white Americans who we put bumper stickers on our cars for to show how much we "support" them. (America - The Land Of The Utterly Meaningless Gesture, Only $4.95 At A WalMart Near You. And make sure to pick up the new Lee Greenwood single, God Bless The USA, 9/11 Remix. Wherever fine plastic is sold.) What about those kids in Iraq who are dead or don't have parents now? Well, fuck them. They're brown, they're Iraqis, they don't beleive in Our God (TM) and they probably were all liberals anyway.