I was walking down the street a few minutes ago and heard some jackass blaring a radio from his mid-life-crisis Jeep. In a roundabout way this got me thinking that there hasn't been much trouble in the world lately. Weird connection, I know, but it went something like this: If a friend told me about a guy blaring a radio outside his house, I'd shrug and say, "Yeah, there's fools everywhere." But when Jeep Guy does it in front of my place, it becomes, "There's goddamn fools everywhere!"
The debacle in Myanmar a long time back - feels like long; it's been a year - proved to me that caring is about proximity, both in time and place. Modern media has the power to make every place on the planet seem like it's right next door, if only for a few minutes. The tsunami (or was it an earthquake?) in Myanmar was on everybody's minds last year. The president had to do something, we had to raise money to help the people. Even peaceniks were saying that an invasion would be proper, to topple the government in Myanmar because the thugs weren't feeding their people.
And it all went away. Just like that. I have to assume that Myanmar's people are still living in abject poverty and that their rulers are still thugs. But I haven't received a chain-email request for money in a long, long time, and nobody on Facebook has the word "Myanmar" on their profile, declaring that we need to help these people. In a strange way, Myanmar just ceased to exist.
Maxim: time doesn't heal all wounds; it heals our wounds.
Caring is about proximity and time. The 9/11 memorials prove that. 8 years on and there's token gestures of remembrance, but not too many moments of silence in the office. The anniversary of Pearl Harbor warrants an occasional hat tip on the evening news, and in fact if it wasn't for the evening news' hat tip, nobody would remember the date of Pearl Harbour. And when's the last time somebody asked us to remember the dead from Waterloo? When women were being gunned down in Iran a couple of months ago, everybody was glued to the Twitter reports. Now, nothing.
Time. Proximity. They're all that matters when it comes to caring. Tornado in Kansas? Interesting. Tornado on my street? Terrifying. The thug states of the world understand this better than anyone. Give people enough time and they will forget everything. The further away the "crisis," the faster they'll forget. Nowadays, it only takes a few weeks, even less if a pop star dies.
Not that any of this is all bad. We'd be basket cases if we wandered around for the rest of our lives feeling exactly as we did the moment after something traumatic happened. But I do laugh when people screech how concerned they are with far flung places on the earth that are going through a hard time. My answer? "Call me in a year." There's no chance they will. (Incidentally, I Googled "Myanmar," clicked the news link, and was greeted with the today's headlines: Seven Bomb Blasts in Myanmar. Apparently no one was hurt. In other news: Myanmar Doubles Political Arrests; Elections a Sham, Group Says).
So there I was walking down the street thinking about this kind of stuff, and then I flicked to Drudge and it suddenly seemed prescient or at least apropos:
Czechs and Poles expressed rancor and relief Thursday that President Barack Obama had scrapped plans for a U.S. missile defense shield on their territories, reflecting deep divisions over a proposal that had also enraged Russia..."Considering Iran as a threat has been a wrong policy since the beginning," said Kazem Jalali, the spokesman for Iran's influential parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy. "Iran has said that it is ready to discuss and share responsibilities in global security."
Whether it's a good or bad idea isn't my point. Fact is, a decision like this doesn't happen the day after 9/11, but it does happen 8 years after 9/11. That's life. Always the way it goes. A little bit of quiet - besides, you know, the odd missile from North Korea landing in the ocean - and things like missile shields seem unnecessary and kind of silly to people with an Everyone's Beautiful In Their Own Way bent. The administration says that they're not really scrapping missile defense, they're redesigning it. Doesn't sound so bad. Besides, if the Russians and Iranians agree with it, then it must be a good idea.
Proximity and time. Thugs building missiles in Iran? A little nervous. Thug loading a shotgun outside my door? A lot nervous.
Should you care about Iranian missiles and American defense shields? Depends what happens next. See you on Facebook.
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