From the notebook of a visitor to Earth

Dreams of harmony and peace or absurd visions of the end of time are

legitimate constructions of human imagination. If you are dealing with

pure cinema, they are effective. Such spectacles appear to confirm the

implacable universality of violence, the murky origins of terrorism, and

the marriage of reason with insanity. They are primary features of life

on planet Earth. Women and men may satisfy their fantasies by imposing

gender and by speaking of amoral Nature in their own images. They are

free to tamper with Nature in efforts to make a more living-friendly

“world,” and they may succeed for brief periods of time. Ultimately,

they fail. They manufacture abstract and material “worlds” that are

mercurial, that speak back to them of their cosmic insignificance in

visual and audible languages which negate interpretations.

All that is happening in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 is merely a rerun

of tribally-motivated antiquities. A frantic male of one tribe,

believing himself to be authorized by the Holy Bible, the United States

Constitution, and the codified laws of Charles Darwin, murders a male of

a different tribe. People who identify themselves with the dead male

react naturally. They are shocked. They grieve. They enact

counter-violence, the only procedure that is paradoxically understood

and misunderstood in a nanosecond by the American body politic. Violence

is very obedient to folkloric injunctions to increase and multiply. And

American  as well foreign mass media take special delight in the

production of misinformation about how violence procreates. In the

historical tragedy entitled the United States of America, the George

Zimmermans and Darren Wilsons are proclaimed to be  the stars of the

show, the militants who keep democracy safe for those who are wealthy

enough to buy it.  The Michael Browns and Trayvon Martins and the

thousands of unarmed dead who were the targets of tragedy are treated as

 footnotes in the smallest print on the playbill. In the sacred

narratives of universal violence, this is proclaimed to be natural.

According to such logic, the American Nightmare that has decentered the

American Dream; the death-bound mission of Europe; the family

squabbles between Palestinians and Israelis and the diabolic plots in

the Arab/Isamic winter of the Middle East; the progress of environmental

destruction in Asia; rampant neocolonialism and unique ethnic hatreds

on the continent of Africa; outbreaks of such health threats as Ebola

and yearly variations of influenza; the refusal to acknowledge the

humanity of indigenous peoples in Australia and yhe actuality of global

climate change—–according to such logic, all is quite normal on

Earth.

Unfortunately, this superb logic is not a part of the education of

Americans. The majority of them dwell in the darkness of believing that a

meek savior will serve peace and harmony at the  Finality Feast of

Thanksgiving. Our transparent wisdom obligates us to tolerate their

eternal ignorance but to act otherwise.