More On Why Lefties Don't Give
Perhaps the reason why Lefty blogs are now so devoid of calls for pledges of aid (after getting off to a pretty good start in the day or two after the tsunami) is that they've discovered that they're actually happy the tragedy occurred. After all, capitalist development is bad, nature is good.
Too far out? Not at all! Just read "Imagine There Were No Cataclysms -- What a Dull World This Would Be" by Matthew Parris. (Hat tip Anne at Palm Tree Pundit, who hat-tipped Captains Quarters) Wordbite:
But all the reciting in the world of the scale of these miseries, all the acknowledgement we can make of the sympathy which they evoke, cannot hide a small, uncomfortable thought which (I am pretty confident) has occurred to you as it has occurred to me.
The thought is expressed in the word (and the punctuation) “Wow!”
A small, insistent voice in the back of my head says: “Isn’t this amazing!” A minor but insuppressible part of me has almost relished — yes, relished — those huge numbers. As the newspaper headlines spoke greedily of the numbers of dead “approaching” twenty, then fifty, then eighty, then a hundred thousand, something undeniable twitched in the back of my brain. It was a sort of excitement as the figures mounted; as though some great auctioneer of calamity were taking bids from the media floor, and I was willing the bidding to carry on upwards. When will it reach a hundred thousand? Could it reach a quarter of a million? Was this a record? How did it stand in the history of these disasters? That high! Wow! ...
I watched the TV pictures of the surge of ocean coming ashore, saw the buildings in its path, and had to stifle an inward “Yes! Sweep them away! Show us how small is Man! Show us how easily this Universe can make matchwood of our dreams!” And no, you do not need to remind me that they were somebody else’s dreams, not mine. “Show us,” I thought, “how lives and livelihoods can be snuffed out in the twinkling of an eye.”
Disgusting, Godless, incompassionate stuff.
Too far out? Not at all! Just read "Imagine There Were No Cataclysms -- What a Dull World This Would Be" by Matthew Parris. (Hat tip Anne at Palm Tree Pundit, who hat-tipped Captains Quarters) Wordbite:
But all the reciting in the world of the scale of these miseries, all the acknowledgement we can make of the sympathy which they evoke, cannot hide a small, uncomfortable thought which (I am pretty confident) has occurred to you as it has occurred to me.
The thought is expressed in the word (and the punctuation) “Wow!”
A small, insistent voice in the back of my head says: “Isn’t this amazing!” A minor but insuppressible part of me has almost relished — yes, relished — those huge numbers. As the newspaper headlines spoke greedily of the numbers of dead “approaching” twenty, then fifty, then eighty, then a hundred thousand, something undeniable twitched in the back of my brain. It was a sort of excitement as the figures mounted; as though some great auctioneer of calamity were taking bids from the media floor, and I was willing the bidding to carry on upwards. When will it reach a hundred thousand? Could it reach a quarter of a million? Was this a record? How did it stand in the history of these disasters? That high! Wow! ...
I watched the TV pictures of the surge of ocean coming ashore, saw the buildings in its path, and had to stifle an inward “Yes! Sweep them away! Show us how small is Man! Show us how easily this Universe can make matchwood of our dreams!” And no, you do not need to remind me that they were somebody else’s dreams, not mine. “Show us,” I thought, “how lives and livelihoods can be snuffed out in the twinkling of an eye.”
Disgusting, Godless, incompassionate stuff.
posted by Laer at 10:05 PM
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