Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Blameless?

I keep hoping that some of my old rants will become passe, but the wheels turn exceeding slow. Here's one from about a year ago :

Blame Less

It’s just too damned easy to blame George W. Bush for the war, too damned easy to blame him for all of our problems. What is he but the figurehead under the bowsprit of our capitalism, under the headsail of our greed?

It’s money that steers our ship and oil that floats it. The sea of oil is going dry and money doesn’t know where to turn. We have a hard time thinking how to save the sea, so we think in terms of carving a new figurehead.

It is not George W. Bush, or his pals in OPEC, forcing us to drive where we could walk, forcing me to ride my motorcycle where I could ride my bicycle; it is not Ford Motor Company forcing you to take your Expedition where you could take your Focus.

Will there be enough fuel left for the ambulance to haul my exercise-hating butt to the hospital?

Should I drive 40 miles to work out at the Y?

Easy, too, to lay blame for the difficulties on states whose people voted a couple per cent differently than our own; “What could those idiots be thinking?”. They must be fools, right, those people who believe in something other than men, something other than politicians? Why, some of them even suggest that there may be a (G)od. Simply inferior beings, those folks from other-colored states.

Easy to see there are no problems here in our blue-nosed, blue-blooded, blue-stockinged regions – well, none we can’t solve with money.

Sail on, Banker! Steady as she goes! Only the blameless aboard our stout vessel. Let us fly a blue flag from the main topmast, for guiltless are we, we men of the open sea! Look smart there, Sailor! Wipe that oil from your boot!

The lookout tells of dangerous shoals ahead – shall we listen, instead, to that sharply-chiseled face at the prow, the gilded wood we’ve elected?

Buffy Ste. Marie (about 40 years ago) said, “ Blame the Indians/ Blame the Fates/ Blame the Jews or your Sister Kate/ Teach your children who to hate/ and the big wheel goes around, ‘round.”

Sail on, oh Ship of State! We’re just the crew; here to take orders and eat our ration.

No one to blame here.

- Ralph Murre

1 comment:

Bruce Hodder said...

I couldn't agree more.Every one of us creates the world in which all of us live.Bush IS a mouthpiece for corporate interests, but how many of us who profess to hate Bush actively resist the corporatisation of America? (or the world?)
Blair probably ISN'T a corporate mouthpiece. I think the characterisation of him as Bush's "poodle" is probably unfair too. But he drew us on a phoney pretext into a war and occupation we may be reaping the rewards of for generations.We certainly felt the sting of Islamic wrath last July in London. And do you know what? As much as I loathed Blair's war I still voted for him.I made the cold and chauvanistic and insular and possibly racist calculation that whatever the iniquities of the Government's involvement in Iraq,they were the only political party in the UK who would maintain the National Health Service and leave alone the trade unions.
It isn't enough to blame everybody else for the fate of your country, or the world.Start at your own nose-tip and work outwards,that's my philosophy.And then, as Dylan says, forgive the sick.It's the only way to heal them.