Love Your Enemies

Nikiforos Lytras, Antigone in front of the dead Polynices (1865)

From the Sermon on the Mount:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Your Head Trucker feels old and weary, and not up to writing a lengthy, well-polished post today, so I will just throw out some thoughts and leave it up to you fellas to connect the dots, if they mean anything to you.

It's a gray, drizzly day here in Texas, where last night, several counties away from me, tornadoes destroyed a subdivision, killing or injuring scores of people. Which seems only to be expected somehow, in a week when the news has been brimful of scandal, crime, murder, outrage, and every kind of horrible mayhem. Too much to take in, and far too much to dwell on: it seems the veneer of civilization is worn through in many places, and the ugly, bloody, barbaric core is bleeding out. I suppose awful things have always been happening somewhere, to someone, every day of mankind's existence on this planet; but whereas news used to travel slowly and partially, now it comes roaring at you in living color at all hours of the night and day. Too much to bear. All one can do is look away, and occupy the mind with puttering around the house, and tending one's own narrow garden.

As much as I applaud the recent advances for gay rights and marriage equality that I often feature here in the Blue Truck, I also have to say that I can hardly help despairing for the future of the world, and to be honest, I am glad that whenever it is my time to depart from it, I will leave behind no posterity to worry about. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity," Yeats wrote a hundred years ago, and it is even truer now than it was then.

At nearly 60 years of age, few illusions about human nature are left to me; with time and experience, one comes to see people for who and what they really are, not what they pretend to be. It is particularly discouraging to see that the great mass of supposedly civilized Western people - the great majority of them at least nominally Christian - are all in a headlong rush to the worst excesses of barbarism. It feels that way, anyhow.  My second-grade teacher got it exactly right one day, fifty years ago, when she asked why a bunch of us little boys were all stepping on one another's shoes in the cafeteria line. "Well, he did it to me, so I did it to the other boy," was the repeated answer to her question. Summing up her inquest with a wry face and a disapproving shake of the head, she exclaimed, "Monkey see, monkey do."

Man is an imitative creature. You become what you think about, what you idolize, what you adore - which may be something quite different from what you say you do. And it seems to me that nearly everyone is doing their damnedest to behave just like characters in a low-class, scrum-bum reality show nowadays. Hence the decline of manners, of civility, of literacy and of reason. Of course, I have to remind myself that the worst examples are not necessarily representative of the whole in any group, but - "Monkey see, monkey do."

Continued after the jump

How We Remember 9/11 Now

via NBC News Photoblog

Your Head Trucker is glad to be back online after a loss of internet connection that began on Saturday; but sad to learn of the grievous attack in Libya that killed our ambassador, and the asshole film that provoked it. As one commentator has put it, this was a case of "some Christian fringe extremists provoking Muslim fringe extremists," and I have no respect for either kind, and neither variety deserves to be dignified with the name of religion - which is supposed to make men more just and more merciful, not less.

Also worth your time is this article by the New Yorker's Amy Davidson: How We Remember 9/11 Now. Just go read it; I have nothing to add to what she says.

"Please Torture Me in the Old Way"

Three years into the Obama administration, Guantanamo is still very much in business, guys, in case you forgot. An excerpt from The Independent, but do go read the whole article:

On the day he marks 10 years locked inside the world's most notorious prison without having been charged with an offence, the last UK resident in Guantanamo Bay pleads with his captors: "Please torture me in the old way . . . .  Here they destroy people mentally and physically without leaving marks."

Speaking from his cell through letters and comments published for the first time in The Independent today, Shaker Aamer, who has never stood trial, reveals the torment of his captivity and removal from his family. Yesterday a senior British source close to the talks admitted that Mr Aamer's detention was "unconscionable". His plight was raised most recently with the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week.

Fears are growing for the welfare of Mr Aamer, from south London, who is now 45 and has a wife and four children. He has never met his youngest son. His lawyers are particularly concerned by the deterioration of his mental and physical state, which Mr Aamer describes vividly in his letters. He has lost 40 per cent of his body weight and is suffering from health problems, aggravated by long periods in solitary confinement. . . .

A British resident, born in Saudi Arabia, Mr Aamer had indefinite leave to remain in the UK when he was reportedly sold to the US in 2001 by Afghan villagers for $5,000. He claims he was helping to build a school. The US claims he was fighting with the Taliban.

Ten years in prison, not seeing his family, tortured and put in solitary confinement - and has never been charged with anything, never been given a trial: all this is being done in YOUR NAME and on your behalf, my fellow Americans.

Do you give a damn?

Do you think it can't happen to you?

Somebody posted this comment on another blog:

Why am I supposed to care about the detainees in Gitmo? People get hacked to death by machete every day all over Africa. Nobody says anything. Nobody has ever died in Gitmo. If waterboarding these motherfuckers saves the life of one American, its fine with me.

What do you say, my friends?