A Cynic’s Conviction

East Africa is the birthplace of humanity and, therefore, the hearth of stupidity and garden of tragedy. To this place, the modern world turns to recall our lineage from grazing ancestors who feared hyenas, trembled at enigmas and first used tools, no doubt to scratch and then as weapons. We channel our inner Australopithecus Afarensis looking homeward.
Darfur is the latest tragedy among the descendants of the Sudan, near enough to the habitat of the first upright apes to demonstrate how barely removed from those ancestors the rest of us remain. Although modern men have helicopter gunships, supersonic bombers, rocket ships and TIVO, angry fools on horses still confound us. Intelligent Design notwithstanding, now would be a good time to say yes to evolution.
The United States has been as proactive as the best nations in opposing the rape, murder and dessication, primarily by crying “Havok” and letting slip our actors. The flaccid is not a new thing. The world watched Somalia and Rwanda and Cambodia and Biafra fall apart into genocide. In Yugoslavia, the response maximized the safety of the intervening parties while quickening the genocide on the ground. Oddly, genocide and mass-rape seem to be something the world is fairly comfortable being appalled at. It’s an interesting fact of humanity that the courage to cross such lines often belongs to those who do so with malice.
Cynics are gifts to humanity, which suffers when not dispassionately mocked. The catastrophe of Darfur challenges the wry to extend ourselves toward the goal of mocking with conviction. To that end, I offer this: The scale of evil perpetrated in Darfur diminishes our space program in scale and all the post-industrial society accomplishes seems feeble in comparison. If all is vanity, and the centrality of movie stars to this story assures us it is, then the prosperous must stop in our vanity what we allow in our humanity.

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The Prattler Wordbook
FURY, n. An avenging monster of the ancient Greeks who punishes crimes beyond reach of human justice. In contemporary Christendom, still typically female.
GOLGOTHA, n. “The place of the skull.” This lexicographer suggests to his long-dead Hebrew counterparts that “A place of the skull” would have been more appropriate.
HORROR, n. An uncatchy advertizing jingle.
IMPOTENT, adj. Distracted from preferred distractions.
JANJIWEED, n. An army that by murder empties the plains of Sudan, by fire bares the desert and by rape insures a generation of half-demons to supply the future with cultural critics.
KIBBLE, v.t. To lightly address great and weighty matters of a generation such as the translation of the national anthem, the abridgement of the pledge of allegiance, or the fugitive status of a bimbo. To address these matters solemnly is to LEAD.

Saturday, May 6, 2006

From the collection of Richard Samuel West / Periodyssey.