A Change Of Mood

[poliphilo]

I used to write sermons for a living and I'm liable, if I don't keep a check on myself, to slide into pulpit rhetoric.

Which is one good reason for not writing too much about the tsunami. I don't trust myself not to be cheap.

But there's just this one thing I want to say: the public mood has changed. For the past couple of years it's been Them and Us and War against Terror and ugly, ugly, ugly, and now, suddenly, it's Brotherhood of Man. Westerner and Easterner, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian, believer and secularist- we're all in this together.

And wonderful things have happened. Pakistan sent aid to its old enemy India, national leaders have discovered that there are votes in being kind and the warplanes and warships are being used to carry food and medicine and water.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The people are setting the pace and Bush is playing catch-up.

Our own Foreign Secretary gave a press conference this morning to say that the British government will match private giving pound for pound. He sounded slightly sheepish and defensive.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

The people are setting the pace and Bush is playing catch-up.

I think Bush should take all the money he is intending to spend on his inauguration and donate to the tsunami disaster aid program.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A nice idea. But it would take a big man to make that sort of gesture.