Believe It!

[poliphilo]

"I can't believe this is happening in America."

Why not? America is periodically swept by these waves of righteousness and paranoia. Remember the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Remember Prohibition.

America is schizoid. It's got LOVE tattooed on one set of knuckles and HATE tattooed on the other. And every once in a while it beats itself up.

As now.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

As I left church Sunday, I noticed two police cars in the Roman Catholic church parking lot across the street. It turns out that vandals had, during the night, tossed red paint on the face of the Virgin Mary and sawed off the head and arms of the baby Jesus in her arms, then lobbed the head through a nearby glass door.

The news last night showed a little girl crying. She had arrived for Sunday School with her father.

The red paint looked like blood.

"I kept thinking, 'who would do such a thing?'" asked the girl, whose father was hugging her.

The church had only recently erected the statue, and it had cost $12,000.

I simply cannot understand the level of hatred required to do something like this. There's a devilish glee involved that feels evil to me.

Here in Oak Ridge, the police are reporting "hundreds of breakins" in the local paper, and are blaming most of them on drug users, who are desperate for money.

And we have random crimes as well--all those tires slashed in our neighborhood last summer, for no other reason apparently than that someone had a sharp instrument and darkness.

The Spirit of the Age--what's in the air over here? Is it the mis-firing war? The insanity of our values that has led to drug use among our young?

It does feel insane.

I keep thinking of that whistling swan, that beautiful swan that flew to our beautiful waterways a couple of years ago and settled in. How lovely to have such a wondrous visitor in such an unlikely place...and it was shot within two weeks by a hunter.

To me, such a meaningless, baffling act symbolizes our current psychosis.

We are running amok.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Sounds to me like the work of a bunch of sad teenagers who think it's cool to identify as Satanists.

Such people are always with us.

And as soon as this bunch grows up, the next lot will come along to take their place.

But there are people out there who have valid beefs against the Catholic church. Suppose the person who did this had been sexually abused by a priest? Plenty have been.

The swan upsets me more. No-one could possibly have a valid beef against swans. That is just wilful destruction. Truly Satanic.

I'm reminded of a story from New York- about this pair of hawks who have been nesting on a high ledge of an apartment building for ten years. And now certain residents have had the nest destroyed. The people of New York are furious; they loved seeing the hawks up there on their nest or out hunting in Central Park.