Sun Feb 19, 2012
posted under General
2012 has some historic events to remember. On April 12 it will be the 100thanniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Later in the summer will be the 100thremembrance of the 1912 Olympic games triumph of the great Jim Thorpe, the only Native American ever to be declared by the King of Sweden the Greatest Athlete in the world and November will be the 100thyear since Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose party’s unsuccessful effort to win a third party effort for the Presidency.
The last event is especially nostalgic because Roosevelt was known as the “trust buster” for taking on the power of corporations to dominate our political system. He was a giant in the land of Lilliputians but just a hundred years later and the Lilliputians, with the aid of the Supreme Court have triumphed. Nothing is as graphic to demonstrate this fact as is the revolving carousel of Republican Presidential hopefuls, each with their own billionaire to fund their efforts.
The results so far is a political toxic dump of negative advertising, the merits of the candidates’ positions is lost in a tidal wave of ad-hominum attacks that leave the viewer questioning why that candidate is not in jail let alone running for President.
Now the issue of abortion, contraception and birth control has entered the dialogue. Trailing in the shadows is the whole issue of “personhood” the idea that any fertilized egg is at the moment of fertilization a “person” and thus protected by the laws against abortion. It does not matter if the fertilization was by rape or incest, the very occasion of an egg being penetrated by sperm at that moment becomes not a biological process but a divine act, an expression of the intent of God to make a human being.
In the middle ages there was a theory that the fertilized egg contained a complete miniaturized human person that was called a “homunculus” and thus was a human being in the view of the believers. It seems we are coming back to that point of view. Not so different from what happens when we get lost in the woods: we tend to wander in circles and eventually end up back where we started.
This brings us back to where we started. Already a great ocean liner has sunk off the coast of Europe, thankfully with 1,400 people rescued and not as with the Titanic lost. The Olympic Games will be held this summer and this fall there could be a third party candidate, but not one of Theodore Roosevelt’s stature. Instead of encouraging people to look beyond narrow self interest, the current group of discontented is one that encourages politicians to pander to the lowest and the slowest and asks no sacrifice to some higher ideal, lest the mob turn on them.
On the darker side of our history in 1912 the KKK was in ascendancy and crimes were committed against some in the name of hatred and bigotry. This is an anniversary year but let us not make it an anniversary of Jim Crow and the hatred of 100 years ago.