The IVC 9/11 event
Cops
At noon today, Irvine Valley College held a fine 9/11 Commemoration Ceremony in its Performing Arts Center. Lots of local VIPs were on hand, and a few of them spoke before the audience of 80 or so.
Despite the massive dollop of PR horseshit inevitably baked into this kind of event, it was a good thing, I think. Everybody behaved (although there was the inevitable invocation), and the speakers were pretty good—although I don't understand why our 9/11 events always emphasize cops.
Hutchins
After Board President Don Wagner’s brief address, Irvine Police Chief David L. Maggard, Jr., spoke, followed by new OCFA Fire Chief Keith Richter, and Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Sandra Hutchens, who, like Maggard, attended last year’s IVC ceremony.
IVC’s Matthew Tresler, accompanied by piano, sang “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America.” Pretty impressive.
All of the speakers were good, albeit subdued, as befitted the occasion.
Yes, they were good. In fact, as they spoke, I was struck by the oddness that people hired presumably to run large and complex and trouble-prone organizations happened also to be photogenic and decent-to-good public speakers.
Maggard may be a nice guy, but he looks and sounds like he’s the star of a TV show about a former FBI man who now heads the Agrestic PD. --That is, to me, when he shows up, he's ready-for-prime-time, and he offers a performance. I’d much rather he got real—maybe talked about how people aren’t always good and you’ve got to struggle to get 'em to straighten up and fly right. (The Irvine PD has a, um, colorful history, you know.)
Richter
As usual, Hutchens was intelligent, but she also seems too nice to kick ass, and surely, given her job, she’s got to do lots of ass-kicking. She did fire a bunch of people recently, so maybe.
But I wanna see a woman who conveys how tough and even nasty her job often is, dealing with all those cops, some of whom are serious assholes (I assume you read the paper).
Richter seemed genuine and smart. It’s easy to imagine him actually being good at his job. Hope so.
Maybe some of you think these observations are inappropriate. After all, this is a special day, commemorating a UNIQUE catastrophe in history. This is no time for peevishness and nickpickery.
Really? Obviously, 9/11 was a terrible day. 3000 or so people were killed on our soil (by “fanatics,” according to one of today’s speaker). Everybody seems to think that that day 8 years ago “changed the world” (as one speaker today put it). Everybody seems to view it as an evil of outstanding enormity.
Trustee Tom Fuentes
Yeah. But we Americans have killed many more than that number of civilians in the Middle East since 2003—in an invasion and occupation instigated by leaders that we had every reason to think might cook the books. And, as it turns out, they did.
I just watched a show on the Military Channel. In Tokyo during WWII, Curtis LeMay’s B-29 crews killed between 80,000 and 200,000 people, mostly civilians, in one night. Burned ‘em alive.
Obviously, I could go on: Dresden, Vietnam, Iraq sanctions, etc.
I don't get it. We're a nation that kills hundreds of thousands of foreigners and we pretty much refuse to think about that as any kind of moral burden. "How many died in the Vietnam War?" I ask my students. The smart ones say, "58,000."
But what about the 1-2 million Vietnamese? What, they don't count?
OK, in 2001, we lost 2 or 3 thousand in one day. That's a terrible thing. But, unless we get to count our losses with a super-multiplier, that toll just doesn't rate compared to the horrors that occur routinely in this world, including horrors we have ourselves perpetrated (or, anyway, that we have brought about).
Please tell me where I've gone wrong in my thinking here.
As you know, some SOCCCD trustees seem to think that we, as a community, have gotta keep touching base with God (an entity who they take to be distinctly Christian, evidently). Well, OK. But it seems to me that, when we send him messages, we'd better be careful. For if there is a God, He’s gotta think that we Americans, especially we comfortable and staunch OC Americans, are some seriously thoughtless assholes.
Next time, I want somebody to talk about that.
Trustee Don Wagner
Reporter Lesley Stahl (asking about U.S. sanctions against Iraq): We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.
4 comments:
Well put!
The God who has supported me my entire life is not the God who would delight in the suffering of others or the failure to honor the sincere beliefs of others who, in various manifestations, including those that some might consider not religious at all, work each day to lead ethical lives focused on kind acts that reveal a true spirit of godliness. And Chuck, you may be surprised (and I hope not offended) to know that you are high on my list of those people. Thank you for inspiring us, for reminding us what it truly means to be "Christian," even though you may not profess to be one.
These events are always so uncomfortable for me. I find that 9/11 gave a reason for those living in a fantasy world to come out of their shells. 9/11 was a horrible day, and thankfully it's behind us. I never noticed Pearl Harbor remembrance days year after year -- maybe on big anniversaries -- but definitely not every year since 1941. Why does 9/11 have to be thrown in our faces every year by those who seem to get off on having an enemy, and those who want their faces in the papers?
Thanks for mentioning Hiroshima among the horrors that the U.S. has perpetrated in the world, Chunk. I find it amazing and horrible that we dropped atomic weapons on not just one, but two cities (Nagasaki second), full of civilian mothers, fathers, and children on their way to school. (Then there's the firebombing of Dresden, of course, which may have caused more suffering.)
I find it inexpressibly terrible that most citizens of this country either don't know about this (my students, often), or accept without the slightest pause that it was "necessary": by which they mean that it saved American lives.
Is there any clearer example of an evil act? (And I don't mean that Truman or the people on the Enola Gay were evil; I mean that the ACT was clearly, egregiously wrong.)
Thanks for the thoughtful reflection on these kinds of ceremonies, Roy. I, too, would love to hear (in addition to honoring the victims, of course) discussion of our own episodes of blindness and self-righteous evil-doing, on just these sorts of occasions. What could be more appropriate and healthy?
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