Like this week, as I am writing about both at the same time. I can’t help it. The news cycle surrounding that whacko backwoods Florida preacher threatening to burn the Koran on 9/11, and the resulting tidal wave of response, has left me wondering if the world has gone nuts.
Shockingly, the president of the United States and others in his employ responded with international gusto, raising the notoriety of that wacko hick to Oprah levels. Troops were put on alert and the blogosphere ignited, well, for about a week or so, with only the smoldering embers of a government building in Kashmir left to remind us of the dangers of giving free advertising to nut jobs.
On so many levels, it seems like the world has gone mad. But the world is a much different place then I remember from my rather tame youth, when the focus was the “war on communism” and not the “war on religion”. Back then, folks burned flags and manifestos, but now the nutters prefer burning bibles.
In a country where religious tolerance has been a historical landmark, Nepal does not seem immune to this shift. For example, I just got a Facebook notice letting me know that “The Gurkha Who Hacked Off The Taliban Soldiers Head Is A Legend!...20 Thousand Fans.” Head hacking and the current religious war seems to go hand in hand, and based on the hundreds of Facebook posts there, head hacking is much supported.
But head hacking has a long history, both in religion and in politics. The most famous beheading coming off of Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France, famous for her words “Let them eat cake.” That was back in 1793, when France was broke after spending the equivalent of billions of dollars in a war against the American colonies and England.
Losing her head also had a lot to do with the political/religious struggle taking place at the time. The Church was loosing power over the people, meaning the monarchy was disintegrating, and the peasants were rising, throwing French society into disarray; sound familiar fellow Nepalis?
There was a time when the world was a sane place to live, wasn’t there? Perhaps it just seemed that way because during those years there was only a single daily paper and two channels on the TV. We had radio back then, but the airwaves were filled with pop songs about true love and romantic heartbreak, and not much of anything else.
But what is astounding to me, besides the old adage that history repeats, is that it appears that economics, religion, and politics are all intricately tied to beheadings, and has been for centuries.
Today, Islamist extremists are beheading dentists, Gurkhas are beheading extremists, and President Obama is being virtually beheaded by Tea Party-ists. Books are on fire while the new Rome is burning, while the American (re)public is sending 60 billion dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia – and in the next headline the The New York Times reports: “Downturn in World Economy effecting US Arm Sales - Wall Street Reacts in the Negative.” Let me ask you this: Wouldn’t a sane society react in the positive over such news? Has the world turned upside down or what!
I can’t help but to slip back to my teen years when I get this upset. That was a time when my world was like Pokhora is today. In a time when dads had food carts or shoe repair shops and there was a spot on the lake where your brothers and sisters played in the grass while mom fretted over the quality of vegetables. Books were revered and kept on the top shelf, and the thought of war was abhorrent.
There was a time when the world was a sane place to live, wasn’t there? Perhaps it just seemed that way because during those years there was only a single daily paper and two channels on the TV. We had radio back then, but the airwaves were filled with pop songs about true love and romantic heartbreak, and not much of anything else.
The words hate speech, hate crimes (as a misdemeanor), extremists, and suicide bomber were not even in our lexicon. Sure...we had dusty old history books filled with the atrocities of Stalin, Hitler, and Attila the Hun. But everyone I grew up assumed that we were beyond all that, and that we were, as a society, rising above our violent history like angels ascending to a heaven on earth. And I never believed my grandmother’s muttering of “Never forget.” How deluded we all were. The world has not gone nuts; it appears that it always has been.
Well there, I’ve said my piece and I am sure my wiser-than-wise wife will now strongly disapprove.
Writer is quirky kinda expat happily living in the Kathmandu valley with Nepali family, friends and a very large dog – on most days that is, but not today, not after reading the bad news online
herojig@gmail.com
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