The Seige of Vicksburg and The Velocity of Time

The Seige of Vicksburg and The Velocity of Time

I am cursed and blessed by memory. When two and a half years old, I rode in the back seat as the Ford passed farms and climbed the hill. I got out with my parents and walked into the Old Stewart Place to see my uncle sweeping gravel out of the living room, as the house had been abandoned and used to stable horses. Max, my uncle, had Down's Syndrome in today's parlance. In those times he was mongoloid. He looked at me, smiled, went on sweeping. The house had been owned by an ancestor, Doctor David Stewart, captain in the 28th Iowa Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. He fought at Vicksburg and returned home to take a seat in the Iowa State legislature. Uncle Max passed away years ago. Doctor Stewart died long before I was born. They fell out of time into memory and I now have an ancient reprint of a picture taken in 1863 of Captain Stewart in uniform with epaulettes and brass buttons.

I touch the picture, feel the edges, note the sepia and white, and wonder about a light that captured it like this, froze it into a minor immortality before the years work at the edges, fade the tones, blur the features. There is decay in this thing I hold and I seem to feel it under my fingers, indiscriminate of flesh or paper, a rot impartial to all, except the picture knows nothing about it while I do. Then TS Eliot comes to mind—"I will show you fear in a handful of dust." That is an unsettling thought, so I tell myself that the paradox is merely one of concepts—emotion and matter. Still, concepts are what we have.

I also have Dr. Stewart's medical accounts book. It is a big book, bound in heavy, brown, padded leather, its pages ruled and columned. "March 10th, 1879. Set Abe Gentry's broken arm," one entry says, then explains, "He paid in ten bushels of corn and promised to work the South Forty next spring." Another states simply, ""Will Langtree's son, Jake, knocked on the door in the middle of the night. I dressed and grabbed my bag while Jake hitched Bess to the buggy. Hurried to the Langtree place. Delivered the wife of an eight pound girl. Came home, too tired to arrange accounts." When a boy, I imagined the doctor and his family on Sunday morning, his wife and children climbing into their surry, and the horses trotting to church in the village. Try as I might, though, I cannot summon much today. Instead, I think of the mystery that enfolded them as it does me. The world feels solid, real. We awaken to the sunrise, then we warm to summers, chill into winters, and suddenly we are gone.

Instead, I sometimes think of the sky that hovered over them like a mask, veiling the black infinitude of space, making the day warm and bright, as if it were the way the world was, and make no mistake. As they rode off to church, a Turkish regiment attacked an Assyrian village, a Chinese peasant drowned in the Yangtze, a prostitute in London felt Jack The Ripper's knife. Here is God's plenty as well.

We live by lies, some of them useful. We live by memories, all of them reminders. The best reminders are not the sieze-the-day sort, but those which tell us something there is that no photograph can explain. As I look at this picture I know that light, travelling at 186,000 miles per second, captured the Doctor's eyes as he gazed into the camera lens, expecting that somehow the future would be better than the past. I can use scientific datum to explain the event, but how can I render the person? The War of The Rebellion would one day be over and school children would read about it as the Civil War. He would return home. He would marry and father children. He would grow old gracefully. How is it that he reaches me on this distant shore of time, this Twenty First century while he remains in the Nineteenth? He touches me with his hopes, his tribulations, his genes. I am his bridge to the future. I live in a time beyond his ken; he, in one beyond mine.

That mystery serves like TS Eliot's paradox. For me, it is what we have in place of the certitude of data. We are all incessantly hurled out of the past into the future, despite our self-reminders to live for the day. Our Earth spins its equatorial girth 25,000 miles every 24 hours. We don't sense it. This planet orbits the sun at 67,000 miles per hour, and yet we feel a different kind of change, that which moves our muscles, ages our skin, dims our hopes. How can we judge magnitudes when death is more calamitous than a major shift in the solar system? We are caught up in our own velocities, which numbers cannot explain.

Perhaps memory itself is orbital, and we always cycle through the same life, committed to time's strange entropy. We await disorder, the uncertain future, and leave patterns in our wake. Perhaps we loop through time and space in an eternal return. That would be fine so long as I experience no déjà vu. I would like that. Captain Stewart lays down his rifle, returns home, and resumes his medical practice. The Ford stops at the Old Stewart Place, I get out, and see Uncle Max. You read about me holding the picture and once again it is all new.

We have lost the deterministic thread of the universe right here, inside ourselves (Michael Frayn)

"Psychoanalysts see dreams as the working out of some inner conflict. And one can imagine how they might be used as texts into which such interpretations could be read. But then random ink blots can be used in the same way without anyone, even a psycho-analyst, thinking that the meaning read into it by the patient was unconsciously put there by the person who scattered the ink. You might think, likewise, that when a dream seems to offer a practical solution to a conscious problem, it's because the dreamer reads a solution arrived at by other means, even if unconscious ones, into the ambiguous material on offer.

Psychologists have proposed various mechanistic explanations, usually by analogy with computer practice. They have suggested that it is a kind of mental housekeeping, in which the brain sorts the day's information, deleting unwanted files and backing up others. Some elements in dreams, it's true, do seem to relate to the experiences of the day just ended. Most (of mine, at any rate) don't. They relate, if to any experience at all, to events in the remote past. Usually they seem more like pure fiction. And far from suggesting any parallel with orderly filing, dreaming seems much more like the breaking open of files, both familiar and unfamiliar, and the chaotic scattering of their contents."

"Isn't there, at the point of origin of all our actions, all our thoughts, some such element of autonomy? The moment of creation always occurs a fraction of a second before the conscious mind discovers the created material, takes it over, and organises it into coherence."

"This is the heart of the mystery, this is what is so difficult to examine: the moment when the action takes shape inside your head. Often at this very point, in fact, just as the plot delivers the great scene, the dream seems to lose interest in itself and peter out. The important events that have been set in motion never quite materialise. We fall from the high building--but never hit the ground. In the brief instant of terror before I awoke, in that dark courtyard off Marylebone Road, I had time to note, with surprise and interest, that in the midst of all this overwhelming mass of sensation I couldn't locate any actual physical pain."

"To Descartes the 'cogito' seemed apodictic--so much so that it could serve as the foundation stone for the construction of a world. But the word begs all the questions we have been looking at; the first-person construction conceals more than it reveals. Even if it's certain, from the act of doubting (which is what constitutes the thinking in cogito), that thinking of some sort is occurring, the authorship of that thinking remains an open question. My thoughts think themselves, and from that thinking the author has to be constructed, as dubious an entity as the argument suggests that everything else might be. The life of the family is the life of its members, but the lives its members lead are their own. Without the family--no members. Without the members--no family."

"Then again, maybe there is an element of pure randomness in the apparently unlocatable deciding force at the heart of dreaming (and of all our thinking). Maybe this generative principle, which is both I and not-I, stems from the quantum behaviour of individual particles in the system, deflecting and shaping the throughput of information from external sources as fundamentally and massively as the random release of the beta-particle affects the state of Schrödinger's cat."

Citizens & Frogs; Media & Government

If you put a frog in a pan of hot water, it will jump out. If you put it in a pan of lukewarm water, then slowly turn up the heat it will boil to death.

We are no different. In Shakespeare's Richard II, the tragic king observes that man's capacity for adjustment seems infinite. Infinite, yes. We are frogs, all of us. The only response is, Do we want to be?, and in that question lies our difference. We can jump out before the water boils.

Not that we will. Only that we can.

Where am I going with this? Here—In the last post, I noted that most media are ignoring the military build-up in the Middle East. The reason is obvious. It's called big business. The media are big business. For news anchors, the build-up story does not scream. People might flick the remote to the next channel. Besides, if war erupts, why that would be a real screamer, attracting many viewers. Never mind all that B.S. about the public interest, say the media. A buddy of media executives, former FCC Chairman Michael Powell said he did not know what the public interest is. He was not kidding.

You and I are the public, and we know what it is. Our vital interest lies with knowing that massive military build-ups have occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. We are already like frogs, our troops in the scalding water of Iraq. Without public knowledge, without public debate, we may be plunged into a caldron. Mainstream news got us into Iraq because corporate profit margins rule out investigative journalism. Instead, the news anchors just parroted the White House buzz words. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Saddam Hussein linked to terrorists. Lies, all of them, we now know, but no thanks to the media's sense of public interest.

There went more frogs into Iraq. In the Nineteenth Century soldiers were openly called cannon fodder by the power elite. Those in power did not understand what we now call Spin, or Propaganda. This explains why recent polls reveal that public trust in government is far lower than in 1981.

The only way to stop being frogs is to understand what is happening to media in this country. Not only to understand it, but to make our voices heard before the water boils.

Think about this.

Could a few media conglomerates overwhelm smaller competing voices? Voices that have news and information vital to the public interest? Quite obviously, they have. A 2004 report identified 6 media conglomerates that owned 94 percent of the media market; (1) Viacom-CBS-MTV; (2) Rupert Murdoch's Newscorpt (FoxTV, etc.) (3) GE-NBC-Universal-Vivendi; (4) Time-Warner-CNN-AOL; (5) Disney-ABC-ESPN; (6) Comcast. In 1981 there was great worry because ownership had shriveled to 15 conglomerates.

Be clear on this. The news media is not in bed with big business. The news media is big business. The State of the News Media 2004 report produced by the Project for Excellence in Journalism in March found that most sectors of the news media have seen clear cutbacks in newsgathering resources. The number of newspaper newsroom staffers shrunk by 2,000 between 2000 and 2004, a drop of 4% overall. Some major online news sites saw much deeper cuts, such as MSNBC, which cut around a quarter of its staff between 2001 and 2003. Radio newsroom staffing declined by 57% from 1994 to 2001. After an up-tick in 1999, network staffing began to drop again in 2000. Since 1985 the number of network news correspondents has declined by 35 percent while the number of stories per reporter increased by 30 percent.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act further deregulated the Federal Communications Commission, paving the way for more take-overs. During the senate debate Senator John McCain said, "You will not see this story on any television or hear it on any radio broadcast." All together the 3 major network news shows aired a sum total of only 19 minutes of coverage of the Telecommunications Act, over the course of NINE MONTHS.

Now, tell me that the media makes sure the public is well-informed.

These conglomerates are not answerable to the people although they use public air waves free of charge, tax free, thanks to the coziness between their lobbyists and Capitol Hill legislators, who need their campaign contributions. Soon only one voice will remain. Only one truth. Theirs.

Oh, we will still have freedom of choice. We can select many different programs to watch. We have great variety in entertainment. Like a frog, we can sit contentedly while the water heats.

But our understanding of our world, the way we see it, that is a different matter. It will be shaped by how big businesses want us to see it. There is a pattern to the way certain stories are covered, then dropped. The level of secrecy, of news distortion, or non-coverage has reached a historic low.

Charles Lewis of the Center for Pubic Integrity was a producer for CBS Sixty Minutes until he concluded that the public simply never learned much of important news. Lewis has this to say of his own organization, Center for Public Integrity:

They don't investigate and report on the media because none of their findings would ever be reported by the media. They found that the most powerful special interest in Washington is the media. The National Association of Broadcasters has lobbyists. The public is entitled to seats in committee hearing rooms, but lobbyists hire place holders, poor people who stand in line holding their position, then slipping out when the lobbyist shows up as doors open for the hearing. The National Association of Broadcasters has nearly 300 paid lobbyists who give away tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. And they control whether a politician gets on the air all over America. Not only that but the Fairness Doctrine has been abolished. No more free time for politicians. They must pay, which accounts for one third of media news budget, and the huge rise in campaign expenses.

That's power.

How much power do we have? One thing is certain. Our power will be limited to that of a frog in heating water unless we make ourselves heard.
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Source: Orwell Rolls in His Grave at Information Clearing House

The Winds of War: A Military Build-Up Most Media Ignore

I take this threat quite seriously and so have chosen to alert my readers, although it is off-topic for this blog. I hope that others take it as seriously as I do.

It may or may not happen, and if it does, it will probably be months or even a year or two, but solid evidence is abundant that contingency war plans are being implemented with a military build-up, probably against Iran, perhaps Syria. Consider what follows, from Global Research. Notice what Sam Gardiner says below. I have watched and listened to Gardiner, an analyst on the Lehrer news hour as well as on the commercial main stream networks. He is very credible. These are only snips from a very long document.
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The March to War: Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean.

October 1, 2006. Editor's note. We bring to the attention of our readers, this carefully documented review of the ongoing naval build-up and deployment of coalition forces in the Middle East.

The article examines the geopolitics behind this military deployment and its relationship to "the Battle for Oil."

The structure of military alliances is crucial to an understanding of these war preparations.

The naval deployment is taking place in two distinct theaters: the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean.

The militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean is broadly under the jurisdiction of NATO in liaison with Israel. Directed against Syria, it is conducted under the façade of a UN peace-keeping mission pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 1701. In this context, the war on Lebanon must be viewed as a stage of a the broader US sponsored military road-map.

The naval armada in the Persian Gulf is largely under US command, with the participation of Canada.

The naval buildup is coordinated with the planned air attacks. The planning of the aerial bombings of Iran started in mid-2004, pursuant to the formulation of CONPLAN 8022 in early 2004. In May 2004, National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 35 entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization was issued. While its contents remains classified, the presumption is that NSPD 35 pertains to the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the Middle East war theater in compliance with CONPLAN 8022.

These war plans must be taken very seriously.

The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, "a long war," which threatens the future of humanity.

In the weeks ahead, it is essential that citizens' movements around the world act consistently to confront their respective governments and reverse and dismantle this military agenda.

What is needed is to break the conspiracy of silence, expose the media lies and distortions, confront the criminal nature of the US Administration and of those governments which support it, its war agenda as well as its so-called "Homeland Security agenda" which has already defined the contours of a police State.

It is essential to bring the US war project to the forefront of political debate, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Political and military leaders who are opposed to the war must take a firm stance, from within their respective institutions. Citizens must take a stance individually and collectively against war.
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Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 1 October 2006. The probability of another war in the Middle East is high. Only time will tell if the horrors of further warfare is to fully materialize. Even then, the shape of a war is still undecided in terms of its outcome.

If war is to be waged or not against Iran and Syria, there is still the undeniable build-up and development of measures that confirm a process of military deployment and preparation for war.

The diplomatic forum also seems to be pointing to the possibility of war. The decisions being made, the preparations being taken, and the military maneuvers that are unfolding on the geo-strategic chessboard are projecting a prognosis and forecast towards the direction of mobilization for some form of conflict in the Middle East.

In this context, people do not always realize that a war is never planned, executed or even anticipated in a matter of weeks. Military operations take months and even years to prepare. A classical example is Operation Overlord (popularly identified as “D-Day”) . . . but the preparations for the military operation took eighteen months, “officially,” to set the stage for the invasion of the French coast.

With regard to Iraq, the “Downing Street memo” confirms that the decision to go to war in 2003 was decided in 2002 by the United States and Britain, and thus the preparations for war with Iraq were in reality started in 2002, a year before the invasion. The preparations for the invasion of Iraq took place at least a entire year to arrange.

Time Magazine and the “Prepare to Deploy Order” of the Eisenhower Strike Group

The latest U.S. reports provide details of preparations to go to war with Iran and Syria. Time magazine confirms that orders have been given for deployment of a submarine, a battleship, two minesweepers, and two mine-hunters in the Persian Gulf by October 2006. There are very few places in the world where minesweepers would be needed or used besides the Persian Gulf. There also very few places where anti-submarine drills are required , besides the Persian Gulf.

Award-winning investigative reporter and journalist Dave Lindorff has written;

[Retired]Colonel Gardiner, who has taught military strategy at the National War College [of the United States], says that the [U.S. Navy] carrier deployment and a scheduled Persian Gulf arrival date of October 21 [2006] is “very important evidence” of war planning. He says, “I know that some naval forces have already received 'prepare to deploy orders’ [PTDOs], which have set the date for being ready to go as October 1 [2006]. Given that it would take about from October 2 to October 21 to get those forces to the [Persian]Gulf region, that looks about like the date” of any possible military action against Iran. (A PTDO means that all crews should be at their stations, and ships and planes should be ready to go, by a certain date—in this case, reportedly, October 1.) Gardiner notes, “You cannot issue a PTDO and then stay ready for very long. It's a very significant order, and it’s not done as a training exercise.” This point was also made in the Time article.

"I think the plan’s been picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran," says [Colonel] Gardiner. "It's a terrible idea, it's against U.S. law and it's against international law, but I think they've decided to do it He says that while the United States has the capability to hit those sites with its cruise missiles, "the Iranians have many more options than we [the United States] do.

Of course, Gardiner agrees, recent ship movements and other signs of military preparedness could be simply a bluff designed to show toughness in the bargaining with Iran over its nuclear program. But with the Iranian coast reportedly armed to the teeth with Chinese Silkworm anti-ship missiles, and possibly even more sophisticated Russian anti-ship weapons, against which the [U.S.] Navy has little reliable defenses, it seems unlikely the Navy would risk high-value assets like aircraft carriers or cruisers with such a tactic. Nor has bluffing been a Bush [Administration] MO [tactic] to date.

Click for the full article at Global Research

Home_____The Method of Political Intolerance: Roger Scruton's Hatchet Job on Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky (born 1928) is a linguist who gave to the world the theory of generative grammar, the most significant 20th Century contribution to theoretical linguistics. He sparked the revolution against B.F. Skinner’s behavioral psychology, dominant until Chomsky’s critique, wherein he challenged the study of mind and language as merely observable behavior rather than something inherent within mind. Chomsky is widely known for his analysis of how media works, for his political activism, and for his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments.

British philosopher Roger Vernon Scruton (born 1944) is broadcaster, journalist, and composer. He seeks to popularize philosophical thought and to defend the institutions of Western culture. Politically, he is a conservative, and not always a thinking one, as his article on Chomsky reveals. He has a deep interest in aesthetics, particularly music.

A 26 September 2006 Wall Street Journal article by Scruton, begins thus: "Noam Chomsky's popularity owes little or nothing to the eminent place that he occupies in the world of ideas. That place was won many years ago in the science of linguistics, and no expert in the subject would, I think, dispute Prof. Chomsky's title to it."

After a few back-handed opening compliments Scruton then buries his axe deep in Chomsky's skull. Most notable in his piece is that Scruton does not understand Chomsky, has not read Chomsky, or simply chooses to lie.

In many ways I don't agree with Chomsky, in particular his political philosophy, but I always find his intellect powerful. Anyone who listens with an open mind and without preconceptions must allow Chomsky as an extremely important speaker on American foreign policy. He will cause you to think, whether you agree with him or not. You cannot merely dismiss him as a ranter, as Scruton does.

I wrote a comment to the Journal article, which the WSJ did not print. They allowed a few mindless comments from the cheer leaders and one from a thoughtful writer who also saw through Scruton, and then they stopped posting responses. I suspect they did so because the response from both left and right was overwhelmingly critical of Scruton's shallow and mindless piece.

Here is my comment not published in the WSJ. It is addressed to Scruton's claim that Chomsky alleges a high-level conspiracy in America:

"If Scruton read Chomsky carefully he would find that the professor repeatedly insists that no US government or media conspiracy is involved. Instead, Chomsky says that like-minded people honestly (at least to themselves) serve like-minded interests. As for any rage, listen to Chomsky. Watch him. There is nothing but sober intellect. He is low key, self-effacing and has a marvelous ability to cite facts. Scruton apparently does not know his man.

Mr. Scruton has his own agenda, which is obvious to anybody familiar with him. If he wants to serve that agenda, he should do his homework before simplistically rendering such a complicated man."

Here, is somebody who read the WSJ piece and has a similar problem with Scruton's anger against Chomsky.

"In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal Roger Scruton—Philosopher and hired hand of the tobacco industry launched a feeble attack on Noam Chomsky. Entitled 'Who Is Noam Chomsky' the piece runs through the usual litany of lies and half truths with even less skill than is usual in this type of ad hominem assault. . . ." Doherty indicates that Scruton is a paid hit man, certainly for big tobacco. His final comment says this: "In an email leaked in 2002 Scruton asked his paymasters at Japan Tobacco if they could raise his payments from £4,500 monthly to £5,500. Presumably they are getting rather better value for money than the Wall Street Journal if this pitiful attempt at character assassination is anything to go by." By Alex Doherty

I am especially sympathetic to Chomsky’s insightful analysis of main stream media. Among other works, he is known for his book with Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of The Mass Media. Here is an excerpt: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

Home_____What’s Happening to Us?: Charles Carl Roberts & The Amish Murders

We live at a time when things seem to be falling apart. Everywhere we look, the old truths have given way to new fictions, and the last has become first. The worst are filled with a passionate intensity; the best lack all conviction. In his fine poem, "September 1, 1939" W. H. Auden sat in a bar on New York's 52nd Street. As narrator, Auden looked at the tense, desperate people around him, trying to forget the Second World War, about to unfold in Europe. Today, in October 2006, we are not like those people on bar stools, faces gazing into a mirror. We have no headlines announcing a fateful and disastrous change like that day long ago. Instead, the change is happening slowly, but for all that it is dangerous and real. In a bar today, people might toss back their drinks, afraid to look at the other faces in the glass—all of them blankly turned to their drink as they swish it between their hands before swallowing another. Something is happening in the world, in their lives They just aren't quite sure what.

On 2 October 2006 armed with shotgun and pistol, a milk truck driver named Charles Carl Roberts IV entered an Amish school room in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and killed five girls from six to thirteen years of age. He did so because he was carrying out a grudge from a past that haunted him—something he claimed to have done twenty years before. Charles Roberts committed a tragedy that scarred and seared the Amish and other township parents, and it is something they will not shake, carrying it with them to the grave. Still, it was no great historical event. Here was no World War III, no earthquake, no tsunami, no meteor smashing into Earth. Because it was not, we must be like the faces in the mirror above the bar. The tragedy is ours, not only theirs. We must not avoid looking into what we see in the mirror. We must study ourselves carefully in it so to learn what we were and what we have become.

The Amish are peaceful, deeply religious people, who do not believe in violence. They have no telephones or televisions. They do not drive cars but get about in horse and buggy. They wear nineteenth century clothes, the women often in bonnets and blue dresses, the men in straw hats for summer, and plain trousers with broad suspenders. They want nothing to do with our century, yet it has caught up with them.

Charles Roberts had nothing against the Amish. He wasn't one of them, and he found no fault in them as a people. He simply needed objects for his revenge. The girls weren't merely Amish to him. They were creatures of a world in which he was alone. They were out there; he was inside himself. A lone individual in a highly fragmented, individualistic society, the furniture of his mind had only one chair, and he sat in it. He was supreme in his own mind. Supreme in his fantasies, in his grievances. Nothing was superior to that. Nobody else counted against that.

Many explanations can be made for his actions, and one is that he was a creature of individualism taken to its present extreme. In Habits of The Heart, Robert Bellah, et al., writes of what has been lost to individualism. A respect for tradition. A sense of duty and obligations to others. A continuity with the past. A belief in pubic virtue. The book reveals how these have been surrendered to a corporate commercialism whose ads seek to mold minds into unthinking lone appetites bereft of any collective defiance against mass consumption. Corporate executives quite naturally justify the needs of a corporation—what best serves the free market economy best serves the country. Isolated individuals are not intended as results of the economy, nor is the economy solely responsible, but it does offer a legitimate way of looking at what has happened to society.

The Amish God is loving. He binds the Amish together into love, into community, into a people filled with one another.

Charles Roberts was modern man at his most desperate. To his wife, he said, "I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself, hate toward God, and an unimaginable emptiness." There is only a quarter inch between that and what Corporate America would have a consumer society believe, as bumper stickers declare, that the one who has the most toys when he dies wins. Toys cannot serve meaning. They could not feed Roberts' unimaginable emptiness.

Oh, of course we can find the usual explanations. Here was an evil man bent on evil designs. Or he was wacko and good thing he killed himself too. Or schools need better protection. Each in its own way is plausible but only superficial. The main stream media reported what happened in Pennsylvania but never got to the serious questions because that would have taken too many sound bites and eaten into time for the next commercial. In the main stream media you never hear any explanation why public killings are on the increase. If the explanation cannot fit into a five or six sentence response, the audience may become bored, so goes the thinking. Nobody asks why is this happening now? What has made the difference? Quite simply, recurrent and widespread attacks against innocents didn't happen in the past. So what has changed?

One could say that they are copy-cat killings fostered by media that uses lurid details to attract audiences, and one copy-cat breeds another. People like Charles Roberts have a chance for the spectacular, for fifteen minutes of fame, as Andy Warhol put it. The killer is a nobody in a media society that vaunts power barons and celebrities. Like a movie star, he can go out in a blaze of glory which vanquishes his unimaginable emptiness. In a single act of violence, he has the power he lacked throughout life. Fair enough as analysis. But, apart from the role of media, what is happening in the world to cause such people?

Nobody is asking you to adopt Amish religion, nor do I recommend a public return to religion or think it possible. But think about this. The Amish believe in the collective, not the individualistic. Independent of consumer society, they don't own telephones or televisions. They don't drive cars, but get about in horse and buggy. They have security in this, a sense of peace. Their society is more important than the individual desires and whims of each member. They have a long history and sense of who they are. They live their lives together. They believe in their value to one another. They have meaning in their lives that shapes them in a manner wholly unlike the form taken by American and Western society. Their lives are entwined by a deep religious conviction. They have sustained that social fabric because they turned away from what outsiders valued. They share their joys, their hopes, their frustrations. They plan together, and in that one room Pennsylvania school house five young girls died together.

In his Bowling Alone Robert Putnam observes that the number of bowling leagues has decreased in the United States although the number of bowlers has increased. Putnam links the decline in leagues to a decline in civic consciousness—to a loss of community. He distinguishes between two kinds of capital, monetary capital and social capital. While the economy has increased, social capital is on the wane. As each year passes, people feel less connected to one another. Today, each person, each family, sits inside its suburban box in the living room watching television, while people in the box next door do the same. They don't speak to one another and instead relate to phosphate images on the back of a cathode ray tube, broadcast from thousands of miles away. They laugh at their favorite sit-com character; they identify with the handsome or pretty news anchor; and in a few hours they flick the remote to turn off the TV, then they go to bed. They are electronically connected to the media power elite who use focus groups to decide what will be broadcast to them while they may not even know the first or last name of their neighbors in the house next door.

Charles Roberts, had he lived, should have faced a life sentence or execution for his murders. That is beside the point. The point is to understand what has happened to society to create the Charles Roberts within it. I have raised the question but have only made some comparisons between the Amish and our mass consumer society. I have not answered it, and cannot do so alone. The question must be a public one resolved by the people. It is a question well worth profound public debate. We must know what is happening to us and nobody will help us. The media will see the next tragedy as a reason to attract viewers, but will not answer why. Experts will be interviewed who will give expert answers. Better security, etc. But that is a band aid, not a diagnosis.

The issue will not be raised on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Certainly, corporate board rooms do not find it in their best interests. We have no town hall meetings anymore. Don't expect a reply from the media. It is up to us.