An Evening with Elie Wiesel take 1

My father managed to score a couple of standby tickets to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel's lecture at Viterbo College in La Crosse and we were fortunate to get in. While we ended up in the Black Box theater in the basement watching it by very poor quality TV feed, it was quite an occasion. It was announced it was the largest turnout in the 35 years of hosting such lectures and the atmosphere was electric with anticipation. It started out with an emotional performance of "The Cry", a Jewish folk song, on the viola. Following that, a wonderful prayer was given by Rabbit Saul Prombaum and the Spirit could be felt powerfully, setting the mood for the night. The lady most involved in getting Mr. Wiesel to speak there introduced him by referencing the first time she saw him speak several years ago. Darryle Clott mentioned that up until then, the biggest moment of her life had been when she'd seen Elvis perform and crashed the police barricade to get to the front of the stage.

Elie was greatly amused by this, he'd never been compared to Elvis before. The afore mentioned music and prayer had deeply touched him, leading him to mention if felt like it was a special night. What followed was a special night, with what was supposed to be a symposium on the Holocaust branching out into something more like a revival meeting. I was surprised by the frank and unabashed spirituality of his talk which touched deeply on his relationship with God and how we should treat one another. The Holocaust was talked about in relation to other subjects and was an ever present backdrop, but the main word that kept being repeated was "moral." The gist of his charming and sincere presentation was that humanity needs to be more moralistic in confronting hate. We must take action and never stand idly by.

All in all it was a wonderful night and I'll go into more detail in a future post, after watching the program again. WKBT Channel 8 will be showing it at 10:35 Saturday night and I plan to record it.

Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

After being really ill for the past week, I've had time to think on the whole subject of being disabled by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I usually don't like to think about it much, as just dealing with it eats enough precious time as it is. But I've been so sick that I haven't been able to read anything of depth, whether it be scriptures, non-fiction, editorials, or fiction. Even TV shows and movies have been hard to focus on this week. So I've been left to think about things and contemplate things (cue ominous music). Or not so ominous, just a good Animals tune.

One thing that jumped out at me is how relatively healthy people simply can't comprehend the disability I have. I don't "look" sick, I'm not in a wheelchair, I'm not walking with braces, I don't have hair falling out... In other words it isn't apparent to the naked eye. Oh there are times I am pale as a ghost, had my father worried the one night I went out to get some things done this week, but most of the time I look normal. This leads to people thinking I don't try hard enough, or that it is in my head, or I'm just lazy. Oh the irony in the last, as I have a very bad tendency to push with every ounce of energy I've got. Which isn't always the smartest thing to do as it makes me even more ill, but there's that whole being "type A personality" thing I've got going. So I end up being misunderstood, which adds insult to injury on occasion. I can't stand being misunderstood.

Interestingly enough, this line of thinking takes me to the spiritual side of things. So I'm not understood, perhaps thought less of -- does this give me the right to be angry about it? Not really. Jesus Christ taught us that we must forgive others in order to be forgiven ourselves (Matt 6:14-15, Luke 6:37). Not always the easiest thing to do, but a necessary thing to do lest bitterness creep into my soul. I often think, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34) when I run into people who wronged me in the past or who are wronging others. So much cruelty and meanness comes from simple ignorance or unwillingness to walk in another's shoes. Even more comes from the simple sin of not thinking at all, for reason is one of our more Divine gifts and when exercised properly leads to compassion and caring. It also can lead to forgiveness.

I'll finish this post with a quote from Doctrine and Covenants, section 64, verses 10-11:

I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men. And ye ought to say in your hearts -- let God judge between me and thee, and reward thee according to thy deeds.

Something to contemplate on a sunny Sabbath day.

Creepshow

While addled by being really ill, first thing I ran into on the net today was this little horror story about what happened Alistair Cooke's remains. There is an astounding problem with medical ethics these days, ranging from organ donations to research fraud. But this takes the cake, it is ghoulish in the true sense of the word. Grave robbing is what I consider it to be. Meanwhile, I discovered the teens who tried to dig up a young woman's corpse for sex won't face any sexual deviancy charges. It turns out there is no law in Wisconsin against necrophilia.

And here I thought the Romans were bad.

Testing BOINC stats

Being ill right now, hence the lack of posting. Trying out something meant for message board signatures to see if it will work here at all. I've found a decent distributed computing app called BOINC and have my dual core AMD PC crunching data for a variety of projects...

A Drop of Water

If we could get a few more OpEd's like this one, a lot of good would come of it.

9/11: The Aftermath

We now know that El Qaeda believes they were the ones who brought the Soviet Union down. This is predicated on the idea that the war in Afghanistan bankrupted the USSR. So Reagan's policies had no effect? Amazingly dumb thinking on their part. We also know that Osama thought taking down the WTC would devastate the US economy. So much so it would collapse completely. The latest dispatch from El Qaeda talks about how the war in Iraq is bringing our economy to ruination. Once again, amazingly dumb. It also had a call for all Americans to convert to Islam, which makes every one of us fair game if we don't. This shows that they think they have the way to beat us and they are in it for the long term. It is a step towards the global caliphate, when the whole world is forced to convert to Islam.

Yet so many people in America (and the rest of the West) simply don't get it. They think that we are the bad guys, that we are evil and have persecuted the downtrodden Arabs at the Jews behest. Aside from the lunatic fringe conspiracy theories about Jews, there is a hatred of Christians who actually profess their faith while being in public office. I've run into so much hatred and histrionics from leftists that I despair about the Democratic Party ever returning to rationality.

But it isn't just the far left who are wavering, a lot of people in the middle are too. Maybe being overly educated has become a problem. My theory is that we've gotten so civilized, we've forgotten the majority of the world is still barbaric and riven by tribal and regional violence. The presumption is that they think like we do, which they very obviously don't. What seems reasonable to us is insane or corrupt to them; what we consider crazy and violent is considered normal in their circles. Amongst the greatest of mistakes humans make is to think that others think in the same manner they do. You'd think married couples would have figured out this isn't true, given the different ways the sexes think! But it applies to different cultures as well.

It is time to start thinking about the way radical Islamists think and start communicating to them in their own language. Unfortunately, that language is one punctuated by bullets, comma'd by threats, and uses bombs for exclamation marks. Which means we are going to have to become a more hardened people if we are to survive. We'll never love death the way radical Muslims do, so I don't see us becoming blood thirsty by nature. But we must tolerate more civilian casualties on the other side and more military casualties on our side. Otherwise, we'll see a lot more civilian deaths on our side.

The wheels of history are in full motion right now, so I think a lot of very bad things are unstoppable now simply because we have been terribly short sighted in the West. The enemy thinks in the long term and has been patiently maneuvering for decades. That's something we need to learn, how to operate and plan for the long term. That will require a massive change to our culture and those things don't happen overnight. Or, when a massive catastrophe happens. I'd prefer it not to be the latter, so we must remain steadfast and vigilant.

9/11 continued

We managed to tear ourselves away from the TV set as the WTC towers burned and headed to the small clinic in Spring Grove to check in with the family doctor before heading to Gunderson Clinic in La Crosse. When we arrived there, the latest news was that the Pentagon had just been hit by another plane and several others had been hijacked. The Capitol was being evacuated and so was the White House. I turned to my dad and said, "It's war." He agreed and the fear in the rest of the waiting room was tangible. At that point, I felt complete calm as I usually do during times of crisis. Dad and I discussed the idea that we were experiencing the feelings people had when the attack on Pearl Harbor happened.

At Gunderson, it was more of the same, except a flight was reported down in the woods of Pennsylvania. After the tests, we headed home instead of shopping. We got home in time to see the towers collapse, adding new horror to the day. The shock of that happening could be heard in the voices of the reporters and anchors as they realized there wouldn't be anymore rescues. That's when I began to get angry, Bin Laden had finally succeeded, a man we could have killed many times before when the Clinton administration was playing games.

But there was something bugging me already and I discussed it with my parents. It was that I was sure the American public would forget this day due to the complete softness of the Western mind. They'd go back to life as usual once the MTV sized attention span wandered and the political left sued for peace. Even then, it was apparent how contemptibly weak we are as a culture and how the enemy is fully aware of and is using it. We have freedom but not the will to protect it once faced with a long, drawn out war.

Today, we are faced with the Democratic Party doing just what I'd feared, wanting to pull back on everything and talking. Talking hasn't worked with militant Muslims, it has been an abject failure unless backed up by force. Culturally speaking, force is what is admired and respected in Islam, it is an integral part of spreading the religion and can't be separated from it. The war in Iraq was a noble attempt to introduce the virus of western freedoms and culture, but it was done on the cheap. Why? Fear of public opinion and the Democratic Party taking advantage of discontent.

So what does that mean in the overall scheme of things? It means we will not be firm in resolve until we are hit again. Inevitably, we will get hit again because they will not stop attacking until we convert to Islam, or they are utterly broken. To utterly break them will require killing millions at a minimum, or having western ideals corrupt them. Disengagement will only encourage them that they are winning.