Copacabana

Remember the Bastille

ah, a week off from work...what to do, what to do?
yeah, right...

I need to give a shout out to my folks, who celebrated their wedding anniversary Sunday. They've been married a million years and have somehow figured out how to make it work, something that statistically is apparently very difficult. I'm so proud of them. They're good eggs.

And here's a thought for the day, taken from the Marquise de Custine's book La Russie en 1839 in which he describes his three-month journey through Russia at the time when Communism was heating up full-force:

"The taste for military reviews is pushed in Russia to the point of madness. I am not moved to laughter.; puerility on a vast scale is to me an appalling thing ... it is only with blindly submissive peoples that a ruler can demand immense sacrifices to produce trifles...One asks oneself what [such men] can do with their excess of thought and you feel uncomfortable at the idea of the force that had to be exerted against intelligent beings to succeed in making them only things."

Militaristic shows of devotion ... blindly submissive populace ... humans used as things ... does any of this sound familar? And, if you're tempted to say "Why yes, our country does this?" think again. Only here can someone roundly, openly and maliciously speak out about their government without being immediately tossed into prison or worse. So check yourself.

As for me, I rather enjoy the fact that I'm not covered from head to foot so as not to entice men into bad behavior, and that I'm not forced to perform in large-scale militaristic dance routines for the approval of a speck of a dictator who waves his hand while gleefully sending me off to war because, let's face it, to refuse is to risk yours -- and your family's -- lives. And that I'm not forced to accept sub-par standardized health care and education because a central precept in my country is that the individual is a powerful force and is expected to excel.

I quietly rebel against those I meet here who sup at the bounty of their native country and then proclaim that it's a bad place and they'd much prefer a different, easier system. It gets me into trouble sometimes. But here lately, I think it might be worth it in the long run.

Custine exemplifies the French attitude. They are piercingly adept at observation and they can call it exactly as it is. They just come up short when asked to fight for it. I hope, when the time comes, and I think it's on it's way, they'll stand by their powers of observation and refuse puerility. Liberte, egalite, fraternite.

posted by Lola @ 9:54 AM