Went to Staples early and had the script bound into a "lie flat" spiral book. This is a terrific service and it cost me only $3.20.
I again viewed the 1963 T.V. version of "Hedda Gabler" on YouTube. Ingrid Bergman and the others are so good, although it's the third translation I've found.
Got a very welcome cam call from the Singapore contingent. Son Mike is recovering from a hernia operation and adorable granddaughters are adorable as ever. Vivian, soon to be five, showed me lots of things, including a toe ring, for heaven's sake. (Next it'll be tattoos.) Little Violet, one next week, was cooing and laughing and precious as ever.
Frank D. stopped in for a few minutes last night to tell Pat the Mets were losing (again!) to the Phillies, which cheered us considerably, but left Frank in the deepest despair. (A joke; he's not that superficial.)
Wider: Today is the fourth of July. I have such conflicted feelings about this holiday. On the one hand, I love my family and the people in my neighborhood and I feel a kind of diffused warmth for compatriots in general. I speak no other languages and have never lived anywhere except New Jersey. I'm as stirred as anyone with "patriotic" music and fireworks and I think I'm luckier than some to have been born an American.
And yet...I believe it's blind patriotism that has people parroting the "this is the best country in the world" tripe. That's the king of cliches, it seems to me, utterly mindless and almost indistinguishable from nationalism. And that's what allows otherwise good and gentle people to accept the horrors we've unleashed on the world.
I subscribe to The New Yorker and am reading an investigative article on a U.S. platoon in Iraq that seems to be overly enthusiastic--or something--with killing "the enemy" instead of taking prisoners. (No fear that there'll be a groundswell of revulsion against this. You'll never, in a million years, see an indepth report on network T.V. where the majority of the populace seems to get its information.)
The whole thing is surreal when you consider that some killing is supposed to be perfectly okay, even laudable. Combatants get medals if they kill in the approved or "legal" ways, but are punished if they--oops!--decide to murder their adversaries otherwise. It's absolute insanity and when we display the red, white, and blue, we indicate our support for the madness.
Hey, everybody knows what the red stands for.
2 comments:
Like you, I think I "love my country" in some sense, although I could much more accurately say that I love my part on the country. And, as you suggest, it's probably a matter of familiarity. If you're born and live most of your life in one place, you're naturally going to be attached to it.
But love isn't a comparative thing, nor is it defined by competition; and that's true of people, as much as places. I love my wife; that doesn't mean I think she's the "best wife" in the world, whatever that might mean. My love for her does not require me to denigrate other women in general, nor any other woman in particular. She has one truly unique attribute, which is that she's more like her than any other woman anywhere. Of course, the equivalent thing can be said for every other woman.
So, too, with places. It seems to me that a loudly-proclaimed affection is a little unconvincing if it can only be stated in comparative terms, or if it can't allow for the fact that people from other places can reasonably be expected to love their homes. It then becomes wildly unconvincing when it celebrates itself with sentimental reminisces about the past, present, and future slaughter of all those "other" people that necessarily accompanies the conquest of their homes.
A very lucid statement, Jim. In particular, I like your mention of the falsity of "comparative terms" when it comes to loving something.
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