Japanese Nuclear Plant "Expected Explosion"
“At worst, the nuclear meltdown in Japan is localized. There will be little to no consequences for anyone who doesn’t step inside the plant itself.” So said an Iowa-based nuclear industry expert on CNN this morning. ”In a few weeks the world will be lauding the entire nuclear power industry for its foresight, genius and selfless effort.”
Moments later on the same network, another expert drew an official Diagram to Disaster on a whiteboard. This frantic fellow looked as though his own rods were about to melt through his suit, right there on camera.
I live in Montana, and I closed the windows on the west side of the house just in case.
…The lure of news coverage, the barrage of ‘experts’, the agony of defeat in the face of forces beyond our control…
My tummy turns when I hear Japanese Disaster Music, played over slick, awful slides at the beginning and end of each news segment on MSNBC. Cue up Arial Boldface Black on a banner of Pantone Red 032. Yeah, that’s it. Perfect.
I resent the committees that put together banner headlines, trying to find just the right phrases and colors.
I resent all the news commentators who elbow their microphones amid the debris, having flown from afar. It’s embarrassing. No matter how honest their emotions, it’s hard to watch broadcasters swoop down, get good footage and leave.
The earthquake, the tsunami, these are made-for-TV disasters. The cleanup, the long-term suffering, not so much.
Don’t fret. We’ll have plenty of fresh tragedy to exploit. It’s been a veritable souk of suffering out there.
There was a perfect escalation from Tunisia (a barely heard of, vaguely exotic repressed state with successful rebellion that began as a food fight) bustin’ through Yemen, and then Egypt (Boo! Hiss! We knew this despot and his Suez Canal, where foreign funds are thicker than Semitic family feuds).
Then–it was just perfect–right at the height of TV sweeps-Libya! A bona fide crazy ass despot, Act III. Like many third acts, it was starting to sag a little. Obama had given an ultimatum to Ghadaffi that he had to leave, then sent the message that if he had the audacity to do so, Ghadaffi would face prosecution for crimes against humanity. The suspense! It was like Shakespeare with prayer rugs and automatic weapons (mostly on Ghadaffi’s side).
The Eye of Sauron Sees Only One Threat at a Time
The ill-equipped, hard-scrabble Libyan rebels have lost our eyes and our hearts to walls of water and broken H-O scale train sets of Japanese villages.
The Japanese tragedy is huge and far away. No despot, just victims. Hey, that last show, it was dragging anyway.
The Libyans, without our momentum and goodwill, have lost precious ground. The Libyan Revolution has gone into syndication, which is a bloody shame. No one likes stale TV.
They should have known better. They should have completed their revolution during Sweeps month. Japan? Who knows how long you will have our eye.
Sorry, this article is just too ‘crass’ for me . . . and with little of substantial commentary and with very little ‘heart’.
I have heard that the Japanese Nuclear site workers have been sacrificing their lives for the rest of us . . . they already experiencing acute symptoms of radiation poisoning . . . the earlier this is experienced, the worse it is and the worse it actually will be for those so affected.
The description of the tsunami disaster as . . . “broken H-O scale train sets of Japanese villages” . . . is just a lot too crass for me . . . I don’t care what literary technique you are trying to employ in saying it that way . . . it’s wrong to use those words in this situation.
This is a ‘heart-breaking’ disaster of epic proportion and it is sad beyond belief or words.
GOD Bless you . . . but use real words and not phony ‘literary’ words when you are talking about ‘real’ Life & Death events like what has happened in Japan, please.
Thank you. GOD Bless us all . . . and especially, GOD Bless the Japanese at this sorrowful time for them.
Thank you Patrick, for your cogent and thoughtful feedback. I appreciate that you took time to read my little blog and cared enough to give me a constructive critique. I agree that both Japan and Libya are humanitarian disasters. My post is not a marginalization of anyone’s suffering, but a satirical rant on the difficulty the media faces when attempting to focus on two disasters at the same time.
Perhaps I was not clear enough that my “crass commentary” was targeted at the news media, not toward the Japanese, who lost so much in the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster.
In my defense, your feedback didn’t mention the suffering under Ghaddafi. While all eyes were on Japan, the fight for self-determination in Iraq lost precious ground.
Much has changed in since I posted this comment last Monday. With the launch of Operation Odyssey Dawn in the last 24 hours, the media has refocused on military intervention in Iraq.
Did we hear anything about the Egyptian vote today? What about the vote in Haiti? In Yemen, President Saleh declared a state of emergency following the deadly events at Sana’a. Even for a student of history, the pace of global events is overwhelming.
My eyes and my heart are tired.
I could tell that you didn’t really mean it the way it came across to me . . . but I didn’t like the wording that was used anyway . . . the critique of the journalists by you, true as it may be . . . this not being a sufficient reason, to me, for anyone to be talking about this Japanese tragedy in that manner of speech used . . . maybe this only because it has hit me so hard to ‘see’ the videos and the ‘loss’ experienced by the Japanese people.
Entire villages and peoples have disappeared from the map of Japan . . . gone . . . in almost an instant. An earthquake in one instant and a wave to wash them away one-half hour later . . . on an otherwise good morning . . . with almost no warning.
Next Sunday we will take a collection for the Japanese, probably to be distributed through Catholic channels of Mercy toward them in their own country.
I have heard that the Japanese have often been the first to help stricken people all over the world . . . and often are the most generous as well. The Japanese have been a most ‘reverent’ people in their respect for others . . . and they deserve as much of the same from us as we can deliver to them.
I don’t watch the news anymore . . . it is as you say . . . so I don’t watch it . . . but I happen to Love the Asians in very many ways . . . and I am as worried for them at this perilous time in history as for our own country . . . this worry of mine for us all is whether Mother Nature is the cause of our harm of if we are harming ourselves.
Somehow, I think it’s better if Mother Nature harms us rather than we harming each other. Maybe if we respond correctly to this disaster, a greater disaster may be averted. If we respond to each other in Love, to repair the damage done by Mother Nature, maybe we can prevent ‘killing’ each other by war.
Mother nature can strike whom She wills to strike and at any time. Yellowstone is the giant caldera of a 300-600 year overdue SuperVolcano . . . and could strike us here in our back yard at any time. I think the Japanese would be among the first to come to our aid if such were to occur to us.
There is no need for you or I really to name-call any reporters of any persuasion . . . no matter that they all equally do a poor job of reporting . . .
Our reporters in the west lost a proper perspective long ago . . . we all know the terrible job they do . . . it being our western wrong-minded way of thinking that is the cause of this. We have all likewise have also lost our soul to a modern liberlism in our wrong thinking about Life and everything else concerning Life . . . we having turned to our own selfish way of seeing Life, each of us, thinking our way is the right way, each of us, even the green people, even though our way often leads un-noticeably or un-knowingly to the death of others . . . even leading selfishly to the death of our babies in the wombs of their mothers, we somehow thinking we are doing the right thing in our selfishness toward our own children.
That’s the west today.
Yeah, that’s another topic altogether, isn’t it? Not really . . . but we think it is.
Nature and us . . . we are joined at the hip, perhaps. When we are messed up and in chaos, this is reflected in nature, perhaps.
At any rate, to me, our response to every disaster in Life is affected by how we Believe as to Life . . . and our Belief as to WHO is in charge of Life . . . and that’s why we are all doing such a poor job in all areas of our response to Life and Death at this time in history . . . because we believe that ‘we’ are in charge . . . and we are reaping the disasters one after another because of this wrong attitude on our part . . . wars and rumors of wars . . . disaster after disaster.
I think we all need to learn to Love and Respect 1st, the GOD who made us . . . and give back to HIM HIS right to control Life, and then 2nd, we all need to learn to Love and Respect each other again . . . not in the liberal sense of that but in the sense that Life deserves respect from conception to grave and no-one and no-state has anything to do other than protect and defend that Life.
If that was our attitude . . . we would soon overcome every disaster that came our way . . . and the heart of mankind would change back to GOD the FATHER and Creator of us all.
How does all this relate to me thinking your words were not well said?
It’s a matter of not blaming anybody . . . and taking it all upon each of our own shoulders to ‘do the right thing’ at every moment of time . . . Loving GOD WHO made us and Loving one another . . . this starting with the most innocent of us and including our respecting Life everywhere we find it.
True reporting of true Life events should not include ‘Literary’ devices of speech . . . unless those devices portray the overall true gravity and nature of the event being spoken about. But that may only be my opinion and not your opinion or the opinion of anyone else. We all have one of those.
I can see that you are talented writer . . . but . . .
Stay positive about Life . . . all of it . . . don’t blame anyone other than oneself . . . and the words that you write will take care of themselves . . . and your words will say only good things about Life that everyone will want to hear . . . even me.
Thanks to you for listening . . .
GOD Bless you and us all and especially may HE Bless the Japanese at this time.
Wedgeblog,
It was not my intention to hurt your feelings. I’m sorry if that is all that comes of my comments. I believe that the west, and mankind in general, has lost its’ way . . . even and especially the Liberals and the Conservatives at both ends of the political debates, both of these two groups of extremes having lost their way, both of these having lost a proper perspective or center based on the GOD WHO sent HIS Only Begotten SON to die for us and to Save us from ourselves.
Maybe I’m wrong . . . maybe not.
Although I can see you care about others, it’s not enough. We must care for others the way GOD cares for others and not the often ‘wrong way’ that we care for others, the selfish way that puts ‘our will’ before ‘HIS Will’. This ‘Way’ becomes a part of us and is reflected in all that we say, think and do . . . for you, that means in your writing especially . . . and for me, well, I’m still learning too.
We are to assist GOD and each other in the accomplishment of ‘seeing’ things with HIM at the center and not ourselves being at the center. HE is the center of Life. If HE had not sent HIS SON, JESUS to show us how to live this way . . . then we would have all perished long long ago in a sea of chaos and selfishness and in a mind-set of liberal and conservative ‘wrong-mindedness’, don’t you think?
It’s true that I don’t really know anything about you or about anyone else . . . and am mostly using my hearts response to something in your article to make a comment about the ‘west’ and about ‘mankind’ that may not be at all related to ‘you’ personally. Sorry about that. But thanks for being my ‘muse’ (should I have said inspiration) for this occasion, if you don’t mind. Please don’t feel bad in any way . . . that not being my intention toward you at all. Keep writing your good articles . . . and perhaps changing them to ‘GOD’ articles in some way.
I did want to perhaps open your eyes and heart to a possibility of new Love not only for those you are writing about . . . but wanting to open all of our eyes and hearts to GOD and HIS Way of Seeing things . . . and to a new way of writing . . . which prioritizes on Life as being the Gift of GOD to us all . . . and not Life as being something that ‘we’ control, as in abortion or as in euthanasia or as in wars. GOD is in charge of Life . . . and the only commands that HE gave to us regarding Life is for us to ‘Choose Life’ (right from Scripture, even the Old Testament), to support Life, to cherish Life, to accept Life, to go forth and multiply . . . leaving the rest to HIM.
So far, we don’t do that too well.
GOD Bless you and us all . . . and please forgive me if I hurt your feelings in any way.
PS
Now, I’m not sure if I posted this, so I’ll post it again . . . and please delete this second one if that is the case. Thanks! GOD Bless you.