Note Well:
This blog is intended for rational audiences. Its contents are the personal opinions of its author. If you quote from this blog, which you
may do with attribution, please assume personal accountability for any consequences of mischaracterizing these expressed intentions.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Remember the Maine?

"The Maine entering Havana harbor. Januar...
"The Maine entering Havana harbor. January 1898." HD-SN-99-01929. Resized version of the original downloaded from the source listed. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course you don't!


Unless you are a centenarian it is not physically possible for you to remember the Maine, which is best known for her catastrophic loss in Havana Harbor on the evening of 15 February 1898. And even if you are a centenarian, you probably can't even remember what you had for breakfast. The relevance of all this will be clarified below.

My wife, Tristein, who is wise beyond her relatively "tender years", has pointed out to me that a person's reality is relative, in the sense that it is largely informed by his personal experiences. The experiences of close family members and respected acquaintances are of secondary importance. And, except for historians and serious readers, what is "learned" in one's journey through academia is a very distant third, if it is at all of any relevance to a person's subsequent experiences of reality.

Since Big Al Einstein had already informed us that, "It's all relative", and since Big Al, along with Lincoln, Tristein, and a handful of others are the people for whom I have the greatest respect, I am much inclined to agree that most American civilians do not incorporate the ravages of war in their personal experiences of reality. How could they, if most American civilians have had no first-hand exposure to war? Need it be mentioned that seeing Marion Mitchell Morrison or Silverster Stallone win wars single-handedly on the big screen (in glorious technicolor, no less) doesn't count?

Having been born in Nazi occupied Poland to a Jewish mother and father, I have had first- and second-hand exposure, albeit as an infant and toddler, to the horrific circumstances of, arguably, the cruelest brutality in human history, while my parents kept us in hiding until we were rescued by the Allied armies from certain annihilation. I can not say whether it was through my first-hand exposure as a young child, or more likely from cues projected by my parents, that I became imprinted with a life-long fear of what humans are capable of perpetrating against their fellow man. But that fear is most definitely a part of my personal reality.

Which brings me to the point of this essay. Clearly, my own personal reality can only be a distant outlier in the distribution of personal realities for American adults. Which fact finally clarifies for me something that has recently been gnawing at my credulity with respect to the flagrant dismissal by the American Left of what are, to me, obvious signs of a murderous hatred directed at our Nation and people, as well as toward the people and the Nation of Israel, by radical Islamists.

How could presumably sane adults not perceive what, to me, seems crystal clear? Am I not, by at least some small consensus, a sane and intelligent individual? Perhaps. But what has been unclear to me, until now, is that my own personal reality is unlike that of the vast majority of Americans. And that, finally, explains a lot.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Post 1,887 Remember the Maine?

No comments:

Post a Comment