Ferguson, Missouri
From the notebook of a visitor to Earth
Dreams of harmony and peace or absurd visions of the end
of time are legitimate constructions of human imagination. If you are dealing
with pure cinema, they are effective.
Such spectacles appear to confirm the implacable universality of violence,
the murky origins of terrorism, and the marriage of reason with insanity. They
are primary features of life on planet Earth. Women and men may satisfy their
fantasies by imposing gender and by speaking of amoral Nature in their own
images. They are free to tamper with Nature in efforts to make a more
living-friendly “world,” and they may succeed for brief periods of time. Ultimately, they fail. They manufacture
abstract and material “worlds” that are mercurial, that speak back to them of their
cosmic insignificance in visual and audible languages which negate
interpretations.
All that is happening in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 is
merely a rerun of tribally-motivated antiquities. A frantic male of one tribe,
believing himself to be authorized by the Holy Bible, the United States
Constitution, and the codified laws of Charles Darwin, murders a male of a
different tribe. People who identify themselves with the dead male react
naturally. They are shocked. They grieve. They enact counter-violence, the
only procedure that is paradoxically understood and misunderstood in a
nanosecond by the American body politic. Violence is very obedient to folkloric
injunctions to increase and multiply. And American as well as foreign mass
media take special delight in the production of misinformation about how
violence procreates. In the historical tragedy entitled the United States of
America, the George Zimmermans and Darren Wilsons are proclaimed to be the
stars of the show, the militants who keep democracy safe for those who are
wealthy enough to buy it. The Michael Browns and Trayvon Martins and the
thousands of unarmed dead who were the targets of tragedy are treated as
footnotes in the smallest print on the playbill. In the sacred narratives of
universal violence, this is proclaimed to be natural. According to such logic, the American
Nightmare that has decentered the American Dream; the death-bound mission of
Europe; the family squabbles between Palestinians and Israelis and diabolic
plots in the Arab/Islamic winter of the Middle East; the progress of
environmental destruction in Asia; rampant neo-colonialism and unique ethnic
hatreds on the continent of Africa; outbreaks of such health treats as Ebola
and yearly variations of influenza; the refusal to acknowledge the humanity of
indigenous peoples in Australia and the actuality of global climate change
-----according to such logic, all is quite normal on Earth.
Unfortunately, this superb logic is not a part of the
education of Americans. The majority of
them dwell in the darkness of believing that a meek savior will serve peace and
harmony at the Finality Feast of Thanksgiving. Our transparent wisdom obligates
us to tolerate their eternal ignorance but to act otherwise.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. August 16, 2014
