Yesterday, while the FBI continued its Orange Alert against terrorist attack, 20,000 people were killed! This tragedy dwarfs the attacks of September 11, 2001, in which only 3,000 people were killed.
Of course, the people killed yesterday were in Iran. They were killed by an earthquake, not by terrorists. They were killed because their government values outdated religious values more than it values the advances of science. They were killed because the American government values dropping bombs in foreign countries more than creating safe conditions in which people in foreign countries can live. Most of the houses in the city of Bam, where the quake took its highest toll, were made of brick and mud, even though the region is recognized as especially earthquake prone.
In the world we live in, it matters more that George W. Bush has proclaimed Iran a member of the “Axis of Evil” than it matters that 20,000 Iranians died because they lived in unsafe conditions.
3,000 people are killed, and we expected the entire world to change everything that it did to suit the needs of our grief.
Today, 20,000 people are dead, but will the story even last a week on the front page? A year from now, will anyone talk about “December 26″? Will we spend months reading about the profiles of the people who died and the heroes who tried to rescued them? Will anyone say that “Everything is different now, in the wake of December 26″? Will Bush declare a war against poverty and ignorance, declaring that the American people will do whatever it takes?
No, of course not. This simple truth will be buried along with the 20,000 who died yesterday: Superstition and greed are ten times more deadly forces in the world today than all the terrorist organizations put together. Terrorism is just more telegenic.
Focusing on terrorism lets us pretend that the world’s problems all rest with someone else, a big bad evil group of people that virtuous folks like us must righteously crusade against. Well, consider these questions, righteous crusaders:
- What kind of world is it that we have made in which some of us play around on Christmas with electronic gadgets we won’t even have time to use for the rest of the year, while others are buried alive because they can’t afford to build houses out of anything other than mud bricks?
- What kind of world is it that we have made in which religious doctrines thousands of years old keep the governments of these two people from working together to make it better?
To answer these questions we’ve got to consider making changes ourselves, and that’s not quite as easy as going around bombing bad guys.
Oh, yes, to answer these questions would require that I examine my life too, so I’m off to ponder deeply while making a half-caff peppermint latte with my brand new Christmas-themed espresso-cappucino machine. It plays “Oh Holy Night” while it blows off hot steam.
