A month or so ago, a national leader passed away after a long struggle with cancer. His death caused comment up and down the political spectrum because of his relationship to the former presidential administration, etc. etc. — it was politics. However, his death wasn’t covered in my friend L’s small-town paper. Instead, there were the usual stories on football and street cleaning. They went on, in a small-town way, not letting the larger world interfere in their small-town mindset.
Contrast that to the paper this morning, in my small town, where the headline reads “North Korean amps up the rhetoric!” Phrases like “saber rattling” are being tossed around to explain a direct “threat to Hawaii, and the whole West Coast!” Whether or not we believe in this threat isn’t the issue; someone believes for us, and is trying to sell us on fear. A different small-town mindset, pandering to a different set of beliefs.
The word “rhetoric” in that headline resonated, reminding me of the Sting song that came out in junior high – Russians, with that lovely, haunting theme from Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé’s suite, “Romance.” Not only was I impressed with Sting’s awesome classical music chops, it was the first time I realized that British people pronounced “hysteria” in quite a different way than I did (☺!)… The song reminds us that, once upon a time, Russia was indeed the great Cold War boogeyman, and the lyrics reflects all of the intense crazy of that time:
How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy
There is no monopoly on common sense on either side of the political fence
We share the same biology, regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children, too.
The artist was quoted as saying that he’d written the song after watching an episode of Sesame Street in Russian from a pirated satellite TV link, and realizing how much went into children’s programming, even in a place characterized by the political media as scary and bad. The comprehension leap from there was simple – even as we love our own, they love their own. Better not to forget this. Best to keep the faces of innocence firmly in mind
flagrant*
plainly flammable
tinder words piled on platforms
and all parties lose
The Latin word for blazing is flagrante, as in, in flagrante delicto; in blazing offense.
Photo courtesy of the San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives.