Time to Think

Having lost my officemate some months ago, I now have the peace and quiet I require to think.  Not to mention I can listen to something other than puerile country music all day.  Thus it has been with a sense of relief and quiet expectation that I've turned the radio dial from meaningless prattle about lost love and drinking binges to something a bit more mentally edifying.  Thank you, Lord, for NPR, BBC and PRI!  My brain is now recovering from the mush caused by the whole country music culture.  I swear being forced to endure forty hours a week of country music and the inane DJs on the country music stations dropped my IQ by at least ten points!

The down side to all of this -- if, indeed, one could call it a down side -- is that I spend a lot of time thinking about what's going on in the world.  As one would expect, doing so makes me much more mindful of what is going on right in my own backyard and causes me to be a bit more of the activist.  I've come to the conclusion that most of the radio programming on other stations exists to lull people into a false sense of security so they won't think about what is going on around them and what needs to be changed.

Lately something that has really weighed heavily on my mind is the vast inequalities in the world.  I understand that not everybody can live in a McMansion, drive a Benz and have a vacation home in the south of France, but surely everybody should have access to the very basics.  Clean water comes to mind. 

Along with these musings on the inequalities of the world, I also start to think about how those with the power often abuse those with no power.  Of course, sometimes those with no power rise up and successfully advocate for themselves.  Here I think of those protesters involved in the Arab Spring uprisings.  But then I'm reminded of those who didn't meet with such stellar results.  They didn't get the coverage that the protesters in Lybia got, but one cannot overlook their suffering.  My heart goes out to the people of Bahrain, Algeria and Iran.  While Lybia, Tunisia and Egypt have seen changes, the people of Bahrain, Algeria and Iran still suffer and die from the brutality of a government with complete control.

And then on January 2nd I learned that Gordon Hirabayashi died at the age of 93.  Now I will grant you his story is not as bad as the stories of the people previously mentioned, but it does bring into sharp focus how even our own government abuses its power.  Not that any of us find this surprising.  However, I will admit that sometimes I forget when I focus on what is happening overseas.

I often wonder how our government can justify what has happened to Japanese-Americans.  And why weren't German-Americans rounded up?  Or Italian-Americans?  Yes, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, but they had allies.  They were not exactly engaged in the war all by themselves.  I often think it was easy to signal out the Japanese-Americans.  After all, they were pretty easy to spot.  And it's easy enough to sell the idea of internment when it was the Japanese who actually did the bombing.

What bothers me the most is that the vast majority of the American population supported this!  Yes, there were some that opposed the internment, but not very many.  Though the reasons were different, this reminds me of how the Native Americans were relocated.  Again, a complete lack of understanding and an easy to identify population without a voice had their rights trampled by a greedy, bigoted government.

I wonder:  If this were to happen right now, how many would stand up and say, "Not on my watch!"  How many people would actually risk their own comfortable existence to advocate for those who's rights are being violated?  I would like to think I would be one of those people.