Georgia in my mind
We're not actually in Atlanta. We just flew into Atlanta, but we're staying in Rome, Georgia. Yeah, I've already exhausted the "when in Rome" and "this place was not build in one day" jokes.
The tournament seems to be running smoothly. Not really much to say on that account. I do find it interesting that as we drive by very, very large plantations, people remark, "I would sure like to live there" without any actual thought to the actions that must have gone on at these places, especially before and during the Civil War. Some people can stare at a plantation manor in awe, while I stare at it with a bit of disgust.
We're somewhat removed from the population in this area. Living in a hotel, spending most of our time at a very expensive university (Berry College), we don't really have a lot of contact with what would be the locals. Therefore, I think the goal of these types of programs, that have forensics tournaments at universities across the country, don't always fill the purpose of exposing students to environments different from their normal experience. Then again, I'm not sure exposing these students to the reality that is Georgia (for the main population) is something that would be all that useful, as well as safe. Sometimes, ignorance has its advantages.
I traveled across the area a decade or so ago, and let's just say that I was exposed to a different environment than the one we get to experience here with our institutional blinders. Last time I came through here, I found myself face to face with the Klan, and while most people see this organization from a mainly intellectual and newspaper perspective, seeing them in person puts a whole different perspective in one's own cache of knowledge. Traveling through the state with an Hispanic and an African-American in the car probably gave us that perspective that people wouldn't normally get as well. What I did find interesting is that when in large groups of people, against a solitary individual, they talk a lot of smack. When in a group and facing a group of obviously combat trained soldiers who aren't scared of them in any way whatsoever, let's just say the experience is much different. That was the experience we faced back then. Our car was surrounded by ten Klan members who were out on the road intersection passing out anti-everybody sheets of paper, but when we showed up, there was a quick moment of gusto on their part, right before we stopped the car, got out and went to confront them. We expected an immediate show down. Instead, the whole group ran. Superior, my ass. We got back in our car and continued driving, not running into another problem until we were almost out of Nashville, but that's a completely different story.
I've been through Georgia a few times in the past, and not every time has been a really confrontational story. There are some good people here, like everywhere else. Unfortunately, there are also one-tracked thinkers as well, and that often scares me. It is interesting to see the perspective while at an academic institution, something that allows one to experience life from a less hostile perspective.
Yesterday, the commencement speech was given for the speech tournament, and the NFA leader went through the usual types of things you here in a speech, and then he started talking about the shootings at Virginia Tech from earlier in the week. He then asked everyone for a few moments of silence to "honor the heroes" who died in that massacre. Now, I can understand the need and desire to commiserate with people who suffered during a tragic episode, but I'm getting a little sickened at the continued response of Americans for "a few moments of silence." I'm sorry, but the shootings at Virginia Tech should not be asking for a few moments of silence, but for a few moments of outrage, outrage that we continue to allow this sort of thing to happen and then try to pretend it never happened, until it happens again, only pausing if it was worse than the times before. We ignore way too much in this country, and we somehow think we're doing the victims a service by giving them our silence (which in my opinion is some kind of desire to get people to pray, but that's another issue). People should be talking about this incident, yelling about this incident, getting people to realize that business as usual is getting us victims as usual. There is something we're doing wrong here, and if we're never going to start talking about it, other than through preconceived talking points ("it's the violent computer games," "the administrators and the police didn't act fast enough," "educational environments are a petri dish of violence waiting to happen," and all sorts of other drivel), we're never going to get at the real causes of what makes violent situations by loners who feel left out of the rest of society happen.
And that brings me to the second point brought up in that speech, and that's the American desire to create heroes where there are none. The people who died in senseless deaths this last week by a crazy gunmen were not heroes. They were victims. The few people that the media have tried to make into heroes did pretty much what anyone else would do when someone is trying to kill them; they tried to survive. Survival is not heroism. Sacrifice of oneself for others is the start of heroism. We went through the rhetoric of trying to turn Jessica Lynch into a hero for being captured by the enemy. We even created a fiction of her "heroic" gun battle that never happened, because we so feel the need to create heroes, much as in Brecht's Galileo when one soldier says to the other: "Pity the nation that has no heroes" and his partner responds: "No, pity the nation that needs heroes." We are a country that sorely lacks real heroes, mainly because we try to manufacture them from people others reject as real heroes. Plus, we deconstruct any potential hero that truly does come along, leaving us with role models that are more along the lines of drug dealers and anti-social misfits because they already deconstructed themselves by the very nature of their being.
So there.
Stumble It!
The tournament seems to be running smoothly. Not really much to say on that account. I do find it interesting that as we drive by very, very large plantations, people remark, "I would sure like to live there" without any actual thought to the actions that must have gone on at these places, especially before and during the Civil War. Some people can stare at a plantation manor in awe, while I stare at it with a bit of disgust.
We're somewhat removed from the population in this area. Living in a hotel, spending most of our time at a very expensive university (Berry College), we don't really have a lot of contact with what would be the locals. Therefore, I think the goal of these types of programs, that have forensics tournaments at universities across the country, don't always fill the purpose of exposing students to environments different from their normal experience. Then again, I'm not sure exposing these students to the reality that is Georgia (for the main population) is something that would be all that useful, as well as safe. Sometimes, ignorance has its advantages.
I traveled across the area a decade or so ago, and let's just say that I was exposed to a different environment than the one we get to experience here with our institutional blinders. Last time I came through here, I found myself face to face with the Klan, and while most people see this organization from a mainly intellectual and newspaper perspective, seeing them in person puts a whole different perspective in one's own cache of knowledge. Traveling through the state with an Hispanic and an African-American in the car probably gave us that perspective that people wouldn't normally get as well. What I did find interesting is that when in large groups of people, against a solitary individual, they talk a lot of smack. When in a group and facing a group of obviously combat trained soldiers who aren't scared of them in any way whatsoever, let's just say the experience is much different. That was the experience we faced back then. Our car was surrounded by ten Klan members who were out on the road intersection passing out anti-everybody sheets of paper, but when we showed up, there was a quick moment of gusto on their part, right before we stopped the car, got out and went to confront them. We expected an immediate show down. Instead, the whole group ran. Superior, my ass. We got back in our car and continued driving, not running into another problem until we were almost out of Nashville, but that's a completely different story.
I've been through Georgia a few times in the past, and not every time has been a really confrontational story. There are some good people here, like everywhere else. Unfortunately, there are also one-tracked thinkers as well, and that often scares me. It is interesting to see the perspective while at an academic institution, something that allows one to experience life from a less hostile perspective.
Yesterday, the commencement speech was given for the speech tournament, and the NFA leader went through the usual types of things you here in a speech, and then he started talking about the shootings at Virginia Tech from earlier in the week. He then asked everyone for a few moments of silence to "honor the heroes" who died in that massacre. Now, I can understand the need and desire to commiserate with people who suffered during a tragic episode, but I'm getting a little sickened at the continued response of Americans for "a few moments of silence." I'm sorry, but the shootings at Virginia Tech should not be asking for a few moments of silence, but for a few moments of outrage, outrage that we continue to allow this sort of thing to happen and then try to pretend it never happened, until it happens again, only pausing if it was worse than the times before. We ignore way too much in this country, and we somehow think we're doing the victims a service by giving them our silence (which in my opinion is some kind of desire to get people to pray, but that's another issue). People should be talking about this incident, yelling about this incident, getting people to realize that business as usual is getting us victims as usual. There is something we're doing wrong here, and if we're never going to start talking about it, other than through preconceived talking points ("it's the violent computer games," "the administrators and the police didn't act fast enough," "educational environments are a petri dish of violence waiting to happen," and all sorts of other drivel), we're never going to get at the real causes of what makes violent situations by loners who feel left out of the rest of society happen.
And that brings me to the second point brought up in that speech, and that's the American desire to create heroes where there are none. The people who died in senseless deaths this last week by a crazy gunmen were not heroes. They were victims. The few people that the media have tried to make into heroes did pretty much what anyone else would do when someone is trying to kill them; they tried to survive. Survival is not heroism. Sacrifice of oneself for others is the start of heroism. We went through the rhetoric of trying to turn Jessica Lynch into a hero for being captured by the enemy. We even created a fiction of her "heroic" gun battle that never happened, because we so feel the need to create heroes, much as in Brecht's Galileo when one soldier says to the other: "Pity the nation that has no heroes" and his partner responds: "No, pity the nation that needs heroes." We are a country that sorely lacks real heroes, mainly because we try to manufacture them from people others reject as real heroes. Plus, we deconstruct any potential hero that truly does come along, leaving us with role models that are more along the lines of drug dealers and anti-social misfits because they already deconstructed themselves by the very nature of their being.
So there.
Stumble It!
posted by Duane @ 5:09 AM
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