![\"Jaime](\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/userimg\/jaiver21.jpg\")
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While the U.S. recalls the moonscape cratered on Manhattan, we are nursing a cup of tea and biting on a mooncake.\u00a0It is mid-autumn festival in Dong Bei, referred to as the two days between summer and winter, as the day is still warm enough but no longer involves a sweat, and the nights now require a light jacket to ward off the cool Siberian winds.<\/p>\n
We remember the \u201cDay After\u201d series, two of which are big hits; the 1983 movie set after a nuclear blast in a Midwest USA city, and the other in 2004, of a climatologist’s frenzied effort to get to his son stuck in NYC before he and his group freezes in an altered climate scenario.\u00a0The ending of this last one was worth more than a giggle.\u00a0It was a scene of frantic crossings of those from north-of-the-border into Mexico for its warmer clime, at a time when we were expending millions on the construction of border fences!<\/p>\n
We already staked our eschatological hope in our reflection yesterday that America is not heading to the dogs, alarming contrary evidence not withstanding.\u00a0Washington Post’s Dana Milbank’s \u201cThe irrelevancy of the Obama presidency\u201d and NYT’s Paul Krugman’s \u201cSetting their hair on fire\u201d attest to the weakness of the office of the President even as Obama’s strong words in Congress fell on deaf ears.\u00a0 His 911 \u201cwe shall not live in fear\u201d is noteworthy more as an opening salvo to a campaign year than anything else!<\/p>\n
MIT’s Noam Chomsky’s statement in 2008 that the United States is a failed state causes colleagues to bewail the situation and attempt to fix what is perceived to be broken.\u00a0 The Obama presidency symbolizes a nation’s continued dependence on a central figure (the President) and an archaic representative democracy (Congress) to make decisions, using an irrelevant formula of monetary, fiscal, and labor policies in an imaginary free-market equilibrium of aggregate supply and demand, a leftover from Keynesian economics that has no relevance whatsoever in the evolution of the financial market that presently rules the world.\u00a0 A more fundamental evolution on the nature of the nation-state, global sustainability, local participation, and universal significance is quietly occurring.<\/p>\n
Our reflection yesterday on Ground Zero: Transforming the Tragic Terrain of Terrorism hit a few listservs before we went to print, and we were amazed at the depth of reflection that ensued.\u00a0We were forwarded Chris Hodges recount of his experience a decade ago including a gut-wrenching claim that \u201cwe are what we loathe.\u201d The telling is riveting, compelling, indicting, and recognizably truthful, best digested with a shot of Scotch, perchance, to avoid existential angst, or possible unsettling dreams.<\/p>\n
Some colleagues have commented that we hold a rosier view of America than what is warranted by current experiences of many, particularly in the visible animosities exhibited by combating political camps, but equally compelling is the sense that a phoenix has risen from the ashes of 911.<\/p>\n
In yesterday’s commemoration, as we recalled the vivid pictures of buildings collapsing (see Alan Taylor’s Atlantic article \u201c9\/11: The Day of the Attacks\u201d www.theatlantic.com) and heard again ground zero shrouded in otic\/odic mayhem of wails and sirens, sensing the rupture of violence invading our internal airs while the smell of death lingered on our bodies even from a distance as we sensed a profound violation of the tranquility of our souls, we, nevertheless, did not lose heart.\u00a0 In spite of our clarity that our officials might have squandered the natural goodwill of the world after the attacks by opening two war fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan, we refuse to fall into the convenient lap of cynicism and despair.\u00a0 Eschatological hope of a person-of-faith abides \u201cin peace that passes all understanding.\u201d\u00a0It is a choice that many has made.<\/p>\n
There is an old story of how a city in its iniquities was saved from divine wrath because of one person of faith, and in a sense, we identify with that person though we do not find ourselves a soloist in a resounding cosmic hallelujah chorus of resurgent humanity.\u00a0In the resolve \u201cover my dead body, by gum,\u201d we dare not allow the agents of destruction triumph over the reality of budding spring flowers; we do not find ourselves alone in the summer of our maturity as a nation.<\/p>\n
Methinks \u201cAmerica the day after\u201d may have flubbed its steps on the fearful shadows of its nightmare, but the grand wake up call by-the-Hudson sharpened our sense, broadened our compassion, and remanded the boundaries of our being into the edges of the improbable and the seemingly impossible.<\/p>\n
Of our immediate familiarity, we concur with the image-shifting work of the Ecozoic folks to an appreciation of the grandeur of the product of evolution as an integral part of our being rather than obsessing with its continuing exploitation, the \u201cYes!\u201d work on refocusing economics and politics to Main Street, to name a couple.<\/p>\n
We bothered to \u201cdeclare\u201d a week ago in our Eco-Democracy series to contextualize our attempts at small circles of relationship and networks of trust engaged in reflection and participation around the world.\u00a0 It is, indeed, the day after.\u00a0 From where we stand, with mooncakes, we move on!\u00a0 What’s offing in your sector of the planet?<\/p>\n
Vergara is a regular contributor to the Saipan Tribune’s Opinion Section.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0By Jaime R. Vergara Special to the Saipan Tribune While the U.S. recalls the moonscape…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}