Bust a Cap

And he smote them hip and thigh
with a great slaughter: and he went down
and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam
--Judges 15:8

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
--The Tyger, William Blake

After all, we are not children.
It's time we planned our life.
--Moshe Dayan
________________

These are frightful times, we are told. Apocalyptical, for some. How to survive? Hunker down and trust those in power have got your six is the answer for most people. And the power we seem to most trust is delivered by those who co-opt the posture and jargon of the military. Militarism has infiltrated almost every sphere of activity today.

The "Houlihan" olive drab fatigues are the woman's best-selling pants this season (Reporting for Duty, the Houlihan), and everything red-white-and-blue is always a good seller. It seems like most t.v. shows revolve around the police or military hunting down the relentless menace.

And look at the above images from the latest Brownell's Police catalog. Behold the Darth Vadar look-alike with his tricked-out black rifle and the assault team gracing the cover -- the only friendly character is the dog.

The police shifted a while back from the old "protect-and-serve" paradigm to being paramilitary organizations. In some cases, their role has been further removed to performance art, as in the case of the Detroit Special Reaction Team team which partnered with a television crew to film their May dynamic entry gone wrong, in which a 7-year-old girl was killed after a flashbang grenade landed on the sofa where she was sleeping.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, supervisor of the Gulf oil spill, has been speaking of the hopeful moment when the "well is killed" (BP aims to deal well a death blow.) What -- is everyone a Samurai today? An oil well is an inanimate object, foundering or not. One cannot "kill" that which does not live.

Perhaps this is the result of too much Twilight, vampires and zombies. Since these creations walk and talk on-screen, that must mean their menace lurks amongst us. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was the penultimate trope, for who is to say they do not walk among us? We all have to sleep sometime, and who hasn't wondered precisely who is that person sleeping next to us?

Yesterday we were told the oil has gone "rogue", as in the rogue oil will be "bullheaded" back down into its source rock (bad oil). Sorry --elephants may go rogue, but oil cannot. Oil is a blob, a slick -- it covers and smothers passively, and gets pumped into tanks -- but it cannot go rogue. Going rogue may be the prerogative of Sarah Palin, but never an animate chemical, which is a life form several layers below that of La Palin.

Early reports of the gusher said it had gone "asymmetric", implying that the oil in its well-behaved state had a symmetric structure. In fact, the media was borrowing from the military jargon, and we all know (if we don't understand) that asymmetry has something to do with terrorism and warfare.

We should get a grip, and that begins which reifying our terms. Not everything is out to get us, despite the magazine articles which trumpet the killer microbes on our kitchen countertops, killer fat and killer obsessive-compulsions.

We may all be vying for limited resources and our little niche, but the confrontational military model might not be the one most likely to ensure survival.

--Jim & Lisa