CBS and our collective Karma

Last night I tuned in at six in the evening to watch Sixty Minutes only to find the time preempted by what I was later to learn was a rebroadcast of a CBS Reports program previously aired in May '07 entitled, "Fathers, Sons and Brothers, A report on members of the Iowa National Guard who are serving in Iraq and their families"

I found the program actually very deeply moving and by no means entirely a piece of political propaganda. Some aspects of the show did disturb me however and I decided to take the opportunity of registering my feelings with CBS, locally and on their national, corporate website.

This is one of the reasons I try to avoid television. Not content to be merely a passive consumer of the great pabulum tube, I too often feel impelled to write the producers after a particularly egregious piece of pap. This exercise is certainly a work of complete futility as I'm sure most of the time the hapless intern has his finger on the delete button by the beginning of the second paragraph.

This time, instead of emailing the boys upstairs at Standards and Practices, I decided to post my comments on their blog site where readers discuss the program content. I certainly could have saved the effort. No one saw fit to comment on my observations.

The mindless, blathering thread rolled on as if my words hadn't even appeared. The next comment on the CBS blog after mine was from someone who wondered what price the Bush twins' pictures that were found in Uday's Baghdad bachelor pad would fetch on eBay. (!) Nevertheless, I hope I was able to make myself understood by at least a couple of lurkers.

It is truly sad that these days so few Americans are able to read with any degree of understanding. The use of irony or subtle nuance just seems to slip right past their glazed eyes. Nevertheless, the following communication to CBS is certain to be misread by those who take the trouble to read it.

For the sake of you reading this preamble, I must emphasize that I am not here necessarily celebrating our defeat in Iraq. Neither am I advocating the death of American soldiers in this stupid war. Let us just say that I am pointing out what I view as the necessary results of our actions that initiated this war in the first place.

In the comments to CBS I did not want to discuss the concept of Karma or what might be considered The Law of Universal Consequences. I'm sure that would have given the good people at CBS just one more excuse to dismiss me as some sort of a New Age kook. Nevertheless the two controversial assertions I made in the communication do primarily address this point.

Many have referred to the exponential acceleration of events in our contemporary world culture as The Quickening. Certainly things are coming at us at a dizzying speed. I have noticed that the wheel of karma in its spinning seems to have quickened as well. We are no longer required to wait for the geopolitical hens to take a decade to return to the roost.

This war and the speed of its karma has amazed me. The shocks began even before the war when the whole world arose with a thunderous voice crying "NO!" to the impending madness. Lights burned late into the night in the halls of government and in the corporate offices of the major news brothels of the land planning strategies to stifle this outcry from reaching the ears of the slumbering American body politic.

Soon after Shock and Awe was launched, the horrific undeniable consequences began rolling in. Immediately a rag tag insurgency sprung up. It has only grown in size, inventiveness and power in the intervening time. Even the sand rose up to strike the feet of the occupiers and the sun smote their heads.

Our soldiers found themselves boiling in a Hell that a Rumsfeld in his air conditioned Pentagon office could never even conceive of. I do not celebrate the American soldier's pain or the horrible cost in suffering and consequence that is inexorably dragging this country to its deserved fate. I see it as the unavoidable payment of our collective karma.

Why do people think we can escape the results of our wrong action? It doesn't take a Newtonian physicist to understand the Third Law of Motion. This law governs not only the movement of physical objects (excluding for this argument the world of the subatomic particle) but also the affairs of men and empires.

Sometimes I almost wish I had the wisdom and detachment of a truly enlightened being so that I could look on the face of that little boy in the film whose mother has just told him that his Daddy will not be home for Christmas, or any time in the near future. I almost wish I could not be so torn by his tears and pain.

For a nine year old, a year without a beloved father is like a death sentence. In a year this sad child will have grown and developed into quite a different person and his father will have no place in that growth. I have learned to look on the wounded, the maimed and the dead with a fair amount of detachment.

Who could live for a moment in this world without such protective indifference. Yet in spite of this hardening of my heart, I still cannot experience the tears of a child without coming undone altogether. The spectacle of innocence lost and wisdom so catastrophically gained in one so young is truly more than I can bear.

Yes the great mill wheel of karma grinds on. As in Orff's Carmina Burana all incarnated beings must buy the ticket and take the ride. One moment we are high on this ferris wheel, masters of all we survey and the next instant we are crushed beneath the weight of age, disease, terror and tragedy. None get out alive.

I think the hardest thing for the poor local CBS intern who deletes my email to hear will be my concluding statement that I would rather see ten American soldiers die than to have the hair of one Iraqi child harmed.

Americans have never regarded the fate of poor, unfortunate brown and black people in other parts of the world as having anywhere near the impact as the difficulties experienced by one of our own. If this were not true our leaders would be unable to conduct most of our foreign policy and virtually all wars.

Fortunately for the majority of humans on the planet we no longer live in a world where this evil blindness can any longer be tolerated. It is not the dictates of sentimentality or humanitarianism that impel this more expansive, more enlightened world view.

The very practicality of our physical and economic survival in this country dictates it. My preference for the death and dismemberment of our forces over similar offenses visited upon the most innocent of Iraqis is not just a mater of my personal preference. Every soldier serving over there is cursed and will ultimately pay a terrible price proportionate to his or her participation in this infamy.

Many serving in Iraq will devoutly wish for death long before their lives have run their course. Unfortunately the voices of the long forgotten Vietnam Vets have taught us nothing. No matter how I might wish to do so I cannot turn back the law that says, for every action there is a reaction of opposite and equal force and devastation.

Dear KRCG TV Missouri:

I have sent the following communication to CBS, New York expressing my concerns over the rebroadcast of the CBS Reports' program on the Iowa National Guard serving in Iraq.

I am copying it to you in case you might be curious as to what one local viewer thought. If there is any chance you might be interested in airing any portion of these comments in a greatly truncated form, please contact me and I will be happy to submit a shorter version composed to your specifications. I would rather you not publish or broadcast your own reedited version of my rather extensive copy below for obvious reasons.