Oct 19

Written by:
10/19/2008 6:06 PM 

The other day a man in a wheelchair was seen at the Vashon north end coffee kiosk. While that in itself was not uncommon, the cluster of white dogs around the wheelchair was uncommon. What then happened was out of this world. A poodle separated out from the cluster to reveal a pair of big white Alaskan sled dogs attached to the wheelchair. And off they went down the walkway to the ferry. As they passed our car the wheelchair was seen to have no arm rests nor, apparently, a back. And they were moving. I don’t know if the walkway at this time had been clear, or got cleared suddenly, but no late walk-on ever hit this pace. The effect was as if a ray of hope had broken through the miasma of MARSEC signs that insult ferry commuters these days.

At risk of dog paddling in deep water I’ll comment on human nature. Not just because a wheelchair was doing wheelies behind two sled dogs, but also because last Friday Andrew Bacevich told Bill Moyers that Americans are stodgy greedy lumps. You could look up the exact words but those will do. I contend that we are good-hearted clay that’s been shaped by circumstance into something worse. We are not simply passive, but rather have lost the ability to empathize. If that is not precisely what we have lost it’s close enough.

We are able to get through the day while Haitian mothers feed mud to their starving children as their very lives are drenched in mud from a hurricane, while Mexicans braving Minutemen and Homeland Security flee a Nafta-ravaged economy, while US agents foment unrest in Bolivia and Venezuela, while our soldiers kill Moslem civilians then are condemned to suicide and living death, while Guatemalan women are murdered by US supported agents, while the Fort Benning School of the Americas trains South American military in torture techniques, while private prisons profit from misery, while the state of Israel, USA carries out genocide of Palestinians, while our riot police attack protestors, while New Orleans people of color get the back of the hand from FEMA and local whites, while mortgage companies legally rob, while agri and food processing corporations poison us, while the so-called healthcare industry wraps illness in paperwork, while corporations that abuse their immigrant employees call in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to scare them into submission, while the carbon fuel industry paralyzes prudent climate action in Congress, while the US flag is reduced to wallpaper, and while the financial sector metamorphoses into the entity Hal that is programmed to destroy public will.

We are able to get through today, and if there are enough sled dogs around to teach us maybe we will make it through tomorrow as well.