Beam Me Up
Set phasers to stun. I’ve lived into the future. Installed and being evaluated in a warship in the Persian Gulf, U. S. Navy has a laser weapon that can be adjusted from warning to sting to obliterate. Next, and why haven’t we been there for decades, a satellite laser that from orbit can stun, blind or crisp a man, sear a tank into molten steel, burn a line of combatants to shadows in the sand, incinerate a metropolis.
The problem will be HAL. Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL? Affirmative, Dave, I read you. Open the pod bay doors, HAL. I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.
Navy acronyms their laser weapons system LaWS. I got away without a red underline because spellchecker thinks I used “acronyms” as a plural noun, though I made it a verb. Language lives and computers can be outsmarted. But not HAL, who not only reads lips, but knows the hearts of men.
Torture and the CIA. “When I was a boy” -- the baseline of our humanity and common decency as a nation -- we knew that Nazis and Japs tortured people for information, as in "ve haf vays to make you talk" but we proudly knew America was above that. We were naive, “name, rank and serial number” was not the limit, when your troops and your citizens are in grave danger there are no lines you won’t cross to get whatever information you need to save and protect them. As we -- and members of Congress who are so lofty in their self-righteous sleaze, presume the moral high ground and emit cries of outrage condemning torture of terrorists -- to what lengths would we not have gone to prevent 9/11? Is evil greater than evil, sin greater than sin? We have lived into an age of unspeakable evil, unspeakable and possibly unconquerable, Visigoths at the gates of Rome. Reports of CIA activities reveal nothing more than that we are part of the league of shameful humanity after all. Genesis 6:5-7 dawns again and we are Calley and Medina. The CIA report? After My Lai, only fools are surprised. If the alternative is more and closer 9/11s, choose. Robert Redford was right about America, “certain things have got lost.” But it is no longer innocents in a faraway Afghan marketplace who are blown to bits by impersonal terrorists, nor is it your neighbor’s friend across the country who is imperiled at the movie theater, it is your own daughter, shopping at the mall with your grandchildren. Choose, ye self-righteous; choose, by God, and Kyrie eleison.
On my chairside table, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, book of essays, favored reading style of one who seldom has the patience to finish a novel. Sedaris, Harry Golden, Roger Ebert, Buechner, Mark Spragg, and others. Sedaris, NR for Sunday School.
Instead, I might have preferred to live in the age of the steam locomotive. Or down the road from Ransom E. Olds. Beam me up, Scotty.
Instead, I might have preferred to live in the age of the steam locomotive. Or down the road from Ransom E. Olds. Beam me up, Scotty.
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