pax

 

6:06 AM, Biehl Line vessel Soda Phoenix 556x89 arriving from Antofagasta in light fog to unload general cargo, departing Saturday for Tampico. Other larger ships currently in port, TCZEW 590x98 loading wood pellets for Rotterdam and Mt Ali Ka 424x66 from Coatzacoalas unloading molasses. 

Population over 400,000, Antofagasta is a port city and regional capital on the Pacific Ocean in a mining area in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. It's known for its copper production. And so, Soda Phoenix's cargo this morning will be copper, a major import product to the Port of Panama City.

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"DRESDEN Tuesday, February 13, 1945" by Frederick Taylor, one of eight books in my Lent 2023 reading commitment to myself. I finished it Tuesday evening and went back Wednesday to read again certain portions. A balanced book that does not suck up to the politically correct myths of outrage over Dresden an innocent city far from The War, it may turn out to have been the best of what I read. Though there are three more books to go; we'll see.

Taylor's book leaves me depressed, even dangerously unto despair, about the enormity of it, the "what have we done?" look back into a Time when feelings were indescribably fierce and nobody could see the future. Taylor is clear that Dresden was not the innocent victim, but a key rail center and major host of war production. The phase-over to Germans casting themselves as victim is beyond the pale, and, with empathy for all sides, Taylor clarifies how that myth of Dresden's innocence and German victimhood developed, yet Taylor leaves humanity fully cognizant of our responsibility for interior examination of our ungodly human nature. 

Taylor's "Dresden" would have been helpful to Brits and Americans who were heaped on and tormented with guilt in the years following World War 2 and during the Cold War.

As for "civilization" at large. We aren't "there" yet. Resolves are short-lived, My Lai and we learned nothing from the Vietnam War, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the vicious Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Taylor's book vindicates my certainties while needing to go on silent retreat and collapse in weeping tears of despair: human history is abominable and we take nothing away, learn nothing. War seems to be our human destiny, and wars against evil are to put the evil out of existence, not to force stalemate and truce so evil can lick wounds, nurse grievances, and regroup. 

Enough already

T