----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 2:45
PM
Subject: Re: Relative Wretchedness
Ed,
There may be something here if you remember
that the US and Canada have been the filters for the "Wretched Refuse" of the
world over the last 150 years or so.
Perhaps we should demand that Canada once more
throw open its border to the poor of the world and lower all immigration
quotas to those countries here in the US as well. In that
case Native Canadians and American citizens could serve as the same type of
filters for the lawlessness and mix of cultures as it had been in the Frontier
days. Where the "End of the Frontier" really meant that most
of the original inhabitants were dead or vanishing it could have a new meaning
and we could recycle the current inhabitants in the role of the
ab-originals.
Ray, that would be a supreme gesture of
atonement!
Or, as the environment in the US and Canada
degrades we could pass the role of "filter" around to more environmentally
pristine countries like Australia, New Zealand, Iceland and eventually the
countries of East and Western Europe or maybe Switzerland or
Norway.
As I'm sure you recognize, no place is pristine
anymore. It would be difficult to persuade the countries you mention to
take up the "aboriginal's burden".
Come to think of it, a case could be made for the
Israelis being the role of the Artists in New York City who are sent into poor
areas to gentrify them so that they can join the rest of the population of the
country with high (collectible) rents. Occasionally you
have a "regressive" bunch like the Hispanics in lower Manhattan who stopped
the Theaters on fourth street dead in their tracks or the Italians and
Gays in Greenwich village who stopped another "gentrifying" attempt
when the West side Highway park plan was
destroyed. They are now stuck with their small
buildings with no glitz or pizzazz or Donald Trump Towers and their families
and the lousy trash pick-ups since the city doesn't service these
"regressives"as well as the Artists in Soho who by and large have sold out and
left the country to the now safely gentrified Wealthy
lofts.
A very long time ago, when I was a kid, I read
Franz Werfel's "Star of the Unborn". It situates a very
elegant, totally gentrified world against the vast mass of humanity,
simply known as "the Jungle". The gentrified world is forever trying to
bring the Jungle around but,
alas, to no avail.
So in Israel we have a little Manhattan with all
of the accoutrements of progress. With the complication
that there are the people who come there to be who they are and to
worship as their ancestors did. What a tough complicated situation
and it must be very confusing for either the left or the right wings and
especially the neo-Internationalists (now the TNCs and their "meaning of life
is profit" culture.) What is an old fashioned progressive to
do? Ask yourself if you would rather live in China or North
Africa or the old Lebanon or the New Israel or would you rather live in
Russia, squeeky clean Singapor or the de-communized
Indonesia? Come to think of it, most of Yugoslavia was
not so bad until the "Progressives" got a hold of it through the aging
Tito while in Germany the great Felsenstein had the best of
both worlds. He could live in West Berlin and work in East
Berlin. Sounds like e.e. cummings.
con-fusing or maybe it is just a "con."
Ray, I'm staying right where I am. It's a great
place to deplore the state of the world from.
Ed
