Giving Thanks
You want to feel thankful? Really, truly thankful? You can start by pondering your own wretchedness, then step back and think, "Yet despite my ridiculous self, I have so much." If that approach sucks, consider thinking about famine. The United States has never had one, and this writer explains the reason: for the most part, politicians keep their hands off the food supply. You want to have a shortage of something? Put a central power in charge (and yes, that's a prediction about health care). But that's not the most compelling part of the essay. In the process of explaining famine, the writer goes into the physical and psychological ramifications of starvation. It's an unsettling read, but kind of cleansing, like the way reading about Hell focuses your mind in a better way. Excerpts:
The physical effects of starving are pitiful and utterly disgusting. The primary change, of course, is a dramatic loss of weight as the body, in order to keep the heart pumping and central nervous system nervous, extracts the needed energy from pre-existing muscle and fat. Once this is depleted the body slows down to save energy, the starving become lethargic and incapable of any prolonged physical exertion. Entire families will lay down together and pass away one by one, famine will reduce whole villages and towns into graveyards. Under the assault of hunger great cities of millions will grow quiet as coffins. . . .
Yet even more than the physical devastation, it is in its psychological effects where starvation extracts the heaviest toll. People withdraw from the world about them, even from family, and think of nothing but food. The urge to survive, the endless craving from hunger will turn men into predators against each other. During the time of Stalin's terror famine upon Ukraine (when at least six million perished) it was dangerous for children to walk around alone ”“ they were prone to be snatched, strangled, and cooked. In the town of Poltava an entire operation for the processing of children's meat was discovered by the Soviet secret police. But the consumption of a child didn't necessarily need to be done by strangers. When Mao's famine was raging throughout China from 1958 to 1961 a couple in Anhui province, driven mad by hunger, murdered then ate their eight-year-old son.
Now, where did I lay those Mainstay bars?
Sorry about that lugubrious post. Fortunately, there's been some funny late night this week, which allows me to lighten things up. Leno: "You have to be careful of political correctness this time of the year. You can't call them 'Santa's elves' anymore. They're 'undocumented little people.'" Conan: "Charles Manson was caught with a hidden cell phone under his prison mattress. In his defense, Manson said he was only using it to stab people." Another Conan: "The biggest winner on Black Friday was Costco. So kids can look forward to running downstairs on Christmas morning to find a 12-gallon barrel of olives." Letterman: "Willie Nelson was arrested for possession of marijuana. Nothing yet on bin Laden, but we got Willie Nelson."
With respect to my Evening Eudemon post yesterday, I do not hold the view that FDR caused the attack on Pearl Harbor. But neither have I written it off as a nutty theory. I'm officially agnostic on this point, and I doubt I'll ever have a firm opinion either way.
