From: Pete BEAULIEU ('62)

Sandstorm Extra that might be political

Re: Political ? Extra

To: Frank WHITESIDE ('63)

I really appreciate your "political" side comments, but also
propose that words are not so elastic that they can mean anything
to anybody. There must be something else at work here... Try this
"political" suspicion: Is it possible that in some ways we from
Richland are members of a sort of cult? Here we are, a bunch of
folks with the same self-congratulatory STEM upbringing, all
friends and all good natured, but in our dotage now allergic on
this website to wandering outside the convenient sandbox of
sensitivity. And some have longer antennas than others, but
others really are downright insulting.

More than the flexible meaning of words, there can be a certain
opaquenss to this.

I recall noticing this all-too-human frailty (which we all share)
when after a tour in the Navy I was entering graduate studies at
the University of Washington in the early '70s. Here I was buried
under the book shelves, and suddenly noticed something profoundly
instructive. The newly formed OPEC imposed a global oil shortage
and price hike, much to the dismay of Marxist poli sci graduate
students who simply knew in their hearts that only the West was
capable of organized collusion against the masses. Prices went up
in the West this time, and at ground level the gas lines got
really long. 

But something else also happened...Here in my sweaty palms was a
Far East journal article featuring riots in the streets of
Calcutta because bus fares were being edged up a nickle or so,
probably to cover fuel costs. Riots! But total silence on
something else. Only a few miles away in the vast rural regions
of India the oil issue was quite different, because the literally
millions of subsistence farmers could no longer afford petroleum-
based fertilizer for their crops. Large-scale hunger and even
starvation in the eighty percent of India that is rural versus
high visibility tweaks in bus fares in that twenty percent of
India that is urban.

Selective outrage is more than a linguistic quirk. Life is just
to big to take it all in, and we often choose to be too small. I
think all of us settle too quickly into one bubble or another,
and that we too quickly lose our innate curiosity, and with it
our interest and possibly deep communion in the mystery of one
another. Superficial chatter, mimicking our talking head and
clueless newscasters, is good enough to get through the day.
Having put much of reality on hold, including the reality within,
we become primitively sensitive like any other mindless amoeba in
a carefully monitored environment.

Cheers. But it may also be that the vast majority is actually
loftier in their thoughts than you and me, Oh yes (!!!), and just
want at least one virtual pub where we/they can simply share
nastalgic memories of Spudnut donuts. (By the way, the current
recipe falls short of the one I remember so well.) Fine, but it
was sobering to see that even my careful and successful entry of
March 18, 2011 (re mushroom clouds and such) is now off limits
and sidelined, and even those nastalgic and happy memories of our
universal grandfather figure, Daddy Dewald.

-Pete BEAULIEU ('62)
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