“It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”

— “Alice in Wonderland”



The recent Tim Burton movie version of “Alice in Wonderland” has had widely mixed reviews. Some critics like it, many don’t. That’s pretty much the way it was when Lewis G. Carroll’s popular children’s fantasy was published in 1865. At the time, most readers thought Carroll was some kind of nut. Years later, critics and readers alike had to change their tune. Not only is “Alice” well written and illustrated, it is a brilliant satire of human behavior in times of great confusion and profound change.

We are in a kind of Wonderland of our own, caught somewhere between the fog of blog and Planet Earth, that is, caught between the yawning chasm between today’s troubles and tomorrow’s fierce uncertainties. Nothing seems to make sense any more. We have lots of information, but little knowledge. What knowledge we do have apparently does not confer upon us greater wisdom.

Consider this: in the past few weeks the national conversation has been about the BP oil disaster, LeBron James’ decision to leave Cleveland, a sadly deranged 17-year-old opening fire on a crowd of people at an Indianapolis event, Lindsay Lohan’s imprisonment and, most recently, the USDA’s abrupt, blog-inspired firing of what appears to be an extraordinary black public official, Ms. Shirley Sherrod. It gets curiouser and curiouser.

There is obviously more insanity among us, but some of the things I’ve just mentioned deserve a bit more examination.

After more than three months of oil gushing into the gulf region, it seems that BP has finally come up with a fix. At least, we all hope so. In an earlier column, I observed that, if a foreign power or terrorists had committed an act with consequences similar to those of the BP oil disaster, America would probably consider it an act of war. To the point, BP would be a goner along with offshore oil drilling.

All the billions BP claims to be spending to cap the gusher and “make things right” is a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of billions it has  earned in the past few years. Yet, the treatment it is getting from Washington and the affected states is little more than a slap on the wrist.

Yes, and how about that Indianapolis 17-year-old who, for whatever reason, is alleged to have opened fire on a crowd of other youths, wounding nine of them? Since the gathering of young people was part of the annual Indiana Black Expo (IBE) solutions, officials from that group have called for a task force to examine what happened and, hopefully, prevent it from happening again.

I’m all for prevention, but as far as I know, that process begins with toddlers and their parents. In the absence of strong parenting, good schools, and other community supports, unfortunately, I don’t know of a single thing any group could do to keep a teenage sociopath from going ballistic. It could happen any time, anywhere.

All it takes is one. You know it. I know it. But I would bet a dollar to a doughnut the IBE task force comes up with a “solution” that makes as much sense as having your shoes inspected for explosives before boarding a plane. The reason we all have to do that, by the way, is because one — just one, mind you — self-confessed jihadist commercial jet passenger tried to use a match to light a fuse sticking out from the toes of his shoe bombs.

To put a finer point on it — call me foolish if you want — I don’t think it is much likely that we will see a rash of shoe bombers boarding planes anytime soon, or ever. But if it happened once, it could happen again. So, go ahead, spend billions searching people’s shoes even though the entire enterprise isn’t worth a pair of old socks. It will make us feel safer, even if we know the practice is utter nonsense.

Well, I’ve run out of space for LeBron, the Sherrod firing, and other stuff we should all be wondering about. In the meantime, to close, some of you may remember the chapter in “Alice in Wonderland” where she grows to 9 feet tall and can’t see her feet. That’s us. We have grown so tall with information we have difficulty seeing the ground, i.e., what is real and what is not, what is true and what is false, or what is right and what is wrong. Indeed, things are getting curiouser, and curiouser.

Have a nice day.  

 

Primus Mootry is an Anderson resident.