Depravity

Is there no end, Bush, to the depravity of the human species? Here's something you and I can agree on, surely. I read this morning about an Internet offer of 300 orphans of the tsunami up for sale--into slavery or prostitution. Some of them are reported to be as young as three years old, and they have been abducted from hospitals and relief centers by adults posing as their parents.

"They refer to people like this as animals," my friend Kirsten said, when she heard about it. "But animals are so much better. Who ever heard of animals selling their young?"

She's right, Bush. No? This kind of depravity has to be stopped. We need to put some serious resources into preventing this exploitation of those whose lives have already been devastated by an act of nature; let them not, now, fall victim also to the schemes of man. From a wider perspective, we need to work to put an end to this vile practice on a global scale. I think I'm right in saying that you yourself have made a public point of this, Bush--though I'm unsure just what kind of solutions you proposed. Your evangelical supporters are behind you, too, on this one; and believe me, I'm personally with you, a hundred percent. The present dreadful circumstance provides the opportunity.

Let's get to it, then. And here I concede we might possibly disagree. I say, let us, with all the power and influence of the U.S., put our strong shoulder to the UNICEF wheel. These people have experience, and expertise. They have a system in place. Let's show the world, Bush, how we can work in the context of a truly global effort. An ideal moment to both enhance our image and do the right thing!

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On a lighter note, I've been wanting to congratulate you on your Texas victory on New Year's Day. Football, I mean. You must have been qvelling all over the place when your guy put on that final, winning point!

I'm pretty pleased, myself, with the USC victory last night. You might not know it, but I taught at the school for eight years, back in the late 60s and early 70s. It's a funny thing, how loyalties work. I had, let's say, certain issues with the school when I was working there. I was young, had lots more judgments than I do today, and I didn't mind biting the hand that fed me. The school, I judged back then, was an expensive conservative finishing school for rich kids. I know it has changed a lot since then. And I've changed a bit myself.

Still, I find myself rooting for the Trojan team. It's a gut thing, isn't it, Bush? Who you root for? Try rooting for the other team. It doesn't work. If you're honest with yourself, you know your heart isn't in it. I'm only an occasional football watcher and, because I don't know the teams, I usually find myself rooting for the underdog. I tried rooting for Oklahoma yesterday, when they fell way behind. But it didn't work.

I'm interested in this because I was taken seriously to task, a couple of weeks ago, by a friend who'd read my early piece, in The Bush Diaries, about finding myself rooting for the insurgents. Not liking myself for it, but finding a place down there in the gut where I actually had to recognize a glimmer of understanding for their desperation. Just to reassure him--and you, Bush: I don't really root for them. I hate their indifference to human life, their brutality, their fanatacism. But I wish the picture I see were as simple as black and white--or as frivolous as a football game. The truth I see is much more ambivalent, much more heart-rending, much more complex and resistant to resolution. If I have to root for anyone, I end up rooting for the human species. We need all the rooting we can get.