Driving

Driving the Riff-Raff

Click Name for Bio of ')">Chris Cook

Tuesday, 03 April 2007

Driving the Riff-Raff by C. L. Cook The peril of our current reality occurred suddenly to me the other night, revealed, as Shakespeare said many truths often are, in jest; the terminal fate of the human race could not have been made more clear. * Witness: the University bus exchange - Victoria - night. Waiting to board the perennially overcrowded University bus, (the under-serviced situation there too a symptom of our collective undoing), I saw three bus drivers shooting the breeze, while laying over. Our driver "Dan," as he later identified himself, turned to his fellows and said; "Well, time to go drive the riff-raff." That would be me, and my fellow sardine-packed transit passengers. Whether Dan considers himself to be another of the "riff-raff" I don't know, but I expect, while he's wearing the uniform of his occupation, he considers himself one of US rather than THEM, the passengers whom's safety and service he is charged to maintain. Of course, Dan is, in the eyes of others wearing other uniforms, one of THEM; riff raff, hoi polloi, a lowly "civvie" to be denigrated, disregarded; someone whose societal relevance is to be dismissed out of hand: a nobody. * Witness: a city bus - Victoria - day. On a blustery, late winter's morning, a near empty bus approaches a bus shelter, near empty too, but for a ragged old man, his chin on his chest, snoozing. The driver pulls up to the shelter, opens the door, and shouts at the elder; "Clear off!" My friend tells me; "No-one rang for the bus to stop, and nobody was getting on. He [the bus driver] just took it on himself to hassle this poor old guy, one of the real survivors." And off the man shuffled, his bundled rags pulled in tow. * Witness: a city sidestreet, piled high with snow - Victoria - night. The sidewalks impassable, an elderly woman picks her way carefully along the street, gingerly following the automobile ruts. A Victoria City police van comes up behind. The window rolls down, and the head of a young constable emerges. He bawls at the woman; "Get outta the road!" and splashes on past. There are doubtless many more examples, many I'm certain you've witnessed yourself: Bicycle police downtown pushing around the homeless for the crime of their poverty; shopkeepers abusing youngsters for the fault of their youth; automobile drivers abusing everyone for the sin of slowing their progress. It's all indicative of a growing incivility, directed downwards towards those deemed socially inferior, and therefore fair game for petty tyranny. I believe, this deterioration in the fabric of public life isn't merely a local phenomenon, but a trend dropped from the heights of what's left of western civilization upon the heads of its neo-peons. Witness: a television - anywhere - anytime. The walls of the room are blue hued behind the viewer. On the screen, chaos; a city is drowning, desperate people wave make-shift flags, surrendered to the situation, begging for help. But help isn't quick to arrive. The people are left to their own devices - sink or swim. I watched as the hurricane approached. I saw what Katrina did to Florida, and I heard what the veterans of storms past said about "Little Andrew." I watched as the storm slowly turned into the Gulf, the Gulf grown unnaturally warm. I watched that Gulf feed that storm, and I followed it's inexorable progress toward the doomed city. And I watched the people of that city abandoned to the waters. Witness: a television - anywhere - all the time. The walls of the room are blue hued behind the viewer. On the screen, chaos; a city is burning, desperate people wail and wave make-shift flags, surrendered to the situation, begging for help. But no help will arrive; those sent know only how to start fires, not stop them. I watched as the wars approached. I saw what George Bush did to Iraq, and I heard what the veterans of Desert Storm said about their "splendid little war." I watched as that storm turned slowly into Gulf War Syndrome, an unnatural pollution of the gene pool. And I followed the inexorable succession of a second George, and watched as he approached the doomed city, and I saw the people of that city abandoned to the flames. Writing of "the day that changed everything," Victoria novelist, Hal Sisson, in the "dedication" section of his 'Modus Operandi 9/11' says; "[U]ntutored emotions of ignorant people are the material that enables evil deeds; and when I have shuffled off this mortal coil I want to leave concrete proof that I was not one of the willfully blind or deliberately ignorant persons unwilling to question the ridiculous government story of what happened on 9/11; unable to entertain the irrefutable evidence of the administration's complicity and participation in the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." Is it too much to believe a government would sacrifice a few thousands of "its own people" to profit its benefactors? How could it seem incredible, when thousands die daily due to the cancerous by-products of an industrial society gone off the tracks? How could it seem absurd that a system routinely disposing of hundreds of millions to a life of want, and suffering, and penal servitude would flinch at a few thousands of souls thrown into the crucible of their infernal greed? The abrogation of civic responsibility, as we see today in both global polity and local policy, are the twin disasters spelling the end of us all. And if that sounds too incredible, consider what we collectively countenance with our silence as humanity's epitaph; again, taken from Hal Sisson's dedication. "The major incredible international crime perpetrated by the world's bully was the use of radioactively contaminated depleted uranium 238, that is spreading through Iraq, Afghanistan, other neighboring countries and the world, via dust storms and global air currents, and becomes deposited in human bones, causing cancer and congenital anomalies. If the U.S. administration is allowed to use nuclear weapons on Iran, then mutually assured destruction and annihilation becomes only a matter of time." I'm watching as that storm approaches. ["*" denotes incidents occurring right here in genteel Victoria that I'm personally acquainted with. Quotes are from the dedication in 'Modus Operandi 9/11' by Hal Sisson.]