Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Irony is not collapsing fast enough...


I saw someone actually wearing this tee shirt at Loyola University - New Orleans.

He is a young American white guy with the ability to attend a $60,000 a year university (an institution created by western civilization) run by the Society of Jesus of the Roman Catholic Church.  He is probably receiving financial aid, both private and taxpayer-funded.

Loyola is a sprawling modern campus.  The buildings are western in architecture: glass and concrete with climate control and technology-equipped modern classrooms.  Students can easily obtain food and beverages, and there is even an upscale Italian gelateria located on campus.  There are no shortages of restrooms, microwave ovens, refrigerators, freezers, computers, and flat screen TVs. Students live in dorms and in modern houses and apartments in one of the most lush and expensive neighborhoods in a great American city.

He was clad in the uniform of western youth: jeans and tee shirt, smoking a cigarette, enjoying the luxury to stand on the corner looking at his iPhone, powered by western technology and an infrastructure of cheap and plentiful digital data and wi-fi.

He probably listens to American pop music and probably watches American television and movies.

While sporting this shirt, he was not in fear that he would be beheaded for religious reasons, nor that a rival tribesman would attack him with a machete.  There was no danger that he would be incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital or gulag camp for wearing a political statement.  There was zero chance that he would suddenly disappear, with his parents being sent a bill for the single bullet put in the back of his head after a sham trial for expressing an idea in the classroom.  No university or government official was going to approach him asking for a bribe, or extorting him for money.  There are no roaming bands of thugs or drug lords on the campus, nor political revolutionaries threatening to round up the intelligentsia in order to execute them. And he was certainly not in danger of starvation or the rationing of necessary items.

As a student, he most certainly has health insurance, is not facing malaria, dysentery, dengue fever, or AIDS.  If he catches the flu, he is highly unlikely to die of it.  He has likely had a full gamut of childhood "wellness visits" and immunizations.

Fortunately for our friend, great civilizations do take time to collapse.

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