A short film produced by da nuoviautori.org adapting Mark Twain’s letter written in 1901 protesting The Spanish-American War.
The full text of Twain’s letter is here.
To The Person Sitting in Darkness
Reply
Category Archives: Current Events
On Parting Ways With Fundamentalism
“True irreverence is disrespect for another man’s god”
-Mark Twain’s Notebook
God is never found through disrespect, fear, or contempt. The strength of anyone’s faith is only diminished by hating another for theirs.
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On Living in the Moment
“There is in life only one moment and in eternity only one. It is so brief that it is represented by the fleeting of a luminous mote through the thin ray of sunlight–and it is visible but a fraction of a second. The moments that preceded it have been lived, are forgotten and are without value; the moments that have not been lived have no existence and will have no value except in the moment that each shall be lived. While you are asleep you are dead; and whether you stay dead an hour or a billion years the time to you is the same.” From Twain’s notebook – 1896
An instant is a lifetime and to dwell on the past or fret for the future is to waddle in what does not exist. In the present is where to find the consequence of past moments and potential for future ones.
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On Making Sense of Senseless Violence
“We build a fire in a powder magazine, then double the fire department to put it out. We inflame wild beasts with the smell of blood, and then innocently wonder at the wave of brutal appetite that sweeps the land as a consequence.”
The two “news anchors” sit on wooden lawn chairs, bracing against a cold wind sweeping across a wide expanse of green grass, somewhere on the campus of Virginia Tech.
No longer in their comfortable New York studio, the two are compelled by the previous day’s events and an odd notion that sitting in wooden lawn chairs in Virginia will provide more gravitas to their delivery of the news.
Another violent and unexpected mass killing from an unhinged soul with a gun, an imagined wrong to right, and a lust for violence.
“How could it happen here? What does it mean? How do we make sense of it?”
The talking heads sitting in wooden lawn chairs really have nothing to offer, and their presence at the scene of a horrible tragedy on a now quiet college campus does nothing to add any insight to their rhetorical questions. They fill time, not saying much, looking mildly ridiculous in the chill wind.
And yet there they are, drawn to the spectacle of violence that seems to define a society even as the society wrings its hands asking why every time the spectacle continues.
Instead of wasting our time listening to talking heads following the trail of blood, we can look to Mark Twain, whose words, written for a speech in the autumn of 1907, provides an insight that is uncomfortable yet telling.
Never is such an act that occurred at Virginia Tech condoned or excused for any reason. And yet we must face a human trait that compels us to find solutions through violence, and justify it as a means to an end – when in fact it is just an end – of life, of innocence, of the souls of people and of nations.
The smell of blood pervades, we inflame the fire, and when the powder keg explodes, people rush, yet again, to wonder why.
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On Patriotism
“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
Government today doesn’t need my loyalty; it needs my patriotism.
Just ’cause the president says it, don’t make it so.
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Mark Twain on Four Years of War in Iraq
“Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
Cheap lies become “faulty intelligence” and any reasonable doubt of ensuing policy – the call for war – is ascribed as sedition, “a validation of the enemy” – nothing short of treason.
When a nation justifies immoral acts through a self-proclaimed moral justification, too easily it becomes the truth that is the enemy, and to whom treason has been committed. Self-deception on the grandest scale.
Four years later, down the rabbit hole we have ventured, and none can find a way out.
On the Growing Scandal Surrounding Alberto Gonzales
“A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.”
Is it then time for Mr. Gonzales to be truthful?
mark twain politics alberto gonzales current events attorney general
On Accusations of Patriotism
“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its office-holders”
More than anything, the United States is an idea. It is good to remember that since its inception, a rancorous debate has ensued on how to best express that idea. None today are likely to accuse any of our founding fathers of a lack of patriotism, though they certainly did of each other.
Could it be possible – barring the purely mean and self-serving voices on all sides – that both liberals and conservatives can not only consider themselves but, oddly enough, each other as patriots?
Perish the thought that there may be some common ground from which to work through the issues of the day.
mark twain A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court patriotism partisanship government ann coulter
On International Women’s Day
“What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce”
Today is international Woman’s Day.
Mark Twain understood that women truly rule the world, or at least if they did, it would probably be a better world.
On Faith in Government
“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
It has been said that the only form of government worse than a democracy is every other form of government. And how often it is that Congress proves the point.