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Hail the Barbarians!

~ All the Right that's left ~ 2 Comments

We stand on the walls of civilization and look out at the barbarians outside the wall and wonder why they have come. Do they want our riches? Do they come to destroy and devastate us or carry away our women and children into bondage? Are they jealous of our success? They are strong and hungry. We are soft and sated.

Maybe they are the barometer to our worthiness to exist. Are we too weak to stand on our own? Have we, as a society moved so far into indolence and complacency that we are no longer worthy of our position of safety? I believe so. When we denigrate our own barbarians, our protectors and are no longer strong enough to defend our own society, the barbarians come to prove it. It happens in every underfunded Fire Department, every chant to defund the police, every disrespected or ignored serviceman or woman.

More weakness comes from assuming that everyone else, all other societies, agree with us, that they have progressed to a point where force is no longer needed to achieve goals. Somehow, the enlightenment we assume is universal, is in fact a hope. We also think everyone needs to recognize and accept our views. If we ignore the facts of the difficult lives of others, who have not reached our own level of comfort and security, we call the barbarians to the gate.

It’s the barbarians who remind us that not everyone agrees and our own barbarians who protect us. The barbarians at the gates force us to change or defeat us and take what they want.

Hail the barbarians!

Edited notes

I was told that my point is a little obscure, please let me try to clarify. We still have and need barbarians, those men and women who are still willing to do rude and violent things on our behalf. They become our protectors. The barbarians inside the walls are our home-grown antibodies against invaders. Our police, soldiers, and fire fighters protect us. Yet, they are attacked and degraded for doing exactly that. If our police use force to protect us, there are protests against them. The riots that rocked us are an extreme example. The example made worse by people and politicians chanting to defund them. Those protests black out the fact that a police officer is nearly 20 times more likely than a black male to be shot during an encounter. I wonder how much longer they will tolerate the abuse before they abandon us. I quit nearly 3 years ago.

The barbarians outside are the ones trying to destroy us. There are terrorists who attack us personally or through proxies. We are surrendering to them, bringing them inside and financing their invasion. Yeah, us! We can now feel morally superior.

I seriously wonder if we deserve to continue as a Republic.

Daily writing prompt
What profession do you admire most and why?
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Landfall

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Hurricane Irma, Landfall

As I start writing, I can hear Band of Heathens singing “Hurricane” in my head. I was born in the south and lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast off and on for several years. The storms would roll in off the water and the raw power would thrill me. The waves would build up and slam into the seawall, throwing up huge sheets of spray. Before they dredged the channel, the shelf ran more than half a mile offshore, smooth and shallow, it made the show more spectacular. Lightning strikes were so close that light and sound were simultaneous.

I wasn’t even 3 years old when Hurricane Camile came in. No one remembers it now. People want to take about Katrina or Hugo, but then, at that time, it was Camile. The weather started rolling in days before, the northern front is a huge basket of wind and rain that sweeps ahead, moving east to west. The gust front alone will destroy the best man can offer. Driving in behind the front is the tidal surge, deceptive because before the surge, the water recedes from the shoreline, only to come back in a wall that washes inland taking out anything that resists too hard. It will pound you for hours with howling wind and rain, so much pressure in the air that breathing is hard. When the eye passes over, it feels like a blessing, you aren’t free yet, but you can breathe again. The southern wing moves from west to east, almost gentle with half the wind and lighter rains than the front.

What I remember most is the mad run to safety, when my mother realized that our shabby trailer wouldn’t survive the storm. She loaded us up in the car, four kids and a gassy hound named Boondock and we made the run. I-10 wasn’t even built yet. We rode Highway 90, the coast road, literally right on the beach with the hurricane bearing down on us. The old concrete span bridge between Mississippi and Alabama was being washed over by the high water. My mother timed our sprints as the water rushed over, we moved. I still remember the feeling of the bridge shifting under the car, rising and falling with the tidal surge.

Camile made me feel its power, the fury of her existence. The awe. I’m probably smart enough now not to throw a hurricane party on the beach with a hurricane coming in, but it’s tempting. Whenever I’m near the coast and a storm is brewing, I want to go out and meet it, just to feel that awe again.

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite type of weather?
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