I'm not sure that I believe in anything these days. And the extent to which I believe in anything changes from day to day.
However, as a lover of Geography and History, I do take note of the metaphors, the foreshadowings and allegories that take place from time to to time in History.
Things like the sinking of the Titanic, 9/11, Adams and Jefferson dying on the same day. The battles of Vicksburg and Gettysburg taking place at about the same time. The outcomes of Midway, Alamien and Stalingrad coming fairly close and in short order of time.
Can we draw historical metaphor from yesterday's Miracle on the Hudson? Make the jump with me and help me build one.
The biggest metaphore and foreshadowing, I like to note was the sinking of the Titanic. She represented all the wonders of modernism in 1912. 1912 came near the end of 50 years of unprecedented advances in science, technology, economics, and civics that transformed daily life. Given the trajectory of those 50 years, people had great hope for the new 20th century and what it would bring. Titanic, then turned out to be the metaphore of what would be a bloody century gone horribly wrong, beginning shortly there after. (I also think our fascination with the movie about the Titanic in the late 90s was also a foreshadowing of sorts - a recognition that as wonderful as things were going at the time, they might soon go wrong again, soon - which it did).
911 was, perhaps another kind of metaphor and foreshadowing. Perhaps it was for the decade, perhaps for a half century, perhaps for more, or perhaps it just a good metaphor for the Bush presidency, with Katrina as an exclamation point.
There's plenty of metaphor to be drawn from this incident yesterday.
First, there's the heroism - from the Pilots, to the rescuers, to the passengers.
Second, there's what a contrast this is to 9/11 - an incidents involving airplanes in New York where things turned out right because of the heroism of those involved.
Third, there's all this occurring on the day that Bush gave his farewell address and, ironically, not even mentioning it his address.
Here's the metaphor I want to draw from this incident.
The plane represents Bush, the Bush administration, the now reactionary movements it embodied, such as Neocons and perhaps the Republican party altogether, and perhaps still, much of our failed (mostly economic, but some political) institutions of the first decade of this century. The fact that Bush gave his farewell address on the same day the plane went down underscores the metaphor, as does the fact that Bush failed to mention the incident in his address.
The people, through the exercise of vigor, common sense, bravery and heroism from all involved, got off the plane.
Everyone acted as they should.
Everyone survived.
They abandoned the plane.
The plane itself sinks into the Hudson.
Salvage crews manage to hang on to the plane to investigate and study just what went wrong.
I'm hoping that's a good metaphor this country at this time.
The people, exercising, common sense and bravery abandon the wreckage of Bush, the Bush Presidency, the Neocons and Reactionary right wing and the Republican party to which they dominate - and go back to their commons sensical, pragmatic American way of life.
I know there's more interesting metaphors to be drawn, and I'm interested in seeing what other people might have to say about this.