Alas, Babylon

Front cover of the book, Alas Babylon, by Pat Frank.

I tried reading this book in high school, but stopped after 30 pages. I found a battered first edition paper back of it for 10 cents and am reading it now.

It was written in 1959 and tells of a group survivors after a nuclear war between the USSR and the USA. It has many interesting points on race, religion, humanity, and other issues. One quote I found very memorable is the one below. Randy, the protagonist is talking to a neighbor, a retired admiral, about how the USA could be in such ruin.

"There are odd similarities between the end of the Pax Romana and the end of the Pax Americana which inherited the Pax Britannica. For instance, the prices paid for high office. When it became common to spend a million dollars to elect senators from moderately populated states, I think that should have been a warning to us. For instance, free pap for the massess. Bread and circuses. Roman spectacles and our spectaculars. Largesse from concquering proconsuls and television giveaways from the successful lipstick kings. To understand the present, you must know the past, yet it is only part of the answer and I will never discover it all. I have not the years."

It is interesting that in 1959, the author was looking at the end of Pax Americana by comparing it to the end of Pax Romana. The mention of the cost of electing senators for $1,000,000 seemed absurd then. Think about how much the last set of elections cost. Over $60,000,000 combined was spent on both sides of the California PROP 8 ballot issue banning same-sex marriages.

Same-sex couple Amber Weiss hugs her partner Sharon Papo as they get married at San Francisco City Hall June 17, 2008, in San Francisco.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

I know I've preached on this before, but I feel it is a message needing to be heard again and again. Look at the crap, or pap, we are fed via tv and other media. We swallow with glee the seed of "Reality TV" thinking it is our life. We believe it is "real", or at least real important. When there was questioning over the validity in the recent American Idol voting, there was an uproar by the American swallowers that would overwhelm any squeak of discontent about recent supreme court decisions. "Roman spectacles and our spectaculars."

In the next few weeks, North Korea is probably going to launch a test missile toward Japan or Hawaii, oh wait, Michael Jackson died. That deserves 24 hour news coverage. We need Barbara Walters preempting all other evening programs with information on Jackson's early demise.
Our celebrity-obsessed culture takes another swallow. Jackson was influential in music. I understand radio stations suddenly playing a lot of his music. Did he deserve this much of our precious public attention at his death? He was not JFK or Abraham Lincoln.
If we are looking at the end of Pax Americana, there will be a vacuum to fill that space. Who will it be? Should we try to fight losing world dominance or is it our time to live in diminished importance?

I have one hope and he is our President. Obama is not a perfect president. He's pissed me off on a couple of his decisions. My hope stems from his greater candor and tranparency conpared to other administrations. He has already shared with us more information than Bush did in eight years.

Maybe we can learn that reality is not the show Top Model, but true things like: war, disease, economic ruin, humanitarian relief, nature, art, beauty, music, education, entertainment, pollution, sex, religioun, culture, violence, and what truly surrounds us. There is room for minor things like Hello Kitty and other fads. Fads should be a small side-show we mildly enjoy and not the all-consuming popular seed we swallow with a huge gratuitous smile, then wipe are lips and open our mouthes for the next.


NOTE: I do not have strong feeling about Michael Jackson. I liked some of his songs. I thought he was a bit of a freak at best. As for swallowing, I am using it as an analogy of our world's wanton consumption of gullability and pap. From a sexual point of view, swallowing is your personal preference. I think it is sexy, but if you don't like it, that is fine by me.