Destroy and Conquer?

I am awash with thoughts about American diplomacy this morning. I've just been reading Japanese accounts of Hiroshima online, and it makes me sick to my stomach, that my own country could do something so horrible, and hope to cover it up as "the only solution to end the 2nd World War." Yes, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. But we had only several thousand people die in that attack, while the death toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hundreds of thousands. Is that something to be proud of? That we annihilated thousands upon thousands of Japanese people, and that this will somehow promote peace? Or, rather, it will promote the furthering of our powerful nation-state in the greater scheme of the world? Pardon my obvious cynicism, but it's no wonder why so many countries hate us and why we are such a target for terrorism. We strut our stuff as this arrogant, consumer-driven, power-hungry nation that uses other countries for our own ends, why wouldn't other countries disdain us so much? I'll stop my cynical ranting now. . . . .

Beyond all of this foreign policy stuff that I've been thinking about (alas, it's effects of reading the online BBC news every morning, it's crazy what unbiased news will do to you- really open up your thinking!), I went for a run this morning, and it made me a bit forlorn with how our formerly quaint farm town is becoming an industrialized suburban city. The fields and creeks (pronounced "crick" for those of you who don't speak Minnesotan) that I used to play in are now taken over by pavement and squared lawns and newly fabricated buildings. The creeks are green, slimy and full of waste and sewage (I used to go wading in it when I was young! It was clean then.). I began to wonder if nature cries when it is being taken over. . . .as if humans are trying to tame it and use it for their own purposes. But in strange ways, it's still possible to see that nature will not be tamed. In the most immaculate, manicured lawns, there are still random weeds- as if to say: "See? You can't tame us! Nature is still wild and unpredictable, no matter how much you try to tame it!" I still feel a bittersweet hope when I see the monarch butterflies flying by and the Canadian geese meandering around the desecrated fields and swampland. I don't see much beauty in man-made, industrial, homogenized housing and building- but if you look hard enough, you can still see the wildness of nature still trying to push through the man-made facade and be seen. That's beautiful.