Thursday, 15 May 2003
GENEVA, Switzerland
What an odd thing it is to be asked to write a diary for a website. How personal am I supposed to get? Shall I tell you how I love my husband? Do I talk about my fierce love for my sons? My deep affection and respect for my fabulous coworkers? Maybe I'll just talk about this airplane ride.
So here I am on this flying 777 box together with a couple of hundred other human beings. First class, business, premier economy, and economy. Four pseudo-classes of people crossing the Atlantic together. I am in the third class, in the premier section of coach, a.k.a. economy. I sit in row 18, my father's favorite number. Next to me at the window is a French man who never gets up. I admire his bladder and worry about his risk of blood clots. Diagonally in front of me is a young woman with a baby girl. She is self conscious about what others may think about having to sit so near a baby. But she is a loving mother, caressing her baby's hands and toes and looking into her eyes.
Sometimes, especially when a flight is delayed on the ground, I fantasize about a group discussion among the people on the airplane. I want everyone to take out their ticket and stand up in the aisle and tell the rest of us the price of their ticket. Then I want to hear how they came to be on this airplane on this day and this time. Interspersed with the passengers' stories would come the pilot telling the tale of how he or she became a pilot and how each flight attendant came to work on this specific flight.
I love the map that you can follow that they project on a screen on 777s. Now we are just about halfway across the Atlantic. We are east of the tip of Greenland at an altitude of 38,000 feet. We have traveled 2,150 miles and have 1,807 miles to go. Somehow, this is all very reassuring. It is 68 degrees below Fahrenheit outside. I am glad I brought my sweatshirt.
We land in Paris early but I still miss my connection to Geneva. So I get to spend five hours in the Charles De Gaulle airport. I walk inside and outside. I drink coffee. I look at faces. I read the International Herald Tribune, the European edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and USA Today.
In each paper, I read stories about the downturn in the U.S. economy, the ongoing U.S. presence in Iraq, the waning chance of peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The most disturbing story, however, is on the editorial page of the International Herald Tribune. It is a commentary by William Pfaff on Leo Strauss, the mentor of neoconservatives like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and William Kristol. These are the men that brought us the war in Iraq, and here is Pfaff on Strauss:
He also argued that Platonic truth is too hard for people to bear, and that the classical appeal to "virtue" as the object of human endeavor is unattainable. Hence it has been necessary to tell lies to people about the nature of political reality. An elite recognizes the truth, however, and keeps it to itself.Weapons of mass destruction? Links between the tragedies of Sept. 11, 2001, and Saddam Hussein?
We need to turn the U.S. government around. But first, I'm going to bed.
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