7/4/2024
My Dear POTUS, JRB,
The higher power strikes again with the synchronicity of train stories accelerating my heartbeat & stimulating my tear ducts.
First, a box of tapes of my uncle’s recording of Nothing Like It In the World, keeps emerging at the top of piles in our move.
Second, you gave the Medal of Honor Award to the Union privates who helped seize a Confederate train. By the way, I love the speech you gave, especially the part where you explained that Pvt Wilson told his executioners that he did not harbor hostility toward them & blamed the rebellion on their leaders, a brilliant allusion to the situation we are facing right now.
Third, today’s Irrawaddy has a book review of Clare Hammond’s (CH) new book On the Shadow Tracks, which she wrote about her adventure in Burma in 2016 where she found that, “railway travel in Myanmar is never as simple as showing up in the train station, buying a ticket, & then settling into your seat at the assigned time.” She concluded “the expansion of Myanmar’s railways is about the projection of military power, for the benefit of distant urban elites in London, Calcutta, Yangon, & now Naypyitaw. The key to this was forced labor regimes which were & are human rights catastrophes.”
What CH writes about the construction & use of the rail system in Burma could be said of the US, namely, an extension of the territory of the colonial state at great cost to the indigenous people enabling the extraction of resources & the insertion of military force.
This is not to say trains are bad, but just like any technology when greed & power are given free reign, people are often harmed.
As you noted in your speech yesterday “It’s important to know our history & not erase it.”
Let’s use the legacy of train construction as a cautionary tale as we figure out how to deal with AI.
I hope today’s BBQ with military families is diverting for you & Jill even though it will cost more today than in 2023.
BYBS,
