| 30 November 2006 Deconstruction I rose to find fog on the balcony and a slump in the money markers. The dollar deconstructed itself by four percent this morning, reminding us that our sweet lives are actually affected by things like monetary policy and deficit spending. I would be remiss if I did not mention idiotic legislation like Sarbanes-Oxley that drives business offshore. A lot of it has gone to London, seat of ancient empire and paradoxical financial freedom. They say the pound will be worth two bucks by the end of the day, and it could affect my travel plans. We are doing this with our own hands, my fellow citizens. This does not have to be the way things are. I only mention it because there are some things over which we have no control whatsoever. The hurricane season is over, officially, and it went out with a whimper. The beginning of massive and violent climate change that would sand-blast the coast of the southern states did not come to pass. That is a very good thing. The last season, with its back-to-back-to back storms, seemed to be the very harbinger of the apocalypse. This gentle season will lull us back into complacency, of course, and construction on the coastal areas will continue, placing more structures and more people in vulnerable areas. We should take heed from the continuing disaster of The Big Easy, where whole neighborhoods were simply bulldozed into the ground. Something unusual is going on, though. Some of the historic buildings contain architectural details that have intrinsic value in themselves, and which can be re-cycled into new structures. They call the new method “deconstruction,” which involves taking things apart. The alternative is “demolition,” which means complete destruction. We see something like it in Washington, as they heave up new buildings behind a thin veneer of the old facades. It keeps a bit of the spirit of the old out front, while providing decent air conditioning, expanded rental space and working elevators behind. We could use some of that in town. The President is being snubbed by Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, as he travels from Estonia to Jordan. He was notified in the air on Air Force One that the situation in Amman had changed, and the itinerary was being deconstructed. Perhaps that is charitable. Demolished might be the better word for it. The President's handlers are scrambling to salvage anything at all from the debacle. The Pope is trying the alternate approach in Istanbul today, trying to deconstruct some recent history and mend fences with the Eastern Orthodox branch of the Christian family. He wants to salvage some of the old, and incorporate it into something new. He is going to visit the Hagia Sophia, which is a secular museum these days. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk made it so, as a gesture to the secular Turkish state he created, and as an inclusive mechanism to deconstruct the residual resentment of the Christian West at their loss. Only some of the media understands the grand strategy of Rome is this. One commentator said the Hagia Sophia had “originally been constructed to be a church,” as though a thousand years as the mother church of the Eastern Roman Empire was a design sketch. The conversion of the Mother Church, deconstructing its altar and icons to highlight the triumph of Islam and the Ottomans was symbolism so potent that it echoes though five hundred years, the loss of the sultanate and into this morning. You can imagine there is some sensitivity about the Pope's visit. Militant Islamists are looking for the slightest sign that the West seeks to reverse the Ottoman conquest and worship again in the place. It could go either way, I suppose. If the Pope avoids crossing himself, or kneeling, things will go well. If he makes a point of honoring the martyrs of the Church, he will provoke a firestorm. I think the Pontiff is just looking for some architectural details to salvage out of the grand old building, and will even walk over to the Blue Mosque, built to surpass the majesty of the old Cathedral, and the old empire. I like the Pontiff's style on this one, following as it does his perceived criticism of Islam as a faith that expands with the sword. He is playing a game of dazzling audacity, far from the ham-handed play of the ideologues we have dispatched abroad. There is no better place for the Pope to make his point than the former Cathedral of Saint Sophia. How he goes about doing it, either by deconstruction or demolition, thrills by anticipation. I wish the President had the subtlety to understand the difference. But if he did, we wouldn't be where we are now, would we? Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |