Page 4 University Dally Kansan, March 31, 1981
Opinion
One long afternoon
The bliss of a balmy spring day was shattered yesterday afternoon as word spread out across campus and across the nation: "They've shot Reagan."
Instantly, political affiliations and party rivalries and former divisions dissolved, and faces all of races, creeds and parties, wrought with anxiety, stared motionless at television screens and queried: "How is he?"
America was shocked at still another assassination attempt upon the life of a president. Part of the surprise came because although he's been in office more than two months, to many he's still politician Ronald Reagan instead of President Ronald Reagan. Even as late as yesterday morning, many newscasters still referred to him as "Mr. Reagan," not "The President."
Suddenly, yesterday afternoon, he was "The President."
It takes time for any new president to truly become the president, and not be just the man who won the election. The assassination attempt yesterday suddenly made all America aware that the nation does indeed have a leader—someone to rally around, someone to look up to and, ultimately, someone to respect and say silent prayers for.
For several agonizing hours, news was sketchy coming out of George Washington University Hospital. The president was conscious and in fact had walked into the
hospital, as TV newsmen reported over and over, but fleet rumor traveled faster than the plodding medical reports. And then there was the footage of the shooting, done in slow motion over and over again: The screams. The confusion.
Finally, by the time the continuous afternoon coverage merged into the regularly scheduled evening news, hospital spokesmen spread the word: The worst was over. The president was awake and in good condition after surgery. Only several inches had separated the bullet from the heart. America's president had come within inches of his death.
Three others—a policeman, a Secret Service agent and Press Secretary James Brady—were, however, hovering near death as night enveloped the drizzle in Washington.
March 30, 1981, almost became one of those tragic days Americans remember for a lifetime. It was a near-tragic day for a country that likes to pretend its 224 million residents are all individuals, united only by citizenship, and then scarcely even eupped by that.
But as worried faces throughout the day and night showed, as the viewers and listeners from coast to coast proved, collectively those 224 million make up a heart for the nation.
It was one of those rare days when America dropped its mask, if even for a few hours, and let its heart shine through.
Once a soldier, always a soldier. Case in point: Secretary of State Alexa Haig, principal macho man of America's new get-tough foreign policy.
Haig setting tone for Soviet confrontation
It seems Haig's trigger finger is itching. Recently he's been grumbling about a Soviet "hit list" designed for the takeover of Central America. First came Nicaragua, Haig says, and now there's El Salvador. And next? Well, unless you dislike the domino theory, the people of Honduras and Guatemala should start saving their prayers.
Poland, too, has given Haig the chance to assail Soviet operations. Any Soviet military intervention there, would have "grave and lasting" consequences, he said, adding that peace is at a "rather precarious level" thanks to Moscow. Recent Warsaw Pact military maneuvers in Eastern Europe prompted his outburst, despite the fact that such maneuvers are an annual event.
Haig's underlings have joined the fray, painting the world red with alleged Soviet intentions. Richard Pipes, a member of the National Security Council, declared that the Soviets have embarked on "the most brazen imperial drive in modern history", and that war might be inevitable. Undersecretary of Defense Robert McCain said military measures may be taken unless Cuba quits supplying Soviet-shipped arms to El Salvador guerrillas.
Of course, no military strategist in his right mind could buy Haig's simplistic assessment of the turmoil brewing in Central America. At best, the Soviets can only foster already established alliances with Russia and Salvador. And the Soviet threat to Poland, deplorable as it is, means world war only if we
concur. The point is, Haig is gunning for a confrontation and he just may have found one.
Haig's better-dead-than-Red ideology has already committed the United States to yet another no-win situation. Despite his public expression of concern for the El Salvadorans, and his hope that a political resolution will prevent him from returning as secretary of state to finding such a solution. Instead, as General Haig, he has sent 54 military advisers, in the guise of Green Berets,
KEVIN MILLS
to bail out the faltering regime in El Salvador. This, despite Pentagon reckonings that the United States is not a major ally of Honduras,
Why are American troops in El Salvador? What can they accomplish other than to prolong a hopeless situation and contribute to needless bloodshed? Obviously Haig wants the United States to stand up to the Soviet Union, no matter how shacky the footing. Haig feels it is time to say, "Take that!" although the gesture is so feeble as to be laughed at in the Kremlin.
The ramifications of such posturing are more frightening. Recent flashing of American military hardware in Western Europe has the Soviets crying foul. If American troops are to be defeated, as is proposed, Soviets may feel pressure imprinted on more aggressive advances. And Haig have even hinted that the United States may provide weapons to Afghanistan, the so-called pipeline
to the Persian Gulf. If push comes to shove, how far off, World War III?
Disregard for a moment the nightmarish nuclear implications of a U.S.V. sowbowl. Consider Haig's role as secretary of state. Besides being the principal architect of our foreign policy, he is the ambassador of goodwill to other nations. How can other nations feel that they are being taken seriously as sovereign states when Haig keeps imposing sanctions on other nations and these nations continue to seek American aid, knowing full well that such solicitation entails being drawn into the superpower conflict, even to the point of military response?
Perhaps Haig's hardline proclamations are merely trial balloons, designed to elicit domestic and international response. Maybe his bad guy posing will be finely counterbalanced by Mr. Nice Guy himself, President Reagan. But there are American troops in El Salvador. And the American public is rejecting their presence there. Already, confusion is rampant among the U.S. foreign policy press. State Joe Bushnell chastises the press for blowing El Salvador saga out of proportion "five times over." Then White House press secretary James Brady announces that, yes, the story in El Salvador is as big as ever.
Such gaffes of inconsistency are reminiscent of the same wishy-washy foreign policy of President Carter, which Reagan so effectively denounced during the election campaign. One is only left to wonder, "Who's in charge here?" But one facet of American foreign policy remains unambiguous: Alexander Haig has thrown down the gauntlet.
Society's push for success resulting in increased stress
An article in last week's Kansan recommended exercise as a possible method for defeating the blues. It defined the blues as depression caused by stress, an affliction students are supposed to be particularly susceptible to.
I keep reading about stress. A thousand bad
tries are usually cited, and a
thousand cures offered.
Don't be a "type A" person, we are warned, who can't wait in a supermarket line without an alarm.
JANE
NEUFELD
Be a 'type B' and smile pliably in supermarket lines. Don't worry about success. Take life as it comes, always remaining calm, pleasant and relaxed.
need to succeed. Type A people all end up on morgue slabs at 25, dead of heart attack.
"I'd like to know what kind of drugs type B patients I suspected that were calm and pleasant, but also possibly lethal."
Telling us to relax, to exercise, to clear our minds and enjoy life's little pleasures is like trying to help a decapitated person by giving him a bandage. We have ways to alleviate some of the symptoms of stress, but we seldom if ever attack its root.
The source of the problem, at least in America today, is often called the drive to succeed. I think succeed is too mild a word. It seems more like the desire to be a star, or the absolute torrent of being ordinary. There seems to be a compelling pressure to excel at everything.
For students, academic success and grades are usually the way to reach stardom. Students often try to be outstanding or even perfect in every class and every activity.
This desire is part of being what professors are found of calling "the well-rounded student." I always think of little beach balls rolling around at cocktail parties and discussing differences between Rousseau and Montesquieu, but part of real, masculinity success is wanting to be able to hold intelligent conversations on topics from aardvarks to zygotes.
You can't possibly relax long enough to enjoy a class. God forbid! No, you have to make sure you absorb and organize all the information so you will excel.
The attempt to excel in everything, all the time, makes classes more a test of mental and physical stamina than a learning experience, which firmly kills any possible pleasure in learning.
Success is a drug. It must be taken over and over again. You can't waste time tasking in past activities.
This standard is exacting enough for the sternest masochist, because sooner or later everyone is bound to fail in something. The knowledge of impending doom shines in student faces, as the lost, wandering souls fuffle along mumbling, "I don't care about grades. I do not care. There are better things in life. I have to go home and study."
last paper, your last test, your last semester's GPA. One slip-up negates every achievement.
They sit in the bars, morally sipping their beers and worrying about their tests the next day. "I've got to get home, sober up and study," they inform the crowd, thus reminding everybody around them of classes and evening, filling everyone's evening. Then they order more and drink completely without enjoyment, a living advertisement for guilt without sex.
"I feel the need to have the feeling that it's good to be alive," some graffiti reads. Or, translated, life stinks. And virtually everyone has an awful sense of what the bell with it and slashed its wrist or hand did.
At some point, the mental or physical stamina necessary for non-stop studying breaks down, and students seek recreation. These sessions of relaxation are noteworthy for the absolute inability of the people who are getting away from their books to forget about their books.
It seems a fairly stupid reason to end it all. Classwork classwork just doesn't stack up against the death scenes in "Homo and Juliet," and the book is one of the most victorious victims as cowards, retracts and loses.
But I think we are past the days where we believe if we kill ourselves will be really sorry and come to our funeral and cry, and we'll show them.
Of course, few people really kill themselves because they don't stack up to some set of expectations they impose on themselves, or their peers, parents or society impose on them. But many people end up with uicers, or drinking problems, or no self-esteem. They seem almost to think, "If I am not perfect at everything, I am not acceptable at anything."
No, if it seems to me that people aren't trying for sympathy; they just cannot take the constant pressure for perfection and the constant failing of others. They may well be searching for some peace and quiet.
We will not really reduce stress until we come to terms with the drive for success. It is not that we should be content with mediocrity. Excellence should be more real. But at the same time, we should be realistic.
If there's one thing we should soon learn from college, it's that people have tests to take and they don't have a lot of time to spend sobbing them. It is still the era of looking out for Number 1.
No one can be flawless. A few areas of averageness should not destroy our self-esteem. You cannot learn to accept some failures. I seriously enjoy being able to live enough long enough to enjoy successs.
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High can come from relishing reality
Then, to my surprise and relief, the other trip leader got up from his position of command at the front of the bus, looking ready to lay down the law, and ambled toward the marjuana smokers behind me, who were shrieking even louder than their radio was playing.
I wouldn't have done anything about it, except for the ironic fact that the mind-altering effects of that toxic haze soon instilled in me courage where there wasn't any before, thus enabling me to be a monster. It was that my sense of me a pride. But alas, not unexpectedly, my outcry was to no avail, and I returned to my seat.
When I got on the SUA-chartered bus to take me skiing in Colorado over spring break, I made a naive blunder. I sat near the back. Thus, I stepped in and I was engulfed by a cloud of smanki smoke.
He then proceeded to join them in their revelry.
I laughed. the edge of insanity creeping into my voice.
I should have saved my laughter for my arrival at the condominium that my friend and I were to share with four other people who had driven separately and whom we had never met. Then they began翻页 up reefers and smoking them literally the minute they walked in the front door.
The reasons that finally I had to laugh are: I was tired of being peeled. But more importantly, it was downright laughable for those people to be smoking marijuana, considering the non-chemical alternatives to it that were easily at the time. Let me explain what I mean.
The key question that needs to be raised is: What are people after they light up? It would be cliche to say that smoking marijuana- or imbibing in any drug for the purpose of intoxication—is a way of escaping reality for such people. It would also be highly accurate. The only way someone can escape reality is to die, and even here there is much room for doubt.
By smoking pot people aren't escaping reality; they are merely altering the way they experience it. They don't seek suicide; they seek a novel experience, one different from hum-drum
That is, it won't change for them unless they transport themselves to a different reality—a different set of givens, a different set of contexts, the word "Colorado" somehow comes to mind.)
day-to-day life. And changing the way they experience reality is the only viable course open to them because reality itself won't change for them.
Thus, presumably, people who smoke marijuana or use other drugs could achieve the same end they are after through different means—namely, by moving to a different
ERIC
BRENDE
Laboratory rats that have been made to be adducted to ampetamines can easily get rid of their addictions if they are moved to a different set of surroundings. The change of environment fills the need that the drug once did. If, however, rats are kept in the place where they become adducted, then the drug is taken away, they suffer pain and protected withdrawal symptoms.
location. Indeed, this principle has proved itself to be useful in both under laboratory conditions and in real life.
The following is a more striking example. During the Vietnam War hundreds of thousands of servicemen became addicted (in morphologically to marijuana while they were in combat). Those addictions would remain with them when they returned home, thus making the war and its effects an even worse tragedy than they already were. But no such calamity took place. When the servicemen returned home, the refreshing remedy they needed in cases completely removed any need for the drug.
Thus, on my skiing trip, all that those people in the back of the bus needed to do to experience
the novelty they desired was to turn their heads, look out the window and take a gander at the scenery. The sight would not only have been different from what they had been used to, it would have been beautifully and refreshingly different.
Or, on arriving in Colorado, our roommates could have gone to the minimal exertion of parting the curtains of our picture window and orienting their bodies in such a way as not to avoid facing it. They would have then seen a remarkable beautiful panorama of forests and covered mountains and thus would have experienced a more natural "Rocky Mountain High."
In short, these people had a rare opportunity to enjoy an altered reality with a minimum of effort and without expensive chemicals (expensive in terms of not only their monetary costs, but also their long term physical and emotional costs.) And they blew it royally, as the saving goes.
I call my technique the "Mount Oread High." Whenever I get depressed about something, I make my way toward an exceptionally scenic part of campus that I usually take for granted, or I go there to attend Strong Hall and Spencer Art Museum. I then find a nice secluded spot with a good view.
But moving to another location, such as Colorado, is not the only way to experience reality in a new and uplifting way, without using chemicals. You can stay right here on the KU campus and do the same thing. All that is required is a set of five senses and a brain—and a pinch of motivation, such as that which the people on the trip lacked.
The roar of the sensations and images that follow is deafening. It's as if I am experiencing reality—with all its intricately engineered machines and man-made wonders—for the very first time.
The experience is very surrealistic and mind-blowing, as it were. It is also exhilarating and uplifting, and can bring me to the doldrums in a snap. It is also a lot cheaper than marrijuana.
It is downward inapplicable to smoke marjuriana or really itself—whether it be in Kansas or Colorado.