Musings: Lingle and the Superferry

Gov. Linda Lingle is coming to Kauai Thursday evening to tell folks about the Coast Guard's "security zone" at Nawiliwili Harbor, which no one can enter, unless they're on the Superferry, for an hour before its scheduled arrival until 10 minutes after it leaves port. The zone, created by a Coast Guard emergency rule, is aimed at preventing the kind of aquatic protests that forced the ferry to turn back to Oahu without docking on Aug. 27. The ferry hasn't been back since. The governor recently announced it will be returning at 11 a.m. Sept. 26, though, and warned that anyone venturing into the security zone will suffer the consequences: federal charges, jail time, hefty fines.

After announcing Thursday's 6 p.m. meeting at the Convention Hall, a DJ on KKCR suggested listeners might think about what sort of comment they'd like to make to the governor about "her imposition of martial law at Nawiliwili Harbor." He then played a song that conveyed his comment, and its chorus went like this: "shout, shout, shout at the devil."

Is Lingle the devil, the personification of evil?

The question intrigued me, because it just so happens I'm reading M. Scott Peck's "People of the Lie," which delves into the psychology of evil. In it, he defines evil as "opposition to life, that which opposes the life force" and "that force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness." Evil people, he says, are those "who attack or scapegoat others, instead of facing their own failures."

Hmmmm.