I'm the CEO/programmer of a smallish company in Toronto. My computer is compiling my software in the background so that I can test it, as I have many times in the last 3 years since moving back from NY city, and I think that in the interest of efficiency, that perhaps now is a decent time to catch up on my favorite blogs...see what's goin' on, how many more ways the Bush administration has stomped on the Constitution, the rule of law and the middle class, and I come across the following:
Yesterday, I'm working and unpacking, and I've got CNN on in the background. And I hear Wolf Blitzer, barking in that constant breathless get-the-kids-excited-for-Christmas, here-comes-another-shiny-pebble pacing of his, mentioning a video of a civilian journalist, Mazen al-Tumeizi, and about a score of other civilians (reports vary) getting killed in a U.S. airstrike. About 60 other civilians were injured.
I didn't actually see the report live --
[snip...]
So, through the miracle of TiVo, I rewound. And there it was.
Video.
Civilians.
Being killed by a U.S. airstrike.
Non-combatants. Celebrating on a disabled U.S. vehicle, granted. But civilians nonetheless. Certainly not in combat against any U.S. troops.
In the foreground, a reporter just doing his job, frowning over some little technical glitch, maybe something he forgot to do...
Bang, boom. No warning. Just an incoming U.S. aerial attack. "To prevent looters from stripping the vehicle," the Pentagon later says, classifying everyone within thirty feet as "looters" and sentencing them to summary execution.
Blood splashes on the lens. The camera spins. Tiny glimpses of terrible carnage.
Without a beat, without reflection, without even a moment of minimal thought, Wolf Blitzer moves on. As do we, collectively.
And that's that. America kills innocent civilians. Lots of them. And it's no big deal now. Not controversial. No reason to ask questions or rationalize or even pretend to soul-search like the national media once did. America kills civilians. Lots of them. Just part of the fabric of things now.
And as I'm reading this, the tears start to flow. Before I'm 2/3rds of the way through the article, I'm sobbing. Big, wracking, shoulder-heaving sobs. The kind that you get when you're listening to Radiohead after you've been dumped by someone you thought was your soul-mate, or after working 16-hour days for three years to bring a small business back from the brink only to find that someone's just defrauded you of $30K, setting you back months (it happened to me recently - I didn't cry). The kind of physical crying that makes Austrian, Republican action heros call one a "girly-man".
And I think, what's wrong with me? I've got a wonderful wife, we've just bought a second home (pray interest rates don't rise), I make a decent salary by almost any standard, from a company I've built from scratch,. I have a warm, caring family and live in a fantastic (albeit too cold for my wife) city. My many friends are scattered throughout the world, a result of the good fortune I had to attend a foreign business school. My $60,000 of bank debt I had post-MBA were paid off (early) as a result of a great job in Manhattan during the Clinton Years. I should be ecstatically happy.
And as I'm writing this, it begins to dawn on me. I'm in mourning.
Sixteen years ago, after university, when I hitchhiked throughout Europe for 3 years, I was met almost everywhere by caring, welcoming, hospitable people. People who took me in, fed me, taught me about their cultures and countries, and wanted to know more about Canada. They gave me under-the-table jobs in Denmark, taught me the proper way to sauna in Finland, took me to their tiny homes in Perigord (foie gras country) just to show me a 17th century Moulin, and made sure that no matter what the country or their economic circumstances, I tried their local beer. Cynical before I left, I returned to Canada after those three years with an abiding faith in the general goodness of people. Faith that we have far more in common, regardless of our place of birth, our station, or our race than we have differences.
Which brings us back to my spontaneous weeping. Sure, I well-up at that part in "Field of Dreams" where the doctor crosses the chalk line on the first-base path, knowing that he won't be able to cross back. I always do.
I know it's coming, I tell myself I won't cry this time, and every time, Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham gets me.
God bless Burt Lancaster.
I'm not a wimp - not an effete, capuccino-drinking poet. I'm 6'2", 205 lbs., and have endured both kidney stones and a slipped disc without nary a single, salty tear. I've operated mini-CATs, spent summers putting in pools and pouring concrete. So...what to think?
When I lived in France, I knew that LePen could rouse 20% of the populous with his hate-filled rhetoric against immigrants (usually Algerian, but take your pick). I always understood that a good percentage of those were just supporting LePen as a protest vote against Chirac, or whoever was the French President at the time. The increasing popularity of the populist, conservative "Reform Party" in my home country stalled at around 30%, which I explained away by assuming that Western Canada felt disenfranchised, and that Reform was their only opportunity to let Ottawa Liberals know that they had best start paying some attention (whatever that means) to the provinces west of Ontario.
I mean, basically, people are good, right? At some, basic level of understanding, they know that we're all in this together and that, even if atheists, they implicitly understand (paraphrasing Jesus) "how you treat the least of (us), so you treat me". That's what was demonstrated to me during my 3 years in Europe. That's what my 5 years working and living in Manhattan taught me, too. Weekends, I volunteered with like-minded people at community centers for children in Harlem. People care. I felt it....I knew it.
It's common knowledge that "those who fail to study the past are doomed to repeat it", right? Even 6th graders have heard that. So anathema to me was the possibility that Capital-A America, the most powerful nation in the world, whose opportunity I had taken advantage of for half a decade before returning to Canada, could possibly ignore the travesty inflicted at home and abroad by this administration .
And yet...here we are again, doomed to repeat history after all. We're talking about who served more honorably in Vietnam, rather than whether what we're seing in Iraq is Vietnam redux. The Media parrots Republican talking points slamming Kerry's courageous testimony against an administration and senior officers that allowed a war like Vietnam to happen (vindicated as he was by the Winter soldier testimonies, and the passage of time). And yet reportage on Abu Ghraib and civilian deaths in Iraq whithers on the vine like the insane aunt that nobody in the family talks about because it makes everyone too uncomfortable.
Today(!) alone, the House "Ethics" committee (80% of whose Republican members have had Tom Delay's PAC donate money to their campaigns) votes to postpone an investigation against Tom Delay for more than 90 days, against its own committee rules, because it can. The Republican-dominated Energy and Commerce Committee, in its eternal fight against transparency and accountability, deny attempts to discover who was on Cheney's Energy task force, voting along strict party lines. Not a single Republican thought that perhaps people should have a right to know who was helping the Administration set energy policy. What are the chances? It is to weep.
I've decided that I'm crying to mark the death of my optimism. This Bush administration, and the fact that half of America can possibly support it, has crushed any hope I had that the world is going to be okay.
America benefits from (arguably) the most advanced economy in the world, consumes by far the most natural resources, and markets a 64-oz drink called the "Big Gulp" while people around the world are dying of thirst and starvation. It subsidizes its farmers, actively denying access to one of the few markets that could potentially help 3rd-world farmers. It pretends it cares about millions dying in Africa in AIDS, promising billions of dollars in funding, but hamstrings the effectiveness of the money by denying it to centers that teach anything but abstinence, knowing that in the end most of the money is going to go to the same pharmaceutical companies that donate millions to their political campaigns. Hell, its legislators have 3 times ignored NAFTA tribunal orders that it stop protectionist tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber, knowing how little recourse Canada has. But don't worry about us. We'll be okay up here. This isn't about us. It's about you.
America has just stopped caring. It's not only become a "me first" country, it has become a "me only" country. From where I am, America has decided that it is not a citizen of the world, but rather that the world belongs to it, and that the rest of us are damned furriners, who should be grateful they let us mow their lawns and wash their toilets. You break treaties with impunity. You torture. You kill civilians and give it (as Bob above writes), 4 sentences in your news. Devout, evangelical Christians tacitly support this by aligning themselves with an administration whose actions belie any credible interpretation that they attempt to follow the teachings of God and his Son.
Now, I know that it isn't all of you. It's (probably) not even a plurality of you. But dammit, if you don't vote this administration out, in the eyes of the world, you're endorsing it. You saw the danger of the electoral system 4 years ago, and you wrung your hands for, what, 5-6 months after the election? And then it was never heard of again. We understand that people fell last time for Bush's "compassionate conservatism" line. Maybe some of you thought that a vote for Nader made you a cool kid, and that you were sending a message. Well, you were. You did. And if you do it again, and Bush wins by the same margin, the rest of the world will get the message loud and clear. When you had the chance to get rid of Bush, you didn't. Call us simple-minded, tell us we're trying to disenfranchise you, but we'll see the result, and judge you by it, rather than the intent. Results matter.
So tonight I'm lighting a candle for my optimism. Maybe, like Christ, it will rise again. I've never been big on the resurrection story, but damn, I'd sure love to see the stone rolled to the side, the cave wide open, and only a shroud left behind after November 2nd.
I can't vote in your election. I can only read the blogs, wish everyone was as angry as the rude pundit, and hope. My wife (who I managed to coerce back from New York) can vote, and has. If you live abroad, you know better than anybody how important this is, so get all your ex-pat friends together and tell them that if they don't vote, they're spitting in the face of the country that now hosts them.
If you've lurked as I have for the last few months, speak up. Use what you read at DailyKos to convince a young person to vote. Write a letter to your editor. Do something.
I hope. Oh lord, how I hope. I hate what this election runup is doing to me, the way it engages me, even as every Republican action further pushes America toward the precipice.
This is my first diary, or post of any kind. I've lurked for the last 8 months, so impressed by the thoughtful, mostly considerate discussion I read here, feeling like I didn't have much to contribute.
But as I read Bob's story, I felt compelled to write. I didn't do it for you. As far as I know, nobody will read this. But I did want to share it. If you haven't clicked the link and read Bob's story, do. And if it makes you sad, and heaven forbid, even a little choked up, know that you've got company. And let me know, so I don't feel so horribly alone.