So, my girlfriend is on vacation, visiting her sister in Africa. A couple of days ago she was in a small town in Kenya and was talking to some locals. When she told them she was American, one of them, a young boy, got excited and asked her,
"You're American? Are you for Bush or for Kerry?"
Not wanting to have to explain to him that the election was two years ago, she simply said,
"I'm for Kerry." He replied,
"Good, I'm for Kerry too. Bush kills innocent people."
Children who live in small villages in the middle of nowhere, halfway around the world are more acutely aware of the extent of our collective degradation at the hands of Bush than are most children here. Why is that?
Surely this kid in Kenya doesn't have anywhere near the type of access to information that his counterparts in the cable/internet equipped track homes of American suburbia, and yet he is better informed.
For me, hearing this just invoked a poignant feeling of sadness, an awareness of how far down the road of anti-intellectual denial we, as a culture, have travelled in a few short years.
I pray that I live long enough to see the day when children around the world can express admiration for the American president, rather than merely expressing grim acceptance of the knowledge that he is a war criminal.
Food for thought I guess...