experiment in the human condition: day 2
Today, I'm tired.
I've been at work for far too long. I'm stuck on the graveyard shift, until we get our software release completed,
or everyone on the planet starts using the same time zone.
Right now, I'm expecting the first to come before the second.
Regardless, I've noticed alot of people feeling emotionally out of whack. Rightly so, but nonetheless, it makes
for trying times.
This month alone, my girlfriend has attempted adultery, a close family member has
had a body part amputated, my job has become joyless, and over six thousand people, who today feel like they were my
closest friends, have been killed.
This whole big mess is killing me.
Parts of me scream for vengeance, to bomb the shit out of anyone who gets in the way of the You-Ess-of-Aye. Of course, those parts are throwbacks to my days on the playground, throwing clods of dirt at people who would call me names.
Bombing makes us an equal evil, we cannot do these things without killing innocent people; and that makes us just as bad as the terrorists, if not worse. (Is it worse to act out of fanatic action, or out of blind rage?). I still feel bad for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, personally.
Which then brings us to the option of bringing in ground troops. Ground troops, to climb through the moutains of Afghanastan; Ground troops, who will have to tiptoe through the mine-fields, to crawl through caves, to dig someone out who may, or may not be there. Russia has learned about this first hand. So have we. I can only hope that we are not so naive as to make the same mistake twice. Sure, we are only on a mission to go 'get the baddies', and not occupy, so that makes this incrementally better than Vietnam. Regardless, this action in itself is going to guarantee the loss of more lives of our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers.
But we can't stand back, we must exact our justice, we must take what has been taken from us.
But this will never happen, and this is the cause of my frustration.
Already, I am ashamed about some of what's going on. Racism has returned like the cough of an emphysema patient; in Mesa, AZ, a Sikh Indian was murdered in his store because he had a beard and wore a turban. I've been to his store before. Hell, I may have even spoken with him. He's gone too.
I hear people in the office allowing some of the hatred reborn from the early nineties, during the gulf war.
Just this week, I've heard the terms 'Rag Head', 'Sand Nigger', 'Camel Jockey'... These are supposed to be mature adults, and they've got no idea that they are not helping the problem, they are making it worse. Far, far worse, because a billion innocent people are being tormented for the actions of a few fanatical terrorists.
No matter who laughs at these jokes, it's simply not funny. By succumbing to the "Bomb 'em all and let Allah sort them out" mentality, we have become inhuman, uncaring, unsympathetic to the plight of thousands of years of human inequities.
And so, like most of America, I find myself glued to the television set; waiting, in fear, for the first mention of a retaliation to begin. I fear that it will be bombs, I fear that we'll kill the innocents because of the evils that their neighbors have perpetrated.
I can only have good faith that this country will do the right thing; that, by some miracle, they find a way to only punish those who have earned it.
I still hope that tomorrow I'll wake up, and this will have just been a dream.
Just some notes...
- Yes, I'm American, and I love my country. Please don't assume that I'm not patriotic
- No, I'm not a pacifist, I understand the unfortunate need for war. I've got family in all of the branches of the armed service, and I trust that they know the difference between right and wrong