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You know, maybe it is just me. <\/p>\n
\nI live mostly in fear. That’s right folks, I am no different than the people I find most revolting; people who pave-over their nagging consciences; people who consider compassion and logic to be unnecessary encumbrances; people who make statements like “You’re either for us, or against us.” I am just like them. <\/p>\n
\nThe people who believe that ‘might makes right’, who promote distortions of true patriotism with sentiments like ‘America, love it or leave it’, and ‘My country, right or wrong’, they would not agree that I am just like them. They would dispute that they too live mostly in fear. They may have no awareness of their fear, or they may be trying to control the fear that haunts them by denying that it exists. Fear makes us brutal when we could be courageous, it makes us violent when instead we could be powerful, and it makes us view dissent as tantamount to treason. This is how I know they are living in fear just like me. <\/p>\n
\nBut maybe it is just me. Maybe I am the only one who is afraid. When I was a child, I would occasionally have a recurring nightmare of being lost in a crowd of strangers, separated from my parents, terrified that I would never be able to find them again. I always thought it would never come true, but here I am; they are gone, and I am lost. I know of course that I am only as isolated as I choose to be, and I choose to be very isolated. I also know that I am not a child, but I feel that way sometimes, and I know that I am not lost, but it sure seems that way. <\/p>\n
\nI don’t want to hate them, I don’t want to hate anyone. But I don’t want to be like them, either. Yet I am. I sometimes let my frustration boil over in a froth of rage and reckless acts, like calling the president an asshole, or calling a cabinet officer a Nazi. While obviously not literally true, such name-calling is polemically unhelpful. To engage in such divisivness is self-abuse. We are a body politic beating itself up, like when the police <\/p>\n Police Attack California Anti-War Protesters<\/p>\n ‘,CAPTION,’www.commondreams.org’);” onmouseout=”return nd();”>inflict injuries<\/a> upon peaceful protesters, or when a raucous war rally tramples a noble sentiment<\/a>. We—and that is the we that includes us all—we do not want to inflict injury upon ourselves, yet that is what we do sometimes in the reckless folly of our rage and confusion. <\/p>\n \nI cannot stop them from <\/p>\n Berkeley resident Clay Hinson \\(R\\), who was shot once in the chest and twice in the back during an anti-war protest, shows his wounds to an Oakland Police sergeant \\(L\\) who takes his statement at the West Oakland train station, April 7, 2003.<\/p>\n ‘,CAPTION,’www.commondreams.org’);” onmouseout=”return nd();”>hurting me<\/a>. I cannot stop them from ”People say this doesn’t happen in this country,” McGeady said, ”but one of my neighbors has been disappeared. It’s not what he might have done that matters to me — they disappeared him. They need to question him and let him go, or charge him. It’s like Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka.” He added: ”We dropped a few civilians, but what do you do?” He said there were women standing near an Iraqi soldier, and one of them fell when he and other Marines opened fire. ”I’m sorry,” said Sgt Schrumpf, ”but the chick was in the way”. <\/a>. All I can do is stop myself from running in fear to the opposite pole in this national debate. I can refuse to become the mirror image of ‘them’, by continuing to patiently insist that there is no ‘them’, there is only us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You know, maybe it is just me. I live mostly in fear. That’s right folks, I am no different than the people I find most revolting; people who pave-over their nagging consciences; people who consider compassion and logic to be … Continue reading
–Steve McGeady, quoted at wired.com’,CAPTION,’www.wired.com’);” onmouseout=”return nd();”>locking me up in secret<\/a> without benefit of due process. I cannot stop them from WE HAD a great day,” said Sgt Eric Schrumpf of the US Marines last Saturday. ”We killed a lot of people.”<\/p>\n
–The War for Truth, article by John Pilger in The Mirror’,CAPTION,’www.mirror.co.uk’);” onmouseout=”return nd();”>killing innocent people<\/p>\n