Getting Bogged Down...
It’s a nice day outside, I get to go to a convention downtown, but I’m still depressed. I function better with a lot of sleep. Last night I managed to get some, but it feels like I’m further behind, and not so refreshed that I could work harder. I just got back from doing laundry. My apartment is a big mess. I continue to do little things here and there when a momumental effort is necessary. When I hunt around trying to include everything in my laundry bag, it takes an inordinate ammont of time because I despair at all the things I don’t have time to do, and even try my hand at a few of them. So, an hour later, I’m on my way to the laundromat.
I’m still reading the Sarah Chayes book, but it’s slow work for a similar reason: every few pages she says something to make me stop and think. Her name in print didn’t make sense to me. I assume that I heard her reports on NPR, but I couldn’t place her. Somewhere in the book, she recounts a sales pitch she gave at a town meeting in Massachusetts, with a crowd of people frustrated about the outcome of our invasion of Afghanistan. Chayes rhymes with Hayes. And I figured it was corrupted Spanish, which makes more sense in print: think Chayes vs. Chavez. So trying to make it two sylables kept me from hearing it in my head properly. Now I can hear her in my memory on the radio four years ago. So that’s who she is. I get into this book, and it sends me away on naked examinations of my self. I have to think back. I never think I was traumatized by 9/11. But what sticks with me now is a sense that I didn’t have any response. It was one more symptom of a world gone mad, and I thought I already knew that. It was one more item in a long list of pushes in the wrong direction. The impact and the fall were garden variety violence writ large. For some reason it doesn’t bother us when that many people die gradually. We’re supposed to be reasonable. We’re not supposed to lash out in retaliation. It may be human nature, but that’s the real lesson. We do so much to be more than just monkeys attacking each other with rocks. Even if they are fancy rocks that can fly and explode. With that in mind, I read to the part where Chayes gets frustrated by her editor’s need for cliched stories, and goes out to interview Marines at the air base in Kandahar. Everybody was doing a “Marines at Christmas” story. The Marines are in foxholes. It’s a seige mentality. Afghans are starting to realize that the American troops are just another warlord force. When Chayes tells them what the locals say to her, one Marine responds “See, I knew they were bullshitting us.” The commanders said it was combat, but the Marines were not doing any fighting. I looked up from the book. I nearly cried. All this intelligence is used to construct clever ways to shirk responsibility. I think we’re in thrall to leaders who don’t care about us. It’s something more than the typical “ignorant masses” attitude of rulers. From before the election, I couldn’t fathom this president or any of his cronies ever being sincere. They didn’t seem like the right people to have on your side in a crisis, and they still don’t. I can’t imagine the people who would believe their lies - and the TV told me these people are Americans. But I’m an American. We must want someone to lie to us, but don’t I keep seeing evidence that we’re fed up? I can’t untangle the paradox.
Posted by Evan Bittner Fri, 19 May 2006 15:02:00 GMT
