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18 march 2003

currently reading

Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, by John DeGraaf (and others). The most engaging book you'll read (and use!) toward leading a more sustainably simple lifestyle. It'll make you want to drop the Joneses like a hot rock.

Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, by Greg Critzer. If you read one nonfiction book this year, read this one. Read it to your kids, for your kids, for your loved ones. Learn how America has gradually widened over the past thirty years, thanks to corporate behavior that is utterly criminal, and America's "right" to have it all, all the time. An engaging, alarming, and thought-provoking discussion of the biology and sociology of being big, fat Americans.

on protest

When I was a kid, my Mom told me about what life was like during Vietnam. Dad was active duty Navy at the time, while she raised me in Phoenix. She told me what it was really like to live at that time, and described the way that many war protestors behaved. From gas lines, to inflation, to unprecedented social upheaval and change--Mom had to raise a kid in the middle of this while her husband was on a submarine in not-quite-sure-where.

When she would tell me what those years were like, she never failed to mention the protestors. Glamourized in the Woodstock-era music that I grew to love in high school, and held up a cool throwback types during my teenage years, many of them practiced more "free" than "love" in their activities. I wouldn't know that until I became a serious history student, and began to listen to what Mom was saying.

We Americans learned how to do a lot in the late 1960's and early 70s. We found our voices again after a long post-WWII silence of almost 20 years of oppressive conservatism, flight from urban to suburban America, and a false sense of comfort in what they used to call "progress". Americans got ornery and vocal again after a long and relatively complacent civil silence and social prosperity.

The problem with many Vietnam protestors is that they demonized the boys who fought instead of the war itself. Or, by condemning the soldiers, they thought they were being effective against the war.

Whenever Mom would tell me about how protestors would treat returning soldiers, she became angry just telling the story. People threw things, called them "baby killers", and helped to create a new and unwelcome nightmare for our soldiers already wracked by the horrors of Vietnam. In fact, post traumatic stress disorder finally got its name because of all the Vietnam Vets suffering from the syndrome. Before that time, you were just crazy.

So you might ask why I give a flip.

Here I sit, a progressive liberal gal, descended from three generations of military men on both sides of my family. Many of my first cousins are also members of the military. I've lived a good life in relative peace and prosperity. I work to be the kind of American at which citizens of other countries don't want to throw things and curse.

I, and many other citizens in my position, are working to protest this war and the "leadership" behind it, without damning our soldiers. I think--at least I hope--that this is something we learned how to do in the Woodstock days. We learned how, and with whom, to pick our battles. Pragmatic peace, if you will.

The technology of war has changed so much since Vietnam. It is now assumed that troops will fight troops, and that civilian casualities can largely be avoided. We mourn them as "collateral damage", knowing that our boys aren't aiming for them, but the bad guy and the guys protecting him. We "surgically strike" the ones we want to attack, and do our best to spare the innocent.

I think that George W. Bush's unilateral charge to war is appalling, inhumane, and will jeapordize goodwill toward our country for countless years to come. I believe that he is forsaking the good of his fellow citizens by single-handedly wrecking our economy with ludicrous tax policy, an arrogant and isoltionist foreign policy, and his frightening messiah complex. He has bullied Tony Blair's political career down the toilet, and made a mockery of the United Nations.

George W. Bush does not rule like a democratically-elected official, because he is not one. He was appointed by the Supreme Court. His behavior is dangerous, narrow, and cavalier, and so is that of Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft. Polls measuring the public support of this war are pointless, in my opinion, until we poll the entire world. It will affect many of the world's citizens much sooner, and more harshly, than it will affect Americans.

As we enter the forthcoming months, my thoughts will be with our troops as they do the jobs to which they are committed. When they return, I will not condemn them. I will continue to peacefully and vehemently protest this war and our current administration.

The first amendment isn't just penciled in. Remember that. Then say something.