I know I just posted about de Quiros the other day, but today's column gives me hope that a
"protest movement will arise from the loins of America eventually, as the folly of its particular response to the terrorist attack on New York becomes more patent. It isn't the body bags that will do it, or more terrorist attacks, or the threat of them. It is not fear that will do it, but basic American decency. The same decency that drove Mark Twain and other Americans to oppose America's colonial venture in the past, the same decency that drove the antiwar protesters of the 1960s to oppose America's incursions into Vietnam. Both protests drew their power from patriotism too, the kind that harked back to the principles the founding fathers of America articulated when they carved a bastion of freedom from the wilderness. " Because, I don't know about the rest of you New Yorkers or Americans out there, but I'm getting tired of feeling the need to whisper about my doubt in the government, to talk in hushed voices about not wanting to "support the president" for the sake of unity, to say under my breath that war really isn't the answer - without know what the answer is. I have to whisper my "fuck you" to the 452521st person to tell me that I have to go back to normal, or go shopping, because if we don't then "the terrorists win." Umm hi, I'm not playing the fucking game. The thing is, yea, I don't want to provoke an argument with a stranger, or a co-worker (which has happened, not comfortable AT ALL) about my "unpopular" views, to be labeled the "apologist". But the fact is that the wounds are still too raw. The growing anthrax scare isn't helping either. Some of my friends (who share my confused and unpopular views) don't agree with mainstream American that what is happening is a "just war." But how do you say how you feel to friends or family that managed to escape from the WTC, who have friends and family who perished? It is so easy to spew out what you believe is the definitive answer to everything when you are not so close to the center. Know what I mean? Yes, unfortunatlely, I think you do. I don't know. I just don't know. I still don't know. It's scary because it seems that most people that surround me (friends, co-workers, family) desperately want to support the president, this war, and all the righteous rhetoric about good fighting evil. THANK GOD that my boyfriend and I feel the same, and a few of my friends do too. But its really so weird and upsetting. It's like overnight (for the past month), we've entered an alternate uber-patriotic, single thought type, vengeful society and I somehow escaped the hypnotic patriotic stance the American media has been feeding us. Of course I have my moments, but manage to snap back to reality...
