Friday, May 13, 2005
At 8:10 am, twenty-four years ago, I was born in Portsmouth General Hospital, Portsmouth Virginia. Don't look for it; it doesn't exist anymore. Pope John Paul II was the victim of an attempted assassination later that day. That's right. I was born on the day the Pope was shot. I am a Wednesday's child.
I try not to be a superstitious person. Black cats don't bother me. Still, I've noticed that it's hard for me to enjoy my birthday, regardless of the year. I downplay the significance, ignore the statistical anomaly presented when an African American male reaches another year without police arrest or police issue bullet holes. My birthday doesn't often matter to me because I reflect on my accomplishments, or lack thereof. I don't wish to engage in useless self-deprecation, but today's odd conflux of jubilation and tragedy reminds me only how little real happiness one receives in this world.
My father called to wish me a Happy Birthday, on his way with my mother to the funeral of a cousin of mine, a fourteen year old named Deshon Antoine Hunt. He was shot in the back of the head by a friend of his on Mother's Day, in Virginia. I read his obituary in the Richmond Times Dispatch. I did not know him. I did not cry.
I spent most of this week irritable and moody. Honestly, I hadn't the slightest idea what the problem was. I kept telling Angel to ignore all attempts at birthday mirth; I really didn't care. I told myself I couldn't care. I was still unemployed, without any viable prospects or upcoming interviews. I was losing friends faster than President Bush could turn the American electorate away from Social Security privatization. I was incensed. I was angry. I had all the time in the world to focus my thoughts on a world I was powerless to affect, a solitary inmate trapped in perpendicular shades of gray too small to breathe in. I took measurements during last Wednesday's American Morning, doubted whether my apartment truly possessed three dimensions while Soledad O'Brien pontificated on the inevitable Senate judicial filibuster battle between 90 Second Pop meanderings on Dave Chappelle's shaky mental state in Durban, South Africa. Before crotchety Jack Cafferty could make some overly White middle class and probably offensive opinion on the funniest comic on Comedy Central (Sorry Jon Stewart...) I retreated to the PlayStation 2 and Tekken 5. No more drama.
Then the phone rang.
Starting July 6, 2005, this commentator will begin employment for the New York City office of Grassroots Campaigns, Inc., a progressive political organization determined to reinvigorate American politics by actively supporting progressive candidates in congressional elections. Instead of commenting in cyberspace on the useless policies of the Bush Administration, I will work against them in the real world. This is a hell of an opportunity; you have no idea how thankful I am.
With all the jubilation accompanying my twenty-fourth year, I feel oddly sobered. Angel and I watched the new Jet Li film Unleashed, a actively poetic tale of perverted control and animal bloodlust, and with all the fun we enjoyed today, I can't force Deshon Antoine Hunt from my mind. I won't allow Passion of the Christ-graphic mental pictures of his bloodied corpse to invade my cortex, but his abrupt demise gives me unnatural pause. Today I'm a decade older than this child was when his friend shot him, and I know that I will forget his name by next week. I don't know how my parents stand it; sometimes I think their retirement is no more than an endless string of funerals, an unceasing hangman's noose lynching Black people of all ages and class plateaus; regardless of social status approved by Bill Cosby, Ph.D, the Reaper assassinates everyone. And the Reaper is a White man.
Chris Rock, in his amazing HBO comedy special Never Scared, famously said that "only the White man can profit from pain." Everyone dies, but not everyone dies from violence at fourteen in this country. The privileged progeny of pampered professionals surrounding Angel and I in this crowded Ithacan movie theater are here to not only watch a short Asian man use his martial arts skills to both impress and entertain American audiences and validate his very on-screen existence (people don't pay money to see Asian men in dramatic roles without violence in George W. Bush's compassionate conservative American theocracy), but also to transfer aggression in a perverse manipulation of testosterone infused visual pleasure. These children of a lesser god named Adam Smith do not engage in physical violence of any sort; they wouldn't throw a punch to rescue their mothers from the rapist's turgid, plunging phallus. All around me are neutered fraternity boys, ambitious, careful, fearful both of lost status and lowered profit, learning to replace an aging technocracy with new blood, new skills, and zero problems. Modern Ivy League corporate student camaraderie engages a homoeroticism without violence, as some forms of aggression disrupt the flow of capital, and must be avoided at all costs, or transferred to useful proxies like sports entertainment and Hollywood horrorcore and mundane minority murder. Therefore, when the Cornell student audience watches Jet Li in an underground pit blindingly bending the bone structures of muscular killers twice his size on-screen for his character's White masters, I notice not only the race conscious use of the otaku villain or the raunchy sex jokes from aged female piano teachers, but also how easy it is to forget a death in the family because I too am an Ivy League corporate alumnus, a transitional technocrat, a Talented Tenth. To fulfill my destiny is to forget my people.
So now, as the gray matter rewires and this reflection on a fallen son I never knew dissolves, I realize again the ultimate gift of Western civilization for those affirmative action babies unblemished by Black Nationalist bullshit. We can analyze for ourselves the true worth of individuality, and then dance. Dance. Dance to dodge forty-one shots of forgotten rage and unsung anger and proletariat passion from the people we will never help, those whose only crimes are the hate etched in their skins and children that deny them.
... ... ...?
Hey, did I forget something? What was I talking about?
I try not to be a superstitious person. Black cats don't bother me. Still, I've noticed that it's hard for me to enjoy my birthday, regardless of the year. I downplay the significance, ignore the statistical anomaly presented when an African American male reaches another year without police arrest or police issue bullet holes. My birthday doesn't often matter to me because I reflect on my accomplishments, or lack thereof. I don't wish to engage in useless self-deprecation, but today's odd conflux of jubilation and tragedy reminds me only how little real happiness one receives in this world.
My father called to wish me a Happy Birthday, on his way with my mother to the funeral of a cousin of mine, a fourteen year old named Deshon Antoine Hunt. He was shot in the back of the head by a friend of his on Mother's Day, in Virginia. I read his obituary in the Richmond Times Dispatch. I did not know him. I did not cry.
I spent most of this week irritable and moody. Honestly, I hadn't the slightest idea what the problem was. I kept telling Angel to ignore all attempts at birthday mirth; I really didn't care. I told myself I couldn't care. I was still unemployed, without any viable prospects or upcoming interviews. I was losing friends faster than President Bush could turn the American electorate away from Social Security privatization. I was incensed. I was angry. I had all the time in the world to focus my thoughts on a world I was powerless to affect, a solitary inmate trapped in perpendicular shades of gray too small to breathe in. I took measurements during last Wednesday's American Morning, doubted whether my apartment truly possessed three dimensions while Soledad O'Brien pontificated on the inevitable Senate judicial filibuster battle between 90 Second Pop meanderings on Dave Chappelle's shaky mental state in Durban, South Africa. Before crotchety Jack Cafferty could make some overly White middle class and probably offensive opinion on the funniest comic on Comedy Central (Sorry Jon Stewart...) I retreated to the PlayStation 2 and Tekken 5. No more drama.
Then the phone rang.
Starting July 6, 2005, this commentator will begin employment for the New York City office of Grassroots Campaigns, Inc., a progressive political organization determined to reinvigorate American politics by actively supporting progressive candidates in congressional elections. Instead of commenting in cyberspace on the useless policies of the Bush Administration, I will work against them in the real world. This is a hell of an opportunity; you have no idea how thankful I am.
With all the jubilation accompanying my twenty-fourth year, I feel oddly sobered. Angel and I watched the new Jet Li film Unleashed, a actively poetic tale of perverted control and animal bloodlust, and with all the fun we enjoyed today, I can't force Deshon Antoine Hunt from my mind. I won't allow Passion of the Christ-graphic mental pictures of his bloodied corpse to invade my cortex, but his abrupt demise gives me unnatural pause. Today I'm a decade older than this child was when his friend shot him, and I know that I will forget his name by next week. I don't know how my parents stand it; sometimes I think their retirement is no more than an endless string of funerals, an unceasing hangman's noose lynching Black people of all ages and class plateaus; regardless of social status approved by Bill Cosby, Ph.D, the Reaper assassinates everyone. And the Reaper is a White man.
Chris Rock, in his amazing HBO comedy special Never Scared, famously said that "only the White man can profit from pain." Everyone dies, but not everyone dies from violence at fourteen in this country. The privileged progeny of pampered professionals surrounding Angel and I in this crowded Ithacan movie theater are here to not only watch a short Asian man use his martial arts skills to both impress and entertain American audiences and validate his very on-screen existence (people don't pay money to see Asian men in dramatic roles without violence in George W. Bush's compassionate conservative American theocracy), but also to transfer aggression in a perverse manipulation of testosterone infused visual pleasure. These children of a lesser god named Adam Smith do not engage in physical violence of any sort; they wouldn't throw a punch to rescue their mothers from the rapist's turgid, plunging phallus. All around me are neutered fraternity boys, ambitious, careful, fearful both of lost status and lowered profit, learning to replace an aging technocracy with new blood, new skills, and zero problems. Modern Ivy League corporate student camaraderie engages a homoeroticism without violence, as some forms of aggression disrupt the flow of capital, and must be avoided at all costs, or transferred to useful proxies like sports entertainment and Hollywood horrorcore and mundane minority murder. Therefore, when the Cornell student audience watches Jet Li in an underground pit blindingly bending the bone structures of muscular killers twice his size on-screen for his character's White masters, I notice not only the race conscious use of the otaku villain or the raunchy sex jokes from aged female piano teachers, but also how easy it is to forget a death in the family because I too am an Ivy League corporate alumnus, a transitional technocrat, a Talented Tenth. To fulfill my destiny is to forget my people.
So now, as the gray matter rewires and this reflection on a fallen son I never knew dissolves, I realize again the ultimate gift of Western civilization for those affirmative action babies unblemished by Black Nationalist bullshit. We can analyze for ourselves the true worth of individuality, and then dance. Dance. Dance to dodge forty-one shots of forgotten rage and unsung anger and proletariat passion from the people we will never help, those whose only crimes are the hate etched in their skins and children that deny them.
... ... ...?
Hey, did I forget something? What was I talking about?
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
The anti-war movement usually finds its most poignant spokespeople from veterans and current military service people, folks whose unabashed love of country or fear of incarceration allowed them to put themselves in harm's way to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. Bob Herbert's recent column profiles one such dedicated young citizen, Aidan Delgado, and relates some of his experiences with the current Iraq War.
Full disclosure: I never supported the current Iraq War in any way. Never. To me, the necessary conflict was against the multinational terrorist conglomerate called al-Qaeda, and any diversion from that sacred mission would result in unneeded death, unwanted casualties, and unsurpassed debt. Today, that's the American status quo. Bill Maher gets it wrong every Friday night: just because the Iraqi people have made certain strides towards democracy in recent months doesn't excuse or justify the hundreds upon hundreds of American servicemen lives or the billions upon billions of American taxpayer dollars our nation has spent to pacify Iraq for petroleum conglomerates. In case you've forgotten what those dead soldiers look like, or how closely those dead soldiers resemble your brother or sister, your father or mother, your friend or neighbor, check out the Washington Post's Faces of the Fallen. Remember, the numbers have no where to go but up.
So I find Bob Herbert's recent column a much-needed public service. My father fought in Vietnam, and he never encouraged me to join the military. He never expressed any outright vitriol over his service, but mostly, he refused to discuss it. After I learned more about the Vietnam War, and it's effects on domestic American life, I understood why. War is killing. To 'raise and support Armies' and 'provide and maintain a Navy', we train those enterprising, volunteering American youth to kill, efficiently and under orders. Against all domestic logic and sanctions against the taking of human life, we train our best and brightest to end life on command. Are we then surprised by improper, immoral actions against the unarmed and the non-prosecuted like the depressing phenomena at Abu Ghraib prison?
Yes. We are appalled, shocked, terrified. We pretend that no American soldier could possibly act in such a manner, then realize we can't turn away from the pictorial evidence. We grudgingly acknowledge that war crimes can be committed by anyone -- except our military leaders. This week yet another meaningless private acknowledged her culpability in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, after various reports washing the hands of Pentagon higher-ups have become public knowledge. In this context, Herbert's exposure of Delgado's story become a welcome anecdotal glimpse into the unmitigated, unconquerable rage of average American soldiers, driven past sanity and normal behavior by elongated tours of duty in hot, dangerous, undecipherable wastelands where Old Glory is hated and people murder the soldiers' friends with roadside bombs. What's immediately apparent to this observer is the immediate, just-under-the-surface American racism that bursts onto the scene whenever soldiers in these circumstances speak openly with candor and without censor. When top officers speak with humor about "heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans", all that 'support the troops' false patriotism must give way to an unassailable truth: killing dehumanizes good people, who then have no compunction with dehumanizing others.
Think about it: having the most nauseating abuses of American military might in recent public memory emerged from breakdowns in military discipline and honor caused by hazardous overwork and unchecked racist hate for American opponents? Consider where racist epithets like "gook", "Charlie", "raghead", "skinny", "sand nigger", and now, "haji" have emerged. We have no need to disrespect the average Iraqi in order to eliminate terrorism and promote democracy in that war-torn, battered land. When our American military forces, through sins of omission or commission, foster this mentality of hatful racist difference in the rank-and-file serviceman culture, then the sickening murder, torture, abuses of power, and violence that characterized the infamous American operation of Abu Ghraib prison will persist throughout the American military, leading to future My Lai's, Son Thang-4's, and obscene Polaroids where round-faced, acne-scarred privates smile brightly around the bloody, mewling, naked forms of faceless brown victims just swarthy enough to resemble international terrorists they nor their families have ever had any contact with. Damn domestic American due process legal protections! If they speak out of turn, shoot them. If they speak Arabic or Vietnamese or any language other than English, hit them. If your buddy was injured by them, or your fellow citizens killed in crashed airplanes by people who may or may not share broad religious background, phenotypic characteristics, or linguistic similarity with them, then imprison them secretly, without the benefit of legal protection like the Geneva Conventions you yourself would want, beat them, torture them, and kill them if they get on your nerves. That's George W. Bush's America -- hurt those that can't defend themselves, and eliminate them if they scream in pain too loudly. And if we here at home speak openly about the un-Christian immorality of such military action, we're helping the terrorists.
Aidan Delgado and Bob Herbert deserve commendation and praise for exposing these everyday abuses to the American people. Patriotic domesticity during times of war involves reminding your nation of all of its positive aspects during its most disheartening times. We don't believe in torture in America, so our soldiers should not inflict torture upon anyone. We don't believe in random violence toward defenseless citizens in America, so our soldiers should not randomly lacerate Iraqi citizens with American symbols of crass global capitalism. No one needs a Coke that badly. Further, we should not be afraid to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law any and all American servicemen who, in either in frustration over lives they can't control or rank-assured complacency, forget the basic universal themes of human dignity, American equality, and personal self-control that characterizes what it means to be an American.
I was born a member of the greatest nation in human history. I believe we all should work without end to deserve the American birthright, by respecting the rights of the downtrodden and distressed instead of using their bodies as anonymous punching bags while we fill up our Toyota Camrys with their natural oil. I won't sell my national dignity for twenty cents less at the 7-Eleven pump, and neither should you.
Update: Check out Reappropriate, Michelle Malkin, Blackfive.net, Baldilocks, and Outside the Beltway for more discussion on this column. And feel free to leave comments here; I'm curious as to what you think.
I spent some time recently with Aidan Delgado, a 23-year-old religion major at New College of Florida, a small, highly selective school in Sarasota.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, before hearing anything about the terror attacks that would change the direction of American history, Mr. Delgado enlisted as a private in the Army Reserve. Suddenly, in ways he had never anticipated, the military took over his life. He was trained as a mechanic and assigned to the 320th Military Police Company in St. Petersburg. By the spring of 2003, he was in Iraq. Eventually he would be stationed at the prison compound in Abu Ghraib.
Mr. Delgado's background is unusual. He is an American citizen, but because his father was in the diplomatic corps, he grew up overseas. He spent eight years in Egypt, speaks Arabic and knows a great deal about the various cultures of the Middle East. He wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.
"He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him."
read more
Full disclosure: I never supported the current Iraq War in any way. Never. To me, the necessary conflict was against the multinational terrorist conglomerate called al-Qaeda, and any diversion from that sacred mission would result in unneeded death, unwanted casualties, and unsurpassed debt. Today, that's the American status quo. Bill Maher gets it wrong every Friday night: just because the Iraqi people have made certain strides towards democracy in recent months doesn't excuse or justify the hundreds upon hundreds of American servicemen lives or the billions upon billions of American taxpayer dollars our nation has spent to pacify Iraq for petroleum conglomerates. In case you've forgotten what those dead soldiers look like, or how closely those dead soldiers resemble your brother or sister, your father or mother, your friend or neighbor, check out the Washington Post's Faces of the Fallen. Remember, the numbers have no where to go but up.
So I find Bob Herbert's recent column a much-needed public service. My father fought in Vietnam, and he never encouraged me to join the military. He never expressed any outright vitriol over his service, but mostly, he refused to discuss it. After I learned more about the Vietnam War, and it's effects on domestic American life, I understood why. War is killing. To 'raise and support Armies' and 'provide and maintain a Navy', we train those enterprising, volunteering American youth to kill, efficiently and under orders. Against all domestic logic and sanctions against the taking of human life, we train our best and brightest to end life on command. Are we then surprised by improper, immoral actions against the unarmed and the non-prosecuted like the depressing phenomena at Abu Ghraib prison?
Yes. We are appalled, shocked, terrified. We pretend that no American soldier could possibly act in such a manner, then realize we can't turn away from the pictorial evidence. We grudgingly acknowledge that war crimes can be committed by anyone -- except our military leaders. This week yet another meaningless private acknowledged her culpability in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, after various reports washing the hands of Pentagon higher-ups have become public knowledge. In this context, Herbert's exposure of Delgado's story become a welcome anecdotal glimpse into the unmitigated, unconquerable rage of average American soldiers, driven past sanity and normal behavior by elongated tours of duty in hot, dangerous, undecipherable wastelands where Old Glory is hated and people murder the soldiers' friends with roadside bombs. What's immediately apparent to this observer is the immediate, just-under-the-surface American racism that bursts onto the scene whenever soldiers in these circumstances speak openly with candor and without censor. When top officers speak with humor about "heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans", all that 'support the troops' false patriotism must give way to an unassailable truth: killing dehumanizes good people, who then have no compunction with dehumanizing others.
Think about it: having the most nauseating abuses of American military might in recent public memory emerged from breakdowns in military discipline and honor caused by hazardous overwork and unchecked racist hate for American opponents? Consider where racist epithets like "gook", "Charlie", "raghead", "skinny", "sand nigger", and now, "haji" have emerged. We have no need to disrespect the average Iraqi in order to eliminate terrorism and promote democracy in that war-torn, battered land. When our American military forces, through sins of omission or commission, foster this mentality of hatful racist difference in the rank-and-file serviceman culture, then the sickening murder, torture, abuses of power, and violence that characterized the infamous American operation of Abu Ghraib prison will persist throughout the American military, leading to future My Lai's, Son Thang-4's, and obscene Polaroids where round-faced, acne-scarred privates smile brightly around the bloody, mewling, naked forms of faceless brown victims just swarthy enough to resemble international terrorists they nor their families have ever had any contact with. Damn domestic American due process legal protections! If they speak out of turn, shoot them. If they speak Arabic or Vietnamese or any language other than English, hit them. If your buddy was injured by them, or your fellow citizens killed in crashed airplanes by people who may or may not share broad religious background, phenotypic characteristics, or linguistic similarity with them, then imprison them secretly, without the benefit of legal protection like the Geneva Conventions you yourself would want, beat them, torture them, and kill them if they get on your nerves. That's George W. Bush's America -- hurt those that can't defend themselves, and eliminate them if they scream in pain too loudly. And if we here at home speak openly about the un-Christian immorality of such military action, we're helping the terrorists.
Aidan Delgado and Bob Herbert deserve commendation and praise for exposing these everyday abuses to the American people. Patriotic domesticity during times of war involves reminding your nation of all of its positive aspects during its most disheartening times. We don't believe in torture in America, so our soldiers should not inflict torture upon anyone. We don't believe in random violence toward defenseless citizens in America, so our soldiers should not randomly lacerate Iraqi citizens with American symbols of crass global capitalism. No one needs a Coke that badly. Further, we should not be afraid to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law any and all American servicemen who, in either in frustration over lives they can't control or rank-assured complacency, forget the basic universal themes of human dignity, American equality, and personal self-control that characterizes what it means to be an American.
I was born a member of the greatest nation in human history. I believe we all should work without end to deserve the American birthright, by respecting the rights of the downtrodden and distressed instead of using their bodies as anonymous punching bags while we fill up our Toyota Camrys with their natural oil. I won't sell my national dignity for twenty cents less at the 7-Eleven pump, and neither should you.
Update: Check out Reappropriate, Michelle Malkin, Blackfive.net, Baldilocks, and Outside the Beltway for more discussion on this column. And feel free to leave comments here; I'm curious as to what you think.
