> i'm talking to people who don't think like us. that's where you are
> completely missing the fucking boat about what i'm saying. i have to
> actually talk to people and i want to persuade people to the notion that
> the left isn't always wacky. i'm appealing to something that i think
> ordinary USers can get a grip on. I don't think it's US for them and
that's
> why i put the words under erasure with the scare quotes.
Last Friday I got into an argument with a coworker over whether or not pointing out the US's history of unsavory acts in the Middle East wasn't equivalent to justifying the attack on the WTC. He was very, very sensitive on the subject--he lives in Battery Park City behind the site and hasn't been allowed back home (except to grab a few things) since 9/11, saw the second plane hit and people falling, etc., etc.--and obviously found some comfort in the war and Giuliani's antics. I didn't, and was halfway into giving him an earful when I caught myself being an asshole and let up on him. I must have given him a very poor impression of what someone on the left is--shrill, insensitive, unyielding. At the same time, I didn't want to drop the subject, because I think that the bombing is mass slaughter morally and counterproductive practically, and it was on the second point that I thought I'd could appeal to him. But I quit while I was ahead; he didn't want to hear it, and after what he'd seen I couldn't blame him.
Now, I don't take this fellow as standing for everyone who has been affected by the attack; there are people who lost loved ones who've gone on record to oppose the war. It did, however, re-introduce into my thick skull the banality of just how emotional our political positions are--and I'm including myself, because if I didn't take the hawkish position as a personal affront, I wouldn't have started arguing with him. But on political matters we're not content to state our emotional involvement with one position or another; we have to have our reasons as well, and reason and emotion are tightly interwoven in our political affliations. If the peace movement isn't going anywhere, it isn't just because it's lacking reason or positive solutions--it must be lacking emotions as well. If it doesn't offer hope or balm to people, then they're right to reject it. The problem is that the need for peace is urgent now: the US is bombing an already ravaged nation, and dumping weapons into an unstable area. If bin Laden and the Taleban are the guilty parties, what we're doing is unlikely to get them out, and almost certain to erode what precarious stability there is in the world. -- Curtiss