Letters to the Editor
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Political emotion
@ Tom
I went to the wall too.
It moved me profoundly. I really had no idea just how moving it would be, but running my eyes across all those names, reading them, pronouncing them, moving on to the next one was undescribable.
It was similar, in fact, to a synagogue I visited in Hungary, I think it was, with the names of all the deported Jews etched into the walls.
There were thousands of them. As I stood there reading each name, they just became so tragically human.
God help us all.
-- weeping for brunnhilde
You know, as the ramifications of this election cycle sink in, and the bigotry takes its focus, and the challenges mount, it makes me reflect how deeply this matters to me. It outrages me, it shames me, I am in despair--that this is my country, so they say--with so much potential, and such wonderful people in it--that so many people are being harmed, by this, my government. When I stop to consider it I become quite disturbed. There's this myth that those people in Washington are accountable to us, the voters; if only it were so, because I would do so many things so differently. I know so many people with brilliant and beautiful ideas who want very earnestly to contribute to making the world a slightly better place to live in.
But the government spends its money transforming minerals and metals, burning up calories in order to build... weapons, which explode as they're designed to do, and necessitate more building--of houses, schools, and roads this time. It's good for the economy. The Pentagon has decided not to report Iraqi casualties, basically because it was such bad PR in Vietnam. All those souls... millions of people were touched by this awful tragedy. How many millions must die before we admit the possibility of cursing America?