Marc
On Account of My Rage
I would like to think that, at least once a week, something exciting, interesting, or out of the ordinary happens to me. Most weeks I find myself disappointed, but others find me pleasantly suprised by some turns of events. For example, this week saw me flip out on a class mate in my second to last general studies course here at the university. I am not one that speaks out a lot in classroom settings. I've noticed that some instructors are frustrated with me because of this, writing things on my papers such as, "you have interesting, unique ideas, yet you never speak ... why?" I appreciate the concern, but I am one that tends to just listen. It takes me a while to synthesize ideas and conversations, and more than a day to come up with something unique to say about it, so I don't speak. It's just one of those things.
This was not the case yesterday afternoon during my 2:00pm communications course. The topic was supposed to be family togetherness, and how it's changed since 9/11.***1*** The discussion was rambling and awkward, and people began talking about their own personal experiences of the day, which always seems like a lot of personal garbage that is ridiculously unneccesary to me. I don't need to know that someone's mother worked in the Sears Tower, and that she thinks that they've been closer since that time because ... well, what if they had hit the Sears Tower then, too? She would've died, maybe, and that would have been it. My answer, so what? I almost killed myself and my best friend on the side of a mountain near Cripple Creek, Colorado because I was tired of following a tourist's bus full of senior citizen down a long, winding road. I passed in a no passing zone, and didn't see that there was a car approaching from a short distance, and had I not slammed on the brake and gotten back into our lane just in time, I'm sure that myself and Jesse would've been carcasses on the bottom of the canyon floor, dead as doornails. I don't dwell on what might have happened. I have Mrs. Knight, the best third grade teacher ever, to thank for that. She told our class, and I quote, "you can sit around and say 'what if?' all day long, but it's not going to make anything happen." Live your lives in the present, is basically what she meant, though it took me a long time to figure that out.
But I'm rambling and being incoherent. The conversation. It moves from families, to 9/11, to the war on terrorism, and inevitably ends up at Iraq and the possibility of the US attacking Saddam and his people. I am not the most politically oriented person in the world, but I believe that there are serious problems with the way that the US media portrays our country to the unscrupulous public. Stations like CNN and MSNBC and (that god-awful) FOX NEWS station do nothing but promote ethnocentric ideologies, myths about American exceptionalism, and non-credible reporting about the actions our government is taking to inform us/not inform us about it(s) dealings with both the American public, and the outside world.***2*** I was horrified to hear some of the things coming out of other people's mouth during the course of the terrorism and Iraq parts of the conversation, most notably one young man who sat on the opposite side of the room from me (who will forever be known as MikeTheGuyThatWantsToSeeEveryForeignerDeadSoHeCanEnjoyFreedom) and talked at length about how there were thousands of other Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and, if we didn't do something about it now, that there were going to be prices to pay in the future.
When asked about going to war in Afghanistan, he said he thought it was a good idea because we needed to stop this terrorist explosion before it got any worse, and, in essence, if we accidentally killed a few civilians in exchange for killing a few Al-Qaeda suspects, then so be it. Luckily, there is a girl from Jamaica in the class, who talked for a few moments about how she perceives America (and she also stated that this was, to her knowledge, the general perception of many of her countrymen/women, as well) to be a bully, basically, and to whine and piss and moan when it didn't get it's way, which hardly ever happened because we always pushed everyone else around. I couldn't agree more, yet MTGTWTSEFDSHCEF immediately raised his hand and condemned all Muslims and they're "backwards religion that said it was okay to kill Americans", and that they (the Muslims) could go "stick Islam up their butts because we're America, and we're the superpower, and we get to decide what goes on because we're bigger than everyone ... we've earned that right". I was trying to write this down as it was happening, because I seriously wanted to tear this kid a new asshole if I got the chance to speak.
Sadly, more people started nodding their heads in agreement, and a few spoke up, saying, "Yeah" or "he's right", at which point I decided to cut in front of all the people with their hands raised and blurted out, "Do you realize that we've killed nearly 4000 Afghani civilians since the War on Terrorism began? Almost twice as many as died on 9/11. Do you also realized that US/UN economic sanctions alone have killed nearly 500,000 people in Iraq alone since the Gulf War? That's more than the atomic bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined ..." and here's where I was shaking and ready to jump up at the kid, and my voice took on this desparate tone, and raised about two levels to a yell, "I have no problem with people that want to be patriotic, but to go about it blindly is IDIOCY!"
At this point the room went silent, and people who had patiently been waiting to speak suddenly dropped their hands and looked at me like I was an idiot. I had never actually said anything in that class before, and I suspect that I am now looked at as ThatGuyInTheBackCornerWithTheCrappyBeard(KindOf)ThatOnlySaidOneThingAllSemester,AndItWasKindOfMean. Oh well. One guy whispered, "Right on" after a few lonely moments of silence, and the teacher decided, probably wisely, to nip that discussion before it went any further. The guy in front of me turned around and looked at me and said, "You've been waiting to say that for a while, haven't you?"
I nodded my head, put one nervous hand in the palm of the other and simply replied, "yeah".
***1*** To me this topic is getting really old, especially considering the fact that it's really, extremely difficult to prove that things have changed that much since. I mean, you can look at the television and see that major corporations have co-opted a tragedy and the resulting patriotism, and know that some things have changed. But there has not yet been any conclusive research published, at least to my knowledge, about how the family life in America has changed since then. How would you prove something like that anyways? It's a highly subjective study to even undertake, and any results would be skewed by the predominate lack of honesty by the participants, who I imagine would be perfectly willing to say that their lives have changed since then, but would most likely be lying because they feel like they should say that things have changed because 9/11 was this big, huge tragedy that deserves large amounts of respect, and blah blah blah. No offense to any of the victims, of course. I'm sure for them things have changed a great deal. But for us in the Midwest, nearly a thousand miles away, I doubt that things really have altered in any way, shape or form.
***2*** I also didn't vote, so judge me how you will. I may just be a huge hypocrite in your eyes for talking about something like this without actually doing anything about it. I'm pretty certain that Zach wants to kill me, and maybe a handful of others, too. But I have not yet voted. Not because I didn't want to vote. Just because I didn't. I'm typically lazy towards election day politics, though I fancy myself a bit more informed than the average Joe about what goes on in the meantime, between elections.
On Account of My Rage
I would like to think that, at least once a week, something exciting, interesting, or out of the ordinary happens to me. Most weeks I find myself disappointed, but others find me pleasantly suprised by some turns of events. For example, this week saw me flip out on a class mate in my second to last general studies course here at the university. I am not one that speaks out a lot in classroom settings. I've noticed that some instructors are frustrated with me because of this, writing things on my papers such as, "you have interesting, unique ideas, yet you never speak ... why?" I appreciate the concern, but I am one that tends to just listen. It takes me a while to synthesize ideas and conversations, and more than a day to come up with something unique to say about it, so I don't speak. It's just one of those things.
This was not the case yesterday afternoon during my 2:00pm communications course. The topic was supposed to be family togetherness, and how it's changed since 9/11.***1*** The discussion was rambling and awkward, and people began talking about their own personal experiences of the day, which always seems like a lot of personal garbage that is ridiculously unneccesary to me. I don't need to know that someone's mother worked in the Sears Tower, and that she thinks that they've been closer since that time because ... well, what if they had hit the Sears Tower then, too? She would've died, maybe, and that would have been it. My answer, so what? I almost killed myself and my best friend on the side of a mountain near Cripple Creek, Colorado because I was tired of following a tourist's bus full of senior citizen down a long, winding road. I passed in a no passing zone, and didn't see that there was a car approaching from a short distance, and had I not slammed on the brake and gotten back into our lane just in time, I'm sure that myself and Jesse would've been carcasses on the bottom of the canyon floor, dead as doornails. I don't dwell on what might have happened. I have Mrs. Knight, the best third grade teacher ever, to thank for that. She told our class, and I quote, "you can sit around and say 'what if?' all day long, but it's not going to make anything happen." Live your lives in the present, is basically what she meant, though it took me a long time to figure that out.
But I'm rambling and being incoherent. The conversation. It moves from families, to 9/11, to the war on terrorism, and inevitably ends up at Iraq and the possibility of the US attacking Saddam and his people. I am not the most politically oriented person in the world, but I believe that there are serious problems with the way that the US media portrays our country to the unscrupulous public. Stations like CNN and MSNBC and (that god-awful) FOX NEWS station do nothing but promote ethnocentric ideologies, myths about American exceptionalism, and non-credible reporting about the actions our government is taking to inform us/not inform us about it(s) dealings with both the American public, and the outside world.***2*** I was horrified to hear some of the things coming out of other people's mouth during the course of the terrorism and Iraq parts of the conversation, most notably one young man who sat on the opposite side of the room from me (who will forever be known as MikeTheGuyThatWantsToSeeEveryForeignerDeadSoHeCanEnjoyFreedom) and talked at length about how there were thousands of other Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and, if we didn't do something about it now, that there were going to be prices to pay in the future.
When asked about going to war in Afghanistan, he said he thought it was a good idea because we needed to stop this terrorist explosion before it got any worse, and, in essence, if we accidentally killed a few civilians in exchange for killing a few Al-Qaeda suspects, then so be it. Luckily, there is a girl from Jamaica in the class, who talked for a few moments about how she perceives America (and she also stated that this was, to her knowledge, the general perception of many of her countrymen/women, as well) to be a bully, basically, and to whine and piss and moan when it didn't get it's way, which hardly ever happened because we always pushed everyone else around. I couldn't agree more, yet MTGTWTSEFDSHCEF immediately raised his hand and condemned all Muslims and they're "backwards religion that said it was okay to kill Americans", and that they (the Muslims) could go "stick Islam up their butts because we're America, and we're the superpower, and we get to decide what goes on because we're bigger than everyone ... we've earned that right". I was trying to write this down as it was happening, because I seriously wanted to tear this kid a new asshole if I got the chance to speak.
Sadly, more people started nodding their heads in agreement, and a few spoke up, saying, "Yeah" or "he's right", at which point I decided to cut in front of all the people with their hands raised and blurted out, "Do you realize that we've killed nearly 4000 Afghani civilians since the War on Terrorism began? Almost twice as many as died on 9/11. Do you also realized that US/UN economic sanctions alone have killed nearly 500,000 people in Iraq alone since the Gulf War? That's more than the atomic bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined ..." and here's where I was shaking and ready to jump up at the kid, and my voice took on this desparate tone, and raised about two levels to a yell, "I have no problem with people that want to be patriotic, but to go about it blindly is IDIOCY!"
At this point the room went silent, and people who had patiently been waiting to speak suddenly dropped their hands and looked at me like I was an idiot. I had never actually said anything in that class before, and I suspect that I am now looked at as ThatGuyInTheBackCornerWithTheCrappyBeard(KindOf)ThatOnlySaidOneThingAllSemester,AndItWasKindOfMean. Oh well. One guy whispered, "Right on" after a few lonely moments of silence, and the teacher decided, probably wisely, to nip that discussion before it went any further. The guy in front of me turned around and looked at me and said, "You've been waiting to say that for a while, haven't you?"
I nodded my head, put one nervous hand in the palm of the other and simply replied, "yeah".
***1*** To me this topic is getting really old, especially considering the fact that it's really, extremely difficult to prove that things have changed that much since. I mean, you can look at the television and see that major corporations have co-opted a tragedy and the resulting patriotism, and know that some things have changed. But there has not yet been any conclusive research published, at least to my knowledge, about how the family life in America has changed since then. How would you prove something like that anyways? It's a highly subjective study to even undertake, and any results would be skewed by the predominate lack of honesty by the participants, who I imagine would be perfectly willing to say that their lives have changed since then, but would most likely be lying because they feel like they should say that things have changed because 9/11 was this big, huge tragedy that deserves large amounts of respect, and blah blah blah. No offense to any of the victims, of course. I'm sure for them things have changed a great deal. But for us in the Midwest, nearly a thousand miles away, I doubt that things really have altered in any way, shape or form.
***2*** I also didn't vote, so judge me how you will. I may just be a huge hypocrite in your eyes for talking about something like this without actually doing anything about it. I'm pretty certain that Zach wants to kill me, and maybe a handful of others, too. But I have not yet voted. Not because I didn't want to vote. Just because I didn't. I'm typically lazy towards election day politics, though I fancy myself a bit more informed than the average Joe about what goes on in the meantime, between elections.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home