03.24.2003 - 2:51 p.m.

(Number two. Pretend I posted this Friday or so.)

It seems that surely by now, they must all be sleeping. The fifteen other people in my building, the sixty in my block, the several hundred in the complex. All the cars are parked neatly in rows, the lights behind windows turned down or off, living bodies curled and tucked under the covers, with or without that someone who matters.

It is one of those nights where your concept of �company� dilates, expanding out and around to bump up against the inner curvature of the sky. And not all of them are sleeping, I know. After all, I am awake, and likely to stay that way for a while yet. It�s just nice to know they�re there.

And I can hear those fighter planes,
and I can hear those fighter planes�

There was a speech, and then a flow of images like after the blizzard last month, when everyone had run out of things to say but not yet run out of the need to say them.

My separate idealisms have spent the night rubbing each other raw.

When I was twelve years old my country saved another country from an ugly, evil man. I had the sweatshirt with the two flags in the desert, the one flying proudly, the other lying in the sand. I still want it to be that simple. It is easy to be proud of something guaranteed to do right.

I�ve grown out of the sweatshirt and into the knowledge that contrary to what I might wish, the purpose of government is not to do right. It is to be right. It exists to perpetuate itself and its people by whatever means it can get away with; history can always be edited later for �right.� My country is a big bully that says �Do it our way� and gives free wedgies to anyone willing to ask �Why?� My country, we, I�I kill people all the time. It�s just that usually, I never have to find out about it. They don�t tell me. My government believes I need to hear the good sides, the ideals, but perhaps not from those protesters, or from the people of some small, third-world country we�ve just turned into a shoe factory. Of course there is freedom of the press; it�s just that certain freedoms only appear on page thirteen.

I hate feeling manipulated, but I didn�t protest. I was never sure enough that it was warranted. War is always bad, everyone knows this; protesting war in general has always seemed sort of silly to me. So the question is whether this one is necessary, and I don�t know enough to say that it�s not. Even reading through to the back cover, all I can say is that the reasons for all this are not entirely as advertised. I can�t say it�s safe to stay out of it, so I can�t argue that we should. I feel old. The shift and pull of history is too big, too heavy, and it is too late to hold it back.

They are still showing the pictures. Several hours ago they were all sleeping. The hundred people in that high-rise, the forty in the smaller one next door. Now they�re not. There are pictures of flashes over city streets, of plumed shooting missiles, and there is not a single thing I can do to stop this war. I did not vote for this president, I didn�t support his actions, I hate just about everything he has done in my name. I am killing people and I know it, the pictures show it and the least I can do is pay attention, to think towards the people in that predawn cityscape, I see you, I�m sorry, I promise not to tell my children this felt good.

Luckily, a country is not the man who leads it. A country is not a colored splotch on a globe. A country is a group of people who feel safe sleeping next door to each other. And pride is like faith; unexamined, untested, it is worth very little.

Being proud to be anything should hurt.

-stonebridge

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