Inauguration Countdown, Day Five: Et lux in tenebris lucet

From my sketchbook, fall 2003:

“We bombed the fuck
out of this girl’s
country.
Chances are good
she’s dead now.
And yet I still find myself
checking out her
outfit
and her hair
and wondering
what it would take
for me to look
as good as her.
Welcome to
Amerikka 2003
Welcome to the dark
in which I’m trying
to sing”

What have we cost the world?

Put on hold the monetary drain, for a minute. Think of the lives. Think of the people—the upright-walking, knuckle-cracking, text-message-getting, grinning, bitching human beings—who are no more, due to America’s actions in the past eight years.

Think of those torn apart by our bullets. Blown into little pieces by our bombs. Think of those in the countries we’ve targeted, wrongly, justifying our murderous urge with terms like “raghead” and “sand n****r”. Look what we’ve done.

I don’t care if they hate us. We should be strong enough to withstand hate, without breaking down and earning it.

Think of those in the countries we’ve neglected, struggling to endure their unendurable lives, waiting for help from us that never came. Think of those in Darfur, in Tibet. It’s one thing that we destroyed a country out of spite. But to do so, mouthing platitudes about liberating a people and bringing freedom, all the while pointedly ignoring those who truly needed our help…it’s unjustifiable.

Think of the opportunities we missed, the treaties not signed, the goodwill not deepened, all because our president couldn’t find most countries on a map, and was encouraged by his handlers to scorn our allies for daring to think we needed their help.

Think, finally, of what we’ve done to each other. We have ravaged ourselves. We have let our fellow countrymen be beaten, tasered, screamed at, vandalized. For long years, we answered evil with passivity and rationalization. We answered tyranny with apathy and intellectual masturbation. One of our cities drowned. The mud is in all our lungs.

Our country under Bush hated itself, wished to destroy itself, and came very close to doing so. That’s wretched enough. But like all good basket cases, it also managed to bring others down with it—selfishly, petulantly, hatefully. We will never be done making amends.

There is too much to name. Every country on earth has been touched by our self-mutilating spree. Some have merely felt the barest touch of entropy. Some have been shaken to the ground. We are sorry. We are sorry.

We are sorry.

To all the world: I apologize for having so little courage. I apologize for valuing my life above yours, for getting tangled in the machine, for all the moments when I ran and hid, simply dove under and let it wash over me. Of course I could have done more. I didn’t know what to do—none of us did. To strike at the heart of the problem would have been to strike at the core of what we, as Americans, are. I could have taken a gun and shot Bush, shot Cheney. But I couldn’t see a way to that being right. Could you really have done it yourself?

I took eight years of risks, put myself in constant discomfort and occasional danger, to oppose this regime. I will never know if my efforts amounted to anything at all. I bore the brunt of the scornful, high-riding hate of my fellow countrymen in the early part of this decade, and braved a year in Europe when America was at its most unpopular. I protested, I wrote, I marched, I campaigned. I cried, and learned how to pray; and when no one was looking, I sometimes laid down on the floor and indulged in a few minutes of complete despair.

I could count the ways I’ve been tempered by this fire. I could come up with 1,001 spiritual triumphs that I, that so many of us, have been blessed to reach during this nightmare decade. Maybe I will write that post tomorrow.

Today is for the dead. Our dead. The missing human beings that will not be here to celebrate with us in four days, who will not be here to watch us commence our national penance. Who will not be alive to profit if, by some miracle, we turn this ship around. Who will not be here—by our doing.

Yesterday I anticipated. Tomorrow I will celebrate once again. But tonight I will grieve, and regret.

I could have done more.

That knowledge will be with me the rest of my life, will take its place as part of who I am. It will settle in amid my pride and determination. It will remind me. I will never forget.

photo uploaded to Flickr by the catalyst…

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