Oprah and the War
Bah. I’m so sad. The other night I wrote this really nice piece for the blog about a dream I had, but it got erased. Maybe I’ll try again.
The other night I had a very frightening dream. I was at the local gay coffee house here, and I was walking along the grassy promenade that stretches for awhile behind the shop (which doesn’t exist in reality). There were all these other people there, walking back and forth, arm in arm, just like in some French impressionist painting. All of sudden, I see that there are these men in green army fatigues on the other side of the promenade. There are five of them, and they are wielding machetes. They start attacking people with them. I try to run, but one of them, wearing sunglasses, catches me and starts attacking me. I try to get away, but all his buddies join in, all of them attacking me, trying to kill me. It was horrible. It was war. I wake up terrified. Soon though, I go back to sleep. I slip into the same dream, only this time the men have sniper rifles, with cross-hairs and laser aiming. This is even scarier than before, because now there’s no running; no matter how far you go, they can still get you. You are never safe.
Later on, after I had woken up and after I had finished work, I went to the local Ethiopian restaurant and bar to get a little dinner. Their TV’s were showing Oprah, and so I watched while I waited for my food. They were reading the last letters written by soldiers killed in the Iraq war. They had their loved ones reading them, crying hard. It was pretty standard. But then, after the segment was over and they were about to cut to commercial, Oprah said one of the most intelligent and relevant things I have heard anyone say during this whole Iraq thing. She looked right into the camera, and said, simply and without inflection, “War is Real”. She then went on say something about prayers and such that didn’t interest me. But that statement, “War is Real” really stuck with me. I don’t think a lot of people understand this, at least not in America. They see war as a game, as a common fist-fight, an idea, a picture on the TV. We want it for reactionary reasons; it’s a strange compulsion, it’s what our parents told us to value, it’s what you have to want when attacked by someone else. And it is interesting to me that all the people who did call for war were the people who were least directly affected by 9/11, that is to say, the people in the south, the Midwest, the deserts and the mountains. The people who were affected by the war, like New Yorkers, all voted for Kerry, which is essentially a vote against the war. They saw the war. It is not a game, or an idea. It happened to them. It is reality, and they want no more of it.
Well, I have a lot more to say about this, but it will have to wait ‘till later.
The other night I had a very frightening dream. I was at the local gay coffee house here, and I was walking along the grassy promenade that stretches for awhile behind the shop (which doesn’t exist in reality). There were all these other people there, walking back and forth, arm in arm, just like in some French impressionist painting. All of sudden, I see that there are these men in green army fatigues on the other side of the promenade. There are five of them, and they are wielding machetes. They start attacking people with them. I try to run, but one of them, wearing sunglasses, catches me and starts attacking me. I try to get away, but all his buddies join in, all of them attacking me, trying to kill me. It was horrible. It was war. I wake up terrified. Soon though, I go back to sleep. I slip into the same dream, only this time the men have sniper rifles, with cross-hairs and laser aiming. This is even scarier than before, because now there’s no running; no matter how far you go, they can still get you. You are never safe.
Later on, after I had woken up and after I had finished work, I went to the local Ethiopian restaurant and bar to get a little dinner. Their TV’s were showing Oprah, and so I watched while I waited for my food. They were reading the last letters written by soldiers killed in the Iraq war. They had their loved ones reading them, crying hard. It was pretty standard. But then, after the segment was over and they were about to cut to commercial, Oprah said one of the most intelligent and relevant things I have heard anyone say during this whole Iraq thing. She looked right into the camera, and said, simply and without inflection, “War is Real”. She then went on say something about prayers and such that didn’t interest me. But that statement, “War is Real” really stuck with me. I don’t think a lot of people understand this, at least not in America. They see war as a game, as a common fist-fight, an idea, a picture on the TV. We want it for reactionary reasons; it’s a strange compulsion, it’s what our parents told us to value, it’s what you have to want when attacked by someone else. And it is interesting to me that all the people who did call for war were the people who were least directly affected by 9/11, that is to say, the people in the south, the Midwest, the deserts and the mountains. The people who were affected by the war, like New Yorkers, all voted for Kerry, which is essentially a vote against the war. They saw the war. It is not a game, or an idea. It happened to them. It is reality, and they want no more of it.
Well, I have a lot more to say about this, but it will have to wait ‘till later.
posted by nearfalse | 2:06 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home