I guess losing heart for me started way back when I was in third grade. At the time I lived on a commune in Virginia and attended the local three room schoolhouse with the townies and the other commune kids.
There was one period that involved reading these essays on this microfische machine. We were allowed to go at our own pace, select a microfische on a subject of our own choosing, read it and write our opinions. I found one on the Statue of Liberty, how France had given it to us to recognize America's largesse in taking in the huddled masses of the world who were otherwise bereft. My heart swelled with pride. I read about the American Revolution and the Civil War and my young mind revelled on the ideals on which this country was founded, and the history that showed we moved steadily closer to embodying those same ideals.
I remember the Watergate scandal breaking out, the seriousness with which the adults took it, and I started paying attention. That's when I learned about the Vietnam war. I saw the photograph of the young girl running naked past American soldiers, her face contorted in pain and fear, wet with tears.
In Chicago, in Junior High, my class went to the movies, where we saw All The President's Men. I took pride in the fact that such things were admitted so openly.
In Twelfth grade I was back in Los Angeles, at a notoriously liberal public school. The Shah of Iran had been deposed in Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini had taken power. A group of feminists came to speak to my class. They had taken a trip to Iran and showed us slides of their trip. One of their visits had been to a prison there. There were pictures of the landings lined with cells and overlooking the concrete courtyard. The landings were lined with bars ending in jagged knife-sharp tops, to keep the prisoners from jumping to their deaths on the concrete pavement. The women explained that this was because the prisoners' treatment at the hands of the Shah's SAVAK henchmen was so violent that the prisoners would choose suicide if given the choice. We were provided with the information that showed how the Shah had been installed and supported by the US government.
When Reagan became president my mother stopped at a red light while driving us to school. A man pulled up beside us and motioned for us to roll down the windows. "The hostages are free! Isn't that great?" I was sleepy and slow. I remember his face registered contempt when he realized I didn't share his enthusiasm. As he drove away I remember wishing I could've shared his joy, and that I was, in fact, glad for the people who had been freed, but hell, Reagan'd been elected. I had studied Reagan's policies as Governer of California; I knew how he'd cut funds to help the elderly to poverty levels. I'd attended the anti-Nuclear rally at Diablo Canyon and had noted how the people's voice had been ignored, or at most, mocked.
Over the next year I watched as the businesses in South Central Los Angeles, where my school was located, were boarded up. I watched as the poor grew poorer. When ketchup was declared a vegetable, I saw how the already deficient school lunches got worse. Encountering crazy homeless people on the street became an everyday affair. As the days passed into years I saw the rich grow richer, and the poor poorer.
I spent some years travelling and living in other countries. I learned what others in the world thought of America. I saw unspeakable poverty. In 1984 or 85 I remember the America's Cup boat race take central stage on the world media. At the time I was staying with friends I'd made, a family in Jakarta, Indonesia. The father was a British doctor who had dedicated his life to running a clinic for the poor in that impoverished city. I remember him shouting out at the television, 'Beat those American bastards.' I remember he looked at my face, the shock my expression reflected at his passion.
When the Iran/Contra scandal broke I watched as the selfish lack of reverence for human life inherent to American Foreign Policy was publicly discussed on the news. When the name 'Hasenfus' became a public word I thought something would change. I was chagrined to note that people largely ignored the undeniable, watched as they justified that which was so obviously wrong with our government, even after convictions had been handed down, watched as Bush the elder, once head of the CIA, was elected president, as he pardoned those who'd been found guilty of lying to Congress, of secretly and illegally selling arms to Iran in order to fund yet another attempt to violently overthrow a sovereign government selected by the people of that nation.
I got a job at Greenpeace and attended protests. I went door to door and observed that so many rejected the 'ludicrous concept' of taking care for the environment into consideration. One guy told me he refused to recycle. "Why should I bother to put my cans and bottles in another container if some homeless guy is just going to take them and make money from them? I don't owe that guy anything," was his reasoning. A Jehovah's witness told me, "The sooner we destroy this earth the sooner Christ will return to take me and my family while sinners like you burn."
Was it the presidential election, the recount in Florida, the partisan putsch of the Supreme Court which finally caused me to lose heart?
Was it my trip to Kalimantan, my witnessing of the wasteful destruction of corporate greed? I was shown how the logging companies move into an area, select one or two valuable trees in a hectare of rainforest, chop them down and then burn the rest of the forest to get to the next virgin hectare. I saw massive logs which had rolled off of trucks or boats, discarded in the river or on the ground, as retrieving them would be unprofitable. I lived with the people who subsisted in dire poverty, who had no fresh water supply, who cooked their food with water from the same river that they expelled their waste. I saw many individuals debilitated by disease.
When I returned to Los Angeles I saw a porch swing in Pavilian's market selling for less than a hundred dollars. It was lovely, and within my price range. I asked to be taken into the back to see the box. It came from Kalimantan. So this then, must be why there are so many miles of scorched barren orange earth where once there was fertile rainforest.
On my flight back from Kalimantan I got stranded. I was in the air when two planes were rammed into the World Trade Center. I opted not to stay with friends at a stopover in Jakarta. My flight was grounded in Tokyo, where I stayed for four days, having been told that America was "closed."
I was heartened by the worldwide sympathy expressed toward America. There was a moment when it seemed that this awful tragedy could lead to a brighter future. Instead I watched as the Bush Administration used it as an excuse to wind up the American people, to channel their sorrow into hate and fear. I watched as Americans justified naturalized and even native-born American citizens being taken from their homes and families, locked away, denied access to lawyers, not even honored with an accusation of a charge. Some of those Americans have not been seen or heard from by their families to this day.
Joining the protests to avoid the waging of war on Iraq, to uphold the ideals of the United Nations, was another heartening event. I marched with millions of other human beings who sought a higher solution. On messageboards and across dinner tables I was astounded to see so many Americans dismiss the facts, the fact that America's foreign policy had armed and empowered Hussein, that this was just a continuation of a foreign policy beholden to corporate interests, a foreign policy that completely disregarded the sanctity of human life, that dismissed the need for reverence toward the earth, that held corporate profit as the only thing of value in the world.
No, I never lost heart in America, in the ideals on which I once learned America was founded. I never lost heart in the inalienable rights expressed in the Constitution.
I lost heart when I realized that these things are no longer held sacred by so many Americans, that the freedoms and noble ideals which I was taught and which I accepted as inalienable are in fact negotiable. I lost heart in the American people, that so many can justify death as a solution, that so many can intellectually explain away destruction as rational and acceptable, that here, in this great land, the truth can be so easily dismissed.
There was one period that involved reading these essays on this microfische machine. We were allowed to go at our own pace, select a microfische on a subject of our own choosing, read it and write our opinions. I found one on the Statue of Liberty, how France had given it to us to recognize America's largesse in taking in the huddled masses of the world who were otherwise bereft. My heart swelled with pride. I read about the American Revolution and the Civil War and my young mind revelled on the ideals on which this country was founded, and the history that showed we moved steadily closer to embodying those same ideals.
I remember the Watergate scandal breaking out, the seriousness with which the adults took it, and I started paying attention. That's when I learned about the Vietnam war. I saw the photograph of the young girl running naked past American soldiers, her face contorted in pain and fear, wet with tears.
In Chicago, in Junior High, my class went to the movies, where we saw All The President's Men. I took pride in the fact that such things were admitted so openly.
In Twelfth grade I was back in Los Angeles, at a notoriously liberal public school. The Shah of Iran had been deposed in Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini had taken power. A group of feminists came to speak to my class. They had taken a trip to Iran and showed us slides of their trip. One of their visits had been to a prison there. There were pictures of the landings lined with cells and overlooking the concrete courtyard. The landings were lined with bars ending in jagged knife-sharp tops, to keep the prisoners from jumping to their deaths on the concrete pavement. The women explained that this was because the prisoners' treatment at the hands of the Shah's SAVAK henchmen was so violent that the prisoners would choose suicide if given the choice. We were provided with the information that showed how the Shah had been installed and supported by the US government.
When Reagan became president my mother stopped at a red light while driving us to school. A man pulled up beside us and motioned for us to roll down the windows. "The hostages are free! Isn't that great?" I was sleepy and slow. I remember his face registered contempt when he realized I didn't share his enthusiasm. As he drove away I remember wishing I could've shared his joy, and that I was, in fact, glad for the people who had been freed, but hell, Reagan'd been elected. I had studied Reagan's policies as Governer of California; I knew how he'd cut funds to help the elderly to poverty levels. I'd attended the anti-Nuclear rally at Diablo Canyon and had noted how the people's voice had been ignored, or at most, mocked.
Over the next year I watched as the businesses in South Central Los Angeles, where my school was located, were boarded up. I watched as the poor grew poorer. When ketchup was declared a vegetable, I saw how the already deficient school lunches got worse. Encountering crazy homeless people on the street became an everyday affair. As the days passed into years I saw the rich grow richer, and the poor poorer.
I spent some years travelling and living in other countries. I learned what others in the world thought of America. I saw unspeakable poverty. In 1984 or 85 I remember the America's Cup boat race take central stage on the world media. At the time I was staying with friends I'd made, a family in Jakarta, Indonesia. The father was a British doctor who had dedicated his life to running a clinic for the poor in that impoverished city. I remember him shouting out at the television, 'Beat those American bastards.' I remember he looked at my face, the shock my expression reflected at his passion.
When the Iran/Contra scandal broke I watched as the selfish lack of reverence for human life inherent to American Foreign Policy was publicly discussed on the news. When the name 'Hasenfus' became a public word I thought something would change. I was chagrined to note that people largely ignored the undeniable, watched as they justified that which was so obviously wrong with our government, even after convictions had been handed down, watched as Bush the elder, once head of the CIA, was elected president, as he pardoned those who'd been found guilty of lying to Congress, of secretly and illegally selling arms to Iran in order to fund yet another attempt to violently overthrow a sovereign government selected by the people of that nation.
I got a job at Greenpeace and attended protests. I went door to door and observed that so many rejected the 'ludicrous concept' of taking care for the environment into consideration. One guy told me he refused to recycle. "Why should I bother to put my cans and bottles in another container if some homeless guy is just going to take them and make money from them? I don't owe that guy anything," was his reasoning. A Jehovah's witness told me, "The sooner we destroy this earth the sooner Christ will return to take me and my family while sinners like you burn."
Was it the presidential election, the recount in Florida, the partisan putsch of the Supreme Court which finally caused me to lose heart?
Was it my trip to Kalimantan, my witnessing of the wasteful destruction of corporate greed? I was shown how the logging companies move into an area, select one or two valuable trees in a hectare of rainforest, chop them down and then burn the rest of the forest to get to the next virgin hectare. I saw massive logs which had rolled off of trucks or boats, discarded in the river or on the ground, as retrieving them would be unprofitable. I lived with the people who subsisted in dire poverty, who had no fresh water supply, who cooked their food with water from the same river that they expelled their waste. I saw many individuals debilitated by disease.
When I returned to Los Angeles I saw a porch swing in Pavilian's market selling for less than a hundred dollars. It was lovely, and within my price range. I asked to be taken into the back to see the box. It came from Kalimantan. So this then, must be why there are so many miles of scorched barren orange earth where once there was fertile rainforest.
On my flight back from Kalimantan I got stranded. I was in the air when two planes were rammed into the World Trade Center. I opted not to stay with friends at a stopover in Jakarta. My flight was grounded in Tokyo, where I stayed for four days, having been told that America was "closed."
I was heartened by the worldwide sympathy expressed toward America. There was a moment when it seemed that this awful tragedy could lead to a brighter future. Instead I watched as the Bush Administration used it as an excuse to wind up the American people, to channel their sorrow into hate and fear. I watched as Americans justified naturalized and even native-born American citizens being taken from their homes and families, locked away, denied access to lawyers, not even honored with an accusation of a charge. Some of those Americans have not been seen or heard from by their families to this day.
Joining the protests to avoid the waging of war on Iraq, to uphold the ideals of the United Nations, was another heartening event. I marched with millions of other human beings who sought a higher solution. On messageboards and across dinner tables I was astounded to see so many Americans dismiss the facts, the fact that America's foreign policy had armed and empowered Hussein, that this was just a continuation of a foreign policy beholden to corporate interests, a foreign policy that completely disregarded the sanctity of human life, that dismissed the need for reverence toward the earth, that held corporate profit as the only thing of value in the world.
No, I never lost heart in America, in the ideals on which I once learned America was founded. I never lost heart in the inalienable rights expressed in the Constitution.
I lost heart when I realized that these things are no longer held sacred by so many Americans, that the freedoms and noble ideals which I was taught and which I accepted as inalienable are in fact negotiable. I lost heart in the American people, that so many can justify death as a solution, that so many can intellectually explain away destruction as rational and acceptable, that here, in this great land, the truth can be so easily dismissed.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
miss_piss:
uhm wow?
suoda:
I feel your loss of heart. I have lost it too for the most part. I can't believe that Americans would just sit and listen to whatever their government spews out at them, regardless of the bullshit in their lies. Last weekened, in my tiny town, someone painted a swastica on the jewish temple sign. Is this what it has come to? How many steps backward can we take? It is often hard for me to believe how everyone was so up in arms with everything back in the '60s. You would think we would move forward with that idea, but we seem to have fallen far behind now. But I still see hope in the young children who will be playing at the playground. Black, White, Asian - all together before any racial tendencies. It is perfect. It is the way it should be.