Back in the 80s, when I was still under thirty, unmarried and incredibly impressed with Rolex watches and six figure salaries, I started being an American. I was still living under the yuppie poverty line, which in those days was about 36K and so I couldn't afford to live alone in a nice neighborhood as I would have liked. I couldn't get the VW GTI or the Ford Escort GT and I didn't like the CRX. So I got the used BMW 2002, which wasn't so bad when the carburetor hose didn't fall off. My life was simpler then, and then I got a letter from Amnesty International.
I got phone calls from brokers no older than I selling me prospecti but I didn't bite. But when I read about the situation in Afghanistan, it bit me. The story was simple. Rebels and warlords of all sorts were using shiny toys and attaching them to grenade pieces. The purpose was to attract and maim children, so they used pieces of grenades, not whole grenades. There aren't many things that pierce my cold, sterile and relentless heart, but this was one of them. I wept.
And I changed. I started looking at the world, not only because of Black Monday, but because I genuinely wanted to know. But I thought I'd start off somewhere else than Afghanistan. The bomblets were too much for me. I ended up studying a little bit about the wars in Southern Africa and became an amateur student of Namibia. I went to protests and teach-ins and all that sort of stuff. I applied my logic and became frustrated at the general ignorance of the political public and then backed up and rethought everything. It wasn't long before I had stopped living as a yuppie and stepped over into the abyss of liberal political activism. But still, I couldn't face the bomblets. I didn't want to admit my complicity of willful ignorance in that way that Amnesty International's NGO-speak nails you. So I sent off a few dollars, put the sticker on my Beemer and started reading Chomsky.
Now I'm going back. My interest in the shiny kiddie bomblets of the world is at an all time low. Except this time I don't feel guilty at all. I am focused on making my interaction with every human being I meet as pleasant and useful and dignified as possible. This is a direct inversion of what I used to do as a politico. Maybe you recognize this in yourself. You find out something compelling about people halfway around the world and your heart goes out to them. And then you look at all of the people around you and find them contemptibly ignorant. I don't think you can have one without the other, it comes with being an American and our activist politics encourages you to behave that way. But that behavior is anti-social, and I have sworn off it.
When I was a teen, full of piss and vinegar, I secretly wanted somebody to occupy our neighborhood, or do something evil to my baby sister so I could lash out. I think a lot of our politics requires innocent victims. It gins up our passions and makes our commitments to causes seem more righteous. It gives us a reason to be indignant when most of the time we're just bored. I see all that now. I'm no longer looking for victims. I'm looking for neighbors, right here. Right now.
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