I was old enough to understand something was wrong with George W. Bush's rhetoric about terrorism and Iraq. When you are 16 it doesn't feel like what you feel or think matters, or that you have any power over what is going on.
What stands out more than anything else about the War on Terror is the war crime of the Iraq War. It stands out more than the spectacle of the operation. It stands out more than the towers' initial attack. It stands out more than the death of Bin Ladin. I wish I understood when I was 16 that there were so many other people all over the world asking the same questions I was asking. I wish I was raised to think that my objections mattered. I wish I was raised to understand how to act on my objections. But that Devil on this Earth got away with it while most of the world either stood by and watched helpless, stood by and watched complicit, or took part in it.
Please hear this: it is not enough for you to merely accept that you don't align with Trump's tactics. It is not enough for you to merely acknowledge your political differences and agree to disagree. You CANNOT let this man drag this country into another regime change war abroad. I'm telling you, you will be haunted for the rest of your life if you let that pig of a man ruin the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people for no good purpose, even if you aren't the one launching the munitions or firing the guns.
My gut told me to throw a conniption when George W. Bush and his demons lied bold-faced to this country and the Right-wing Liberals went right along with it. But I was raised to think of politics as something that happens on a screen. If you, like me, have any idea of the horror of the Iraq War, then you understand why this is a time we are invited to learn from history and truly keep it from repeating itself.
This year I am 40. I know there are some young people who realize that something is wrong because I remember vividly understanding something was wrong.
If you know any way you can use your personal power and your platform to impede open hostilities with Iran, I promise you will not regret making it the most important project of your life until it is seen through to the end.
The repeated images of violence desensitize our culture to the emotional reality of what is going on. So I'm going to have to momentarily hypersensitize you so you can really witness what is happening. It will only be uncomfortable for a moment because those emotional defenses tend to just pop right back into place every time, anyway. So don't freak out. Think of what you love most and imagine it's your child. Maybe it's a hobby or a pet. Now fast forward your life and expand your love experiences to take on more hobbies and challenges and relationships. Imagine these are your children. These worlds spawn more worlds--your "children's children." Take this constellation of things that you love dearly and multiply it by thousands to consider a whole culture of relationships. It's difficult to explain how fractals work, but the dynamics at play in the world compound on themselves and split into probabilities with mind boggling variation.
Let's say when you kill 1,000 people, you are ruining 6,000 lives and terrorizing the rest of the population. When you ruin the lives of thousands of people and terrorize an entire nation, you create the kind of trauma that shapes people's entire existences and identities. The survivors will either pass down horror stories through their families for generations, or they will bury the reality and the emotion of the trauma and contort themselves into avoidant ghosts who can't process the immensity of what has happened to them. So what about when you kill a quarter of a million people? I'm traumatized by the experience, even though I was a citizen of the aggressor state watching hopelessly on the news. Can you imagine the hell on Earth experienced at ground zero of these these warmongers' dangerous games?
For the love of all that is holy, resist open hostilities with every fiber of your being and every motion you take in your life. These bigots believe in nothing, and your children are less than nothing to them. If I had one wish for the rest of my life, it would be that at least some one out there would heed my warning and feel reminded of what they know deep down, so that they might resist in any small way, any meager way.
I have nothing else to ask of you, nothing to sell you, no ideology I want you to follow or subscribe to, no book I want you to read, no promise I want you to make except stay open to the possibility that these events are exactly as serious as it seems they are, and we don't have to comply.
