They are warming up the old horrors; and all that they
Say is echoes of echoes.
Beware of taking sides; only watch.
These are not criminals, nor hucksters and little
Journalists, but the governments
Of the great nations; men favorably
Representative of massed humanity. Observe them.
Wrath and laughter
Are quite irrelevant. Clearly it is time
To become disillusioned, each person to enter his own
Soul’s desert
And look for God—having seen man.
Robinson Jeffers, “The Soul’s Desert”
As I sat down for lunch in Darnall on Friday, my friend and I were talking about the week’s terrorist attacks and what they meant here at Georgetown. We couldn’t make sense of too much, and probably no one here is able to comment on the national situation without sounding trite and repetitive. “America unite!” seemed too easy a thought at that point last week.
Suddenly, a pony-tailed guy named Alex dressed in GERMS gear rushed in and started yelling over the din of the cafeteria. He was asking people to give blood at a location off campus. Bulldog Alley was overflowing.
“For all of the supposed patriotism and solidarity on the campus, you should get out there and do something to save lives rather than sitting here doing nothing,” Alex heatedly yelled to the quiet group of students. Then he hurried out to help manage at Bulldog Alley.
The cafeteria was silenced. No one knew how to react. Someone clapped from the far corner, but for the most part, kids didn’t know how to respond to someone publicly pointing out their hypocrisy, their apathy and perhaps their selfishness.
A group of athletes at the table next to me looked at each other. One snickered to another, “That guy was a dork.” A defense mechanism maybe, but an ignorant and mean-spirited one certainly.
“I hate this school,” my friend said, responding to the athletes.
I was inclined to agree with the statement, as I sometimes do. Why do people have to be so mean sometimes? I’m not that patriotic, but it seems that at a time like this there would have been a show of openness or appreciation for a guy doing his part to help.
You may say the campus has been united in some sense since the World Trade Center and Pentagon were destroyed. You may say people have been praying. You may say people have been crying.
But why are innocent kids with dark skin sitting alone in Red Square being called “fucking Arabs?” Why do they feel inclined to walk around in groups? Why were kids still walking around last weekend looking to get drunk off their asses? Why did kids want to go out and party on Thursday once they heard that classes on Friday were being canceled for “A National Day of Mourning and Remembrance?” Why were people willing and eager to give blood at Bulldog Alley, but too lazy to ride in a van for five minutes to give blood elsewhere when the overflow was too much?
And as we sat and pondered these thoughts, a bigger, scarier question creeped out: war or no war?
Should we hate those fucking Arabs on campus, or should we comfort them? Should we destroy those fucking Arabs in the Middle East, or should we meet destruction with peace?
Why did George W. Bush turn our nation into Mr. Hyde by saying “This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger?” Do we want to be vengeful and violent, after all the violence and revenge that has been wrought on us all? Are we going to destroy thousands of other innocent people half a world away, hoping to win a war against a relative handful of people we can’t even see?
I guess so.
But why? Why answer hate with hate? Will this “war” destroy Osama bin Laden, and all hate along with it? Eighty percent of Americans want war, but do 80 percent of Americans know what it’s like to have their father or mother murdered in a maelstrom of flames and rubble? Do Americans really care, in the true sense of the word?
Does waving an American flag make you a patriot?
Think about that. Give people like Alex a break. Help him, in fact. There’s a lot that you can do. Be genuine, be helpful, be generous, be thoughtful, be inclusive, be respectful, be skeptical, and do something good. Observe, think, don’t jump to conclusions.
Drink a beer, watch football, pray, salute the flag, yes. What’s more American than that? I’ll tell you what is. Be fucking kind.
That’s American, or at least what American used to be.
