CAN WE TALK FEELINGS ABOUT RACISM? AND PATRIOTISM?

So I was in the parking lot of a local diner and a truck was parked right in the middle of the lot. It had a big American flag on it, and the big bold scary words "LOVE IT OR GET THE HELL OUT".

I am realizing that when people are congested and clogged emotionally, information isn't really going to mean much. I have also been shocked, even unexpectedly, by the meanness of so many comments in my neck of the woods, which is not really known to be redneck perse'.

It's a no-brainer, requiring little thought and little or no reservation of people blurting out statements like, "Obama, don't you think he'll cause a revolution in Africa?", "He's a Hussein!", "He told 39 lies!" Really? Amazing this stuff, and for me, what is coming through is also that as a Jew I am particularly mortified by the lack of concern on the part of so many of the book banning and scornful attitude of Madame Pailin (sorry, Dudette Pailin) about the obvious silliness of cleaning up our environment and such.

Foaming at the mouth won't help, or will it? Better that we start talking on emotional levels about why we think or hate or fear the way we do. Emotional honesty might be a start here.

The National Guard Goes to the Movies

The National Guard Goes to the Movies

This title is not from a new children's book or a South Park episonde. It is about their visit in amazing mixtures of sounds and team bravado, and smiling little Arab (Iraqi?) children who greet the Americans with gratitude, after seconds of fright.

It was an amazing contrast between the film we were about to see. The film was "Elegy", written by Nicholas Meyer and directed by Isabel Coixet, with Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz, Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson and others. It is a sensual and sad and moving film. "Elegy" is reflective, and at times brutally honest and surprising; at others it's romantically photographed and acted to the sounds of classical music or no music whatsoever.

The National Guard left just in time, the tone of its commercial being filled with sounds of rock, and the beat of insistent pictures of our heroes who come to kick a soccer ball to a scared little boy who is clearly Arab, so he can smile. It is the old military giving out candy to children and freeing the world.

Of course it's the Guard of today, but it's about yesterday and about nostalgia. And it is mainly about drilling into the heads of the less than convinced and feeding the adrenalin of those already there, that if there's one thing about Americans, we fight to win, and to accept defeat is to die, and worse.
The rhyming has an end in sight but it what I woke up with today.



We Fight to Win (We will never be defeated)

We are Americans, say it again,
And Americans fight and fight and fight,
We fight because God says we're right
We fight where we are needed

Our motto is, bring freedom home
And we can never ever accept defeat
We give and give and give and give
And we will never be defeated

And if we find the war is wrong
Why we can never be defeated
And if we see the war is wrong, why
We can never be defeated

We learn at school to win and lose
And we can never be defeated
To share and pray and love our neighbor
And we will never be defeated

We use our words and not our fists
And we will never be defeated
Until the day our boys enlist
And we can never be defeated.

When we're at war we have to win
Accept defeat and you will sin
Accept defeat and you will lose
All the freedom we can choose
Accept defeat and you will meet
The enemy here upon our streets
Everything from church forget
Everything from school upset
Accept defeat we can't come back
We see the world in white and black
We want a President who knows to fight
And fight way after dawn's early light
We call this patriotism strong out proud
Where doubters are betrayers wowed
By propaganda from enemy lines
Elect the fighter, ignore the whines
The weak or those who cry and cry
They cry for peace but will not die
Like us who proud and wowed and strong, sing
We shall never be defeated

A Distraction Monologue, Dialogue, kind of Poetry in the Motion of Sadness

Distraction Dialogues can here be the beginning of a hoped for dialogue....
Sometimes it's the only way to start one, and the answers can respect the dialogue but keep it going with a hint of presence or objection, but some kind of accessibility.
It is very hard to think of people listening to everything and only staying suspicious of anything that might imply the need for us to look at ourselves, as perpetrators or as bystanders. Do you know that most Jews of my generation looked at every German and thought or said, "What did you do in the War?", meaning World War II, or the question would be What did your father or your grandfather do or have you paid enough? It's an unfair question since it's not only what they did but what they didn't do, if they stood and observed or fooled themselves into thinking there was no such thing as ecology, as human ecology. Into fooling themselves as we are fooling ourselves that American actions in far away lands don't affect us, better just believe the stongest face of stone and false security...Better believe the one who makes us doubt and fear any signals of non-believing....And better never ponder the evil, the potential evil that lies within us all, and how when it goes untamed, stuffed into the shadows, it will harm us all more than words can say....Distraction as stuffing our difficult parts into the shadows of the basements of our lives and daring to think they won't matter or come back to haunt us....

Distraction Dialogues
The color of love is not vanilla unless, of course, you love vanilla.
Unless someone from above says vanilla is love, and then
We pray...we believe, we hide chocolate up our sleeve

Torture could not be done by Americans ever, never ever.
So elect someone who smiles and speaks with words of style that
Convince you

And do not read the news that might just give you some clues because they give you too much blues and besides
It's just propaganda

Just because we don't see or hear something doesn't mean it's not there.
But if the power says it's so, it's so hard to know, no power to say no
It's too embarrassing.

There is no freedom without responsibility.
I have to not hate the people who rate
the bullies by their bragging, with their minds closed and sagging
It can be so lonely

Unless we know the enemies within us, we won't recognize or be able to fight those outside.
Beware the innocent because their clothing is of sheep, they dare to make no peep about the evil in their sleep
That hides in the daylight

Distraction, at its worst freezes our minds, our intition has blinds
we moan into a zone where questions just postpone
Vanilla

Words used to confuse are using what's left of our minds to consider that one can deal with evil by "defeating it", just like Nike.

Sometimes, I feel like I am dialing 911 and no one is responding.
I study distraction and know the affliction is mine as well.