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2001-10-08 / 7:31 p.m. ~A Rather Mundane Diary Entry....not to be confused with anything controversial or inciteful of contempt~ Whew, ever get exhausted just checking your email? I'm on these Yahoo Groups lists now, local anti-war stuff, and I guess I'm getting a little bombarded. It's a good bombardment though. Carlos actually wrote back to me, rather innocuous, but thanked me for the photo I sent. It occurred to me that he would get back to me in his own sweet time, ahem, being the Capricorn he is (control freak). Have I mentioned I suck at shopping? Well I do. I used to have lots of money, and I didn't work, yeah, it was great indeed. I would pore through my vast collection of over 300 cookbooks, find interesting recipes, go shopping for ingredients, and cook, and eat, and have great fun. Doing as I pleased. Now I work all day, it's a nine hour day including the lunch hour, and it sucks. There is so little time left for me. I hate working, really. Now, it's rare that I shop. I never look at the cookbooks. I don't even cook anymore. I just grab and run. So tonight I went to Publix after work and there were so many people there, all rushing around with their carts and handbaskets, so many singles, like a meat market, and I was so shy, couldn't stand to make eye contact, couldn't decide what to get, had to walk around two or three times, the whole store, before I got into the swing of things. No set plan for things to cook, just maybe pasta with tomato sauce, sausage, juice, milk, stuff. It was so outrageously hard. But they got more of those canvas shopping bags in! I guess I bugged them enough times..."Do you have any MORE of these???". Bought another of those so I have two now (YAY!), and managed to buy some actual food, frozen and fresh. Aarrrggggh. So, I come home, and the whole apartment reeks of roast chicken. I swear, the people downstairs eat chicken every fucking night. Fried, roasted, whatever, and it fills my apartment with the aroma. Not bad, mostly, but every night? Especially in the bathroom, must be poor insulation. Walk in there and it smells like Thanksgiving or something, like family, like home. Smells good, but I had to get some air in here. Okay, I'm tired, I need a bath, this is such a normal entry..."Dear Diary, my apartment smells like chicken, I don't know how to shop for myself, I am tired of working, Carlos wrote to me...blah, blah, blah". Now comes the meat. Here is something I wrote at work today. I know it's controversial, hopefully no one will read it. That's the plan anyway. I know it's flawed, I am not an essayist, I am not a professional, these were simply my thoughts on media brainwashing, okay? Oh, yes, I believe Osama Bin Laden is a bad man, perhaps he has a good heart, I don't know, perhaps he is a good father, I don't know, however I do know he is sorely misguided and if he survives the current attacks he will be forced to live in hiding forever. I have been conflicted since 9/11, but my thoughts are now with the people of Afghanistan, and if I could I would want to ease their pain, much like America wants to ease the pain of our own people. The killing must stop. Okay, this is it: I'm thinking of the effectiveness of media brainwashing, and how even I almost lost myself to it. Osama Bin Laden's name was mentioned the day of the attacks on 9/11, he was responsible, so we were told, the attacks had his "fingerprints" all over them. Of course the actual attackers had died along with everyone else that day, so really who are we after? Bin Laden, of course, we are told. Endless replays of limited film footage of the man, being interviewed, and holding a gun. He is the new Hitler, we are told, he is bad, he is the one, he is evil. I succumbed to this. I suggested we "take him out", send in Special Ops, an American James Bond, or other. Take him out, take out the problem. Even I believed it. And don't think there wasn't a good reason behind CNN's weekly (at least) showing of "Beneath the Veil"�watch that documentary and you will hate the Taliban. Period. It worked for me. Why is it important to help Americans hate the Taliban??? Could it be that CNN is surreptitiously on Bush's payroll? It has been necessary to get the Americans behind the attacks on Afghanistan, and we all, even I, knew they were coming. Bin Laden, the Taliban, notice how quickly the attention shifted from the vague "war on terrorism" to the more concrete removal of the evil warlords and their "guest"? It's impossible to attack a concept carried out on occasion by suicide bombers, however it is easy enough to bomb a country. Convince the American people that Bin Laden pulls the strings of all terrorists everywhere, that the evil (and yes, they are evil) Taliban regime play "host" to him, then it's perfectly understandable that we would want to take him out, take them out, in a large, days long bombing raid. It's okay, in that case, you see. But I, and thousands like me, do not see. We have broken free from the brainwashing, we are listening, to all sources, we are reading, we are exchanging knowledge, we are not believing everything, we are turning away from CNN, the major networks, from Ashcroft, Powell, and Rumsfeld. We know who Tom Ridge is, we know who Bush is, (the two largest proponents of government sanctioned murder in this country) and how soon the people are forgetting everything they've known up to now. Yesterday's rally focused on the collective amnesia of the citizens of this country. I am amazed, shocked really, now, as I was when the U.S. participated in the bombing of Yugoslavia, that the otherwise liberal, intelligent, left-wing population lends its support. Give them a bad guy and they are blind to reason. Give them a Milosevic, give them a Bin Laden, and they need not bother with blinders, they are built in. Killing of innocents? Well, there will be some casualties, they admit, their eyes glazed over. "Casualties"? Don't you think that's what the terrorists said when they made their decision to take those planes and fly them into the Twin Towers? Someone may have said, What about the women and children? And they may have said, Yes, well, there will be some casualties. Why don't these supporters see that they are no better than the terrorists themselves to condone such violence? Normally intelligent people are falling victim, admitting they don't really know too much about it, don't really listen to much news, yet they have formed these opinions, based on what? The man you didn't even vote for is suddenly in your living room telling you that this is what must be done and you nod your head, zombie-like and say, "Yes, Bush, you are so right, Bin Laden is evil, the Taliban are evil, let's take them out, and there will be casualties, but that's to be expected." Wow. This morning I came in here to work and of course there was buzz about the bombings, but it was all such a mishmash of misinformation, sound bytes turned into rhetoric and it was spooky. Especially when I realized that it must be the same for all the flag-waving, "God Bless America"-singing American citizens right now. Kill=Bin Laden�Kill=Taliban�Bush=God. My favorite part? This is sweet: We fly overhead with bombing planes, the B-2s, the B-52s, etc., and the British subs launch cruise missiles�then�this is so fun!�we drop them some bags of flour! Some "food". See, we're not mean, we're really there to help the Afghan people, aren't we? Yeah, we know they're fleeing to the borders, which are all but closed to them�Sorry, you can't come in to Pakistan!�Sorry, you can't come in to Iran�Sorry. You'll just have to lie down right there at the borderline and hope the bombs don't land there. You're hungry? Here, have a bag of grain. There, isn't that better? Oh, you can't return to your home, it's gone. Oopsy! They have dark eyes, dark skin, their clothes look different, their religion is different and strange, so it's okay to kill them. After all, it's not like they're Americans or anything� Just so long as I can have my digital cable and go to hockey games. Yeah, I do not want to lose my life here. Whew! After all, as pro-war minions love to remind me�someone has to die so I can live free. Really? Is that how it works? Cost of the War in Iraq
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