I’m finding it hard to write here. It’s all too much. The Trump trials. Gaza encampments on college campuses. University presidents calling the cops on peacefully protesting students and professors standing in a circle around them to protect them. Arrests and suspensions and charges of trespassing for tuition paying college kids, including at Columbia, my alma mater, just up the street from my home. People more exercised about student idealism and activism than about the bombs dropped on Palestinian homes, hospitals, children, so many children, about Israeli hostages taken by Hamas who may never be recovered, not that Netanyahu cares, about the dead World Central Kitchen volunteers whose three cars were surgically targeted, leaving neat ash blackened holes in the roofs of each vehicle, the precision missiles killing the aid workers as they tried to get food into Gaza.
I’ll vote for Biden when the time comes because the alternative is still more unthinkable but I’m sick that he keeps sending arms to Netanyahu. I’m sick that abhorring genocide in Gaza is reflexively labeled as antisemitism, and that people listen to bad actors spewing hate and refuse to see what’s really happening on college campuses, Jewish and Muslim students in solidarity with one another, Black, Brown, White, gay, straight, students of all perspectives and persuasions, and faculty members too, joining forces, linking arms, agitating for our humanity, for peace. I do know this though:
It is sickening, Hamas and Netanyahu both continuing to put Palestinians in harms way, both refusing to see, or both not caring, that thousands and thousands of non-combatants are dying. Whole families are being masacared and still it continues. It is an ideology of hatred on both sides and it is shameful.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile Israeli troops are reading to go into Rafah. I can't vote for Biden any more than I can vote for Trump. Very sad times.
ReplyDeleteI thought studying history meant we wouldn't repeat the same mistakes, but the world has repeatedly schooled me on my naivety. Despite the weariness, I will continue to cheer on these protestors and I will continue to vote for progress, however slow.
ReplyDeleteHow can this be happening?
ReplyDeleteWell said, you, sister! Ignorance seems to be flourishing here in Texas as well. Thanks for having the courage to be vocal about the madness. Be well.
ReplyDeleteall of that. it's as if the world has been at relative peace for too long and all that bottled up repressed violence finally exploded. maybe humanity is finally beginning it's swan song. ruining the planet isn't killing us fast enough?
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to think of an exception to that tweet, but I can't! (Are they still called tweets? What are they now?)
ReplyDeleteI read about it all but I can't write about it. As you said, it's too much, and I feel like so many others have said what I would say anyway.
Thank you. You expressed how so many of us feel well. I, too, will vote for Biden because the alternative is unthinkable. I would really like to see a time in the remainder of my life where I don't need to make decisions this way. I'm from the Vietnam era, I so much agree with the quote.
ReplyDeleteYep, I'm furious with Biden about his position on Israel, as well as his tacit approval of the destruction of public health in this country. Furious, incendiary, actually. However, voting for the guy that did away with Roe and will declare himself dictator on day one, and who will deport the very damn people who are boosting our economy with their bodies and their labor, is unthinkable.
ReplyDeleteWho is Jeremy Flood? Googled and couldn't find what sort of authority he is. Historian? Has me thinking, and wondering if the statement is true. Must admit, I'm one who is not convinced we need to turn everything upside down in life, especially in a nation that seems to be full of angry people and those seeking to be offended at every turn. Troubled and troubling times. Thanks for the post.
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