Thirteen Short Conversations About Nothing

Hastily assembled, somewhat plagiarized, poorly constructed........

1) On being liberal or conservative - I am fortunate to have been formed by conservatives and forgiven by liberals. Embarrassed to vote Democrat, ashamed to vote Republican.

2) On being Catholic once (sort of) - I remember fighting with priests as a boy, convincing myself I was an atheist. Later, after meeting Father Bill Talentino in Virginia who was doing social just work, and a dozen or so other priests working in poor missions in third world countries, I lamented my diversion from spirituality and began to build the real foundation of my faith. I am not Catholic, but I am connected.

3) On leadership - It is all about the separation of my ego. Divorcing what is in my interest from that which benefits others, then leveraging the residual grit, stubbornness, and courage to fight the right battles. 

4) On friends - Few and far between, forever forgiven, forever familiar.

5) On alcohol and drugs - The epitome of our collective selfishness. The distillation of evil deemed disease to ease our guilt and to look past crime, child abuse, and despair. 

6) On change - There are two kinds of new people who "cause" trouble in a system: Those who bring it in and those who expose it once they arrive. 

7) On wisdom - The ability to recognize the value in things.

8) On serendipity - Like looking for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer's daughter (Penthouse Magazine, circa 1970's).

9) On Misters Rauner and Trump - Bullies and sissy boys.

10) On Hillary Clinton - I once thought the evil press only published pictures of her frowning. Now I don't think I like that which lies underneath the frown.

11) On honesty - Too often confused with solipsistic convenience.

12) On aging - Ear hair grows faster than my IRA; I wake up with pains with no recollected attributable causes; I care far less for money and I find less things I want to waste said money on; and the notion of passing away before I change the world scares the heck out of me.

13) On love - I pray for reincarnation.............

To A Few Of My Conservative Friends, To Whom I Am Tired Of Discussing Terrorism With

A few notes before I proceed - I am tired, sick, and oddly in the mood to write this post. I do not support terrorism, but I am not sure I don't understand it. As a Muslim, I decry cowardly acts such as 9/11, but I am a little worn thin by the folks on the other side of it who use it as a tool to mask their own selfishness and barbarism. They say we have freedom of speech in this country, let's see.......

I am probably more conservative than I am liberal, thanks to a few years living in a refugee camp with folks from a civil war. Succinctly put, they taught me that there were wicked people in the world that needed to be stopped by force, not coddled by diplomacy. It reminded me of living in those cheap rentals over the Midwest, cowering in an empty corner as my drunken step-father raged through the place. When I finally stood up and fought him, I lost, but whatever pain he inflicted was far less than the humiliation of my silence, my cowardice. Yes an eleven year old is a coward if he hides away while his mother is beaten or his sister is terrified or worse. The liberals in my universe of course tried to comfort me, probably believed I shouldn't have felt any shame. But I did - when someone takes up in his hands all that you have, all that you love and fear and humbles and crushes you with it, there is little left but the emptiness of shame.
It was almost forty years before I felt that helplessness again; this time at the hands (and rifle barrels) of young Israelis bent on toying with me while I tried to go into mosques to pray - indifferently exposing me to just a bit of the animosity and ugliness inside them that they project so well on the Palestinians around them. And to be sure, mine was just a taste of this madness. I would love to take any freedom-loving American over there, let them find out why they believe it is so important that the military is not the only armed populace in their society, find out what it is like to have a 19 year old hold your life in the balance at any given moment of the day, or maybe just leave them at home, knock down their houses, move them fifty miles away and tell them they can never return "home." Or maybe have them explain how a group of people could displace them over night, claiming the land that has a cemetery with five generations of their family buried in it.
Really, what I am most tired of is the dishonesty that often precedes the questions about terrorism. An artful artifice of sorts, masking the motive that dares not reveal itself: "We think those people should just disappear quietly." Whether it fulfills a prophecy or profitability, it is amazing how a good part of the world cares so little about these Palestinians who face daily realities that are completely anathema to the American ideals I was taught. Well, given that they probably won't just go away, what should they do? What would an American do?
In this modern world, there is inevitable conflict. How does a group, outnumbered and out resourced, defend itself today? In a military state where the general populace feels disenfranchised and oppressed, how should they assert their basic rights? Imagine an American reality where a particular ethnic group could expect their homes to be demolished regularly with no recourse, no recompense. Imagine a world that would respect you only if you slid silently into your oblivion in order to spare it some uncomfortable introspection.
While growing up in that household filled with violence and shame, I was often astounded by the grown-ups that stood away and let it happen. These adults were family members, school officials, social workers, even policemen. There were times the police were called to our house and they cautiously dealt with my step-father, as afraid of him as I was I supposed. On most occasions, they postured a bit then let him return back into the house, not concerned with the consequences that would follow. I realized early that I was on my own. When I did begin to fight back, eventually prevailing, those same mature witnesses looked the other way - fair is fair I guess, but perhaps not in Palestine though.
As I have said before, I should have killed my step-father back then, before those more terrible things followed my occasional beatings and periodic degradation - things I won't speak of here. If I had killed him with whatever means I could have summoned, would I have been a terrorist? Am I a terrorist now for promoting this retroactive posture? Am I a terrorist when the occasional thought passes my mind that killing one Israeli soldier would do more good than trying to help teach a hundred displaced Palestinian children in a desolate refugee camp (that point when my logic and my ethics collide uncomfortably and repulsively)?
It is an ever-coalescing notion that I as a Muslim am becoming an enemy to my own country. Whether it is Michele Bachmann, the state of Kansas, or the Republican convention featuring a Zionist Rabbi and the Democratic convention voting Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, I see the alignment forming. Looking down this road, I wonder what my recourse would be when a bulldozer or tank shows up at my home because my grandson threw a rock at armored soldier, or if the space became needed for some zealous Christian converts who liked the property. If my home wasn't very nice, would they put a thirty-foot high wall around it? Would my religion trump my right to bear arms? Would I be expected to relocate to Mexico or Canada? No, surely not in America! Why then anywhere else in the world?
So, given that we won't suggest the Palestinians turn away and die, what is their recourse? What are the rules of engagement? Of war? When negotiations fail, and you are hopelessly outnumbered, what do you do?
I don't know the answers to these honest questions, but I do know I am weary of the conversations I have about the byproducts of injustice and racism. When you oppress people, when you treat them inhumanely, you introduce them to the evil you may one day reap. Let me be clear - evil is evil, and anyone who engages in it is evil and unsupportable. It is a dangerous game to begin to quantify its effects, particularly when you initiate it - I would never say or believe a terrorist act is justified, but I would be less than honest if I said I could not imagine what motivated it. And if I would have killed my step-father forty years ago, I would suspect there would be consequences, lest our society unravel into a anarchistic chaos as Martin Luther King admonished us.
We are a nation that worships justice, that has attained a fair measure of it, and maybe no longer appreciates its principles. I simply cannot believe that what has evolved in Palestine is compatible with the fair and equitable notions lodged securely in the freedom-loving hearts of most of the people I know here in the United States. Therefore, please quit asking me about terrorism because I am a Muslim and start asking me about the basic and unalienable rights of all people everywhere, and the consequences of looking the other way, or worse yet, colluding in the suppression of the freedom of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of anyone.

I do not support terrorism.