Rocky Mountain Oysters for all Americans!

T-money thinks that my blog is veering too far away from the jocular and that I risk losing my readership (ha ha) talking about politics and gods, but I just can't help myself right now. As much as I like writing about my dismal adventures in breastland and geeky love of Battlestar Gallactica, I've been really consumed lately with the elections and ongoing humanitarian crises in the world. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with performing Rachel Corrie, and feeling chastened and inspired by her activism. It also has to do with teaching, as I excoriate my classes to vote and think and am always pushing responses to the question of how we move from reaction to action in what seems like a paradoxically fast-paced and static global community. I can't keep asking the question if I'm not willing to make the move myself.

I also just finished reading The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell by John Crawford, which gives an insider account of the war in Iraq from an American infantryman's perspective. It's addictive and sad, and a little gross, too. You start to understand how basically okay guys commit violent acts against the Iraqi people; Crawford and his peers were (are) scared most of the time. Their armor is heavy and decrepit, they're underfed and hot and always at risk of being shot at by snipers or blown up by a roadside bomb. Their wives and girlfriends leave them, their children are born without them, they come back--when they come back, and their leaves are often extended--to a flawed veterans system that does not guarantee education or good healthcare. If you felt like you were in life-threatening danger all of the time, and (let's be honest here) for no practical purpose, don't you think you would eventually get angry and paranoid, shooting blindly at every perceived threat? Crawford's account has increased my empathy for American soldiers, even though I still abhor the civilian casualties, looting, torture, ignorance, and rapes (of Iraqi women and female soldiers) that many of them are guilty of.

Reading and talking about the war, listening to heartbreaking reports about Chinese earthquakes victims on NPR, being in the play, and discussing issues of torture, race, food, slavery and media voyeurism with my classes is making it hard to keep ignoring the inequities and nuances of life in 21st century America.

One of the issues that has been most troubling to me in the last couple of days is Hillary Clinton's recent pandering to the racist inclinations of some blue-collar Democrats, for example, in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Rather than saying, "Thank you for your support, but don't vote for me based on race, because doing so perpetuates harmful stereotypes," she's actually using Obama's blackness as leverage. I understand that politics is a dirty game and you take what you can get in order to win, but this is terribly disappointing. Clinton is benefiting from and reinforcing an embarrassing aspect of the American sociopolitical landscape, instead of advocating for equality. This is especially ironic given her position as a minority candidate, and the (I assume) intended consequences of her domestic policies being an equalizing of opportunities and well being for all Americans of all backgrounds. I don't think Clinton is a bad person, and I'm impressed by her audacity (has Obama trademarked that word yet?) and ambition to be the first really serious female contender for the presidency. I wish I could vote for her. But I can't; not only is her foreign policy agenda far too militaristic for my liking, but she wants to win more than she wants to be a voice for what is good. It's scary to face down a state full of bigots and say, "Your votes, if they are racially determined, hurt me, and they hurt America." It takes bravery and balls.

It's time to grow some cahones, America.