..: So in the midst of the MMW-struggle today, mapping out the various elements of Alex Haley’s Roots, we began to conjecture about a so-called atrocity index, some statistical mean of brutality you might use to assess each era of humanity… that is, what periods of time might represent the greatest peaks of human suffering? An interesting, and potentially trick-, question to pose to the podlings, as they live their insular lives of post-pubescent frolick. The answers were generally good, in that I mean right; after all, ’tis a college, and these are young ones looking to find fault with their parents, and their parents’ parents (ad infinitum). But, perhaps unsurprisingly, no one knew one whit about Darfour, the genocide occurring, the 70,000 people dead since March. Maybe I can’t fault them– after all, in one of my rare attempts at political proselytization, I accosted my sainted parents, and they knew nothing about Darfour either… though they mustered extreme contention concerning Kerry’s claim for more purple heart grandeur.

I do not claim to be much of a political chap– it has taken me many years to get serious about my voting privileges. But teaching History courses has certain… ramifications; if nothing else, it instills a whisper in my heart that encourages me to look up from the books and look around a bit. I would like to think that it has helped me pick out the bullshit– the agendas that linger behind all the strange manipulation of word and image that they (you know who I am talking about) keep pumping into the aquarium of our psycho-cultural lives. Perhaps it has made me a bit paranoid, but I doubt that: after all, what can explain our oh-so-American studied blindness to the world outside our protected coasts? Is it Orwellian?

Well, no– it isn’t exactly. Here’s what I think it is: we’re fat and happy. We are given just the right amount of freedom to convince us we’ve got it good (and oh– we do have it good), but not so much that we get to meddling. We’re laced with just the right amount and– more importantly– kind of fear: that it is a dangerous world out there, and if we just let the good people take care of business, we’ll make it through ok and we will not lose our way of life, which of course includes an inalienable right to plastic-wrapped beef and cable television.

Shit… as I write this, I am so self-conscious: I feel like a younger, less-able me, writing an immature hack on the very world that created me, enabled me, allowed me to slither out these letters off my keyboard and through my fast cable-internet connection. Like I am publishing a ‘zine, middle class urban digital white fluffy political-angst. I am aware of the problems inherent in this. But I forge ahead anyway. I have no true gift for the editorial, the political– some out there would agree, telling me to stick to the poetic ramblings and optimistic transcendentalisms. And I will, but… give me a break. Read the fucking news, kids. Looking the other way, or never looking up, doesn’t make it go away, it lets it happen more. Please don’t make me write stuff like this anymore.