Posted on by David Drucker

Back for the Final Sprint

When we catch our breath, I’ll go into detail on how great the South of France was, but then again, most peo­ple already know that it’s a beau­ti­ful, ele­gant and epi­cure­an delight, so I won’t go sprin­kling this blog with any more clichés. Besides, pic­tures are def­i­nite­ly worth a thou­sand words in this case, so if I get about 50 of them up on Flickr then I think our vaca­tion will be bet­ter shown.

The fact that it was so easy to for­get our immi­nent depar­ture from Cam­bridge made Sat­ur­day’s reen­try all the more of a shock (not to men­tion the 95°F heat and the cab had no famous Amer­i­can Air Con­di­tion­ing!). So we’ve thrown our­selves into pack­ing once more. It feels as if it will nev­er get done, and always be in a state of near chaos.

I’m still a bit jet lagged, get­ting up before dawn and near exhaus­tion at this hour (9:30 PM), and I’m a night per­son! So, I’ll make this entry a bit short.

I think I should acknowl­edge the new set of right-wing blog­gers who have dis­cov­ered me. Appar­ent­ly I’m just a man with­out a coun­try, because even Cam­bridge, MA is too Amer­i­can for me. I had no idea that ‘left­ists’ (which I guess, is what I am) had appro­pri­at­ed the term ‘lib­er­al’, and that 9/11 taught us that the left had destroyed the coun­try. There’s more, but just read the com­ments on the pre­vi­ous entry to get the rest of it.

OK, with­out get­ting too much into a debate, the way I see, it, 9/11 was indeed a tragedy. It was an awful, hor­ri­ble, hate­ful thing and the peo­ple behind it are the worst excus­es for human beings the plan­et has pro­duced for a long time. But the big­ger tragedy is that the US pop­u­lace got so scared, so screwed up, that they were will­ing to fol­low any­one who said that they had The Answer and would Make Them Pay for What They Did. The Repub­li­can lead­ers who claimed they knew what to do, in black and white, con­fi­dent and hero­ic lan­guage then took advan­tage of that vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and gulli­bil­i­ty to drag the coun­try into war with Iraq, which had noth­ing to do with the attack (yes, that’s a fact and we all know it now — only the tru­ly delud­ed dis­pute it) . So it’s a tragedy, but not the kind of tragedy of 9/11. It’s some­thing more far­ci­cal, show­ing how eas­i­ly an une­d­u­cat­ed and irra­tional pop­u­la­tion is per­suad­ed. It’s a tragedy that the coun­try I grew up in just does­n’t exist any more, not because of 9/11, but because of what the shock of those falling tow­ers allowed peo­ple to get away with.

Final thought: I’m think­ing about how to explain that I real­ly do feel as if I’m being forced out of this coun­try. If I stay and fight, I fear even­tu­al­ly that I’ll end up in jail or worse. I’m not con­tem­plat­ing any­thing ille­gal, but these days peo­ple are real­ly get­ting spir­it­ed away in the night, the way it used to be in the old Sovi­et Union. It’s most­ly just peo­ple who have some con­nec­tion to the Mid­dle East, like that poor soul who at one point worked for an Islam­ic char­i­ty that it was revealed had fun­neled funds to the ter­ror­ists.

Let me put it this way. It’s not as if I went off my rock­er and became an under­ground activist. But I feel like a pas­sen­ger in the sub­way car, sit­ting still on the tracks, but the train going by the oppo­site direc­tion is mov­ing with so much force and dom­i­nat­ing the win­dows, so I feel as if I’m drift­ing for­ward (we’ve all felt some­thing like this opti­cal illu­sion at some point in time). So I feel the coun­try lurch fur­ther and fur­ther to the right, and hence, I also feel that my place with­in it is less and less clear. If being Amer­i­can means being ultra-reli­gious, intol­er­ant, arro­gant and waste­ful, then I guess I don’t want to be one of those. Call me crazy.

7 Replies to “Back for the Final Sprint”

  1. LOL! Obvi­ous­ly your trip to France has been invig­o­rat­ing.

    There’s a lot to unpack in your analy­sis of post 9–11 Amer­i­ca. I don’t have the time to address all of it, but the ref­er­ence to peo­ple who have dis­ap­peared in the night is hilar­i­ous. Were you refer­ring to Mr Muntass­er of Logan Fur­ni­ture fame? He was­n’t spir­it­ed away in the night by black heli­copters David, he was arrainged in fed­er­al court for lying to immi­gra­tion offi­cials and the IRS among oth­ers. It’s no dif­fer­ent than our Irish Amer­i­can neigh­bors who used to do fundrais­ing for the IRA 20 years ago. It’s ille­gal!

    I checked with the own­ers of one of my favorite blogs and they have extend­ed an invi­ta­tion for you to do a guest post, per­haps on your expe­ri­ences in France recent­ly. It won’t exact­ly be the warm fuzzy echo cham­ber you are accus­tomed to, but I find most of the posters are civ­il and fair-mind­ed and it is an excel­lent chance for you to demon­strate your com­mit­ment to diverse view­points.
    What’s the worst that can hap­pen? Maybe we’ll talk you into stay­ing?

    Any­ways, check out http://discardedlies.com/ and I hope to see your guest post soon.

  2. Hey papi­joe! Good to see you as always.

    Wel­come back David. Thank you for your acknowl­edge­ment. I’m sor­ry to say that I still haven’t had the chance to read through your entire blog yet. I real­ly should though, should­n’t I? It real­ly isn’t fair for me to judge you based on a bio & a few posts. Per­haps you will take papi­joe up on the invi­ta­tion to post over at DL. Like he already said, most of the posters there will give you a fair shake. Some will give you a bit more than a shake, though I’m sure you can han­dle it. Of course there will be at least one rag­ing lunatic. How­ev­er, I promise that it won’t be me for a change.

    Per­haps you can write about the Amer­i­ca that you grew up in. I’d love to hear about it. If you have already writ­ten about the bliss­ful utopia of your youth, please for­give me as there is still much here that I haven’t dis­cov­ered yet. Sim­ply point the way.

  3. OK guys, as long as peo­ple are civ­il, I’m oblig­ed to be civ­il back.

    To be hon­est, the blog you men­tioned did­n’t real­ly appeal all that much to me — not because of the ‘echo cham­ber’ effect (and aren’t we all occu­py­ing echo cham­bers these days, because it would be near­ly ridicu­lous to say that Fox News is tru­ly ‘Fair and Bal­anced’). What was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­taste­ful was all the reli­gion. I may have been raised a Jew and was even bar-mitz­va­hed, but my feel­ings on reli­gion these days (Judi­asm, Chris­tian­i­ty, Islam, what-have-you) is that they are cer­tain­ly Not Worth It and I can glad­ly do with­out all of that mythol­o­gy and pious­ness. Maybe I’m miss­ing that God gene thingy, the arrange­ments of thymine and gua­nine that make one see the divine light, but that God stuff just does­n’t do it for me at all.

    I also have no trou­ble with euthana­sia at all, and all of those post­ings about how we let Schi­a­vo die just strike me as utter­ly ridicu­lous and child­ish, espe­cial­ly now that it’s entire­ly clear that she had tru­ly been a veg­etable all of these years. So those post­ings were also high­ly unap­pe­tiz­ing (much as I like veg­eta­bles).

    At any rate, after we get set­tled (and by the way, I doubt we are return­ing, although I’ll always lis­ten to argu­ments for us to recon­sid­er, and nev­er is a long, long time), I’d be intrigued with guest-post­ing at discardedlies.com. As for get­ting a fair shake, that’s what I would expect. Oth­er­wise, I sup­pose I’ll just have to return to the muck and mire of lib­er­al (excuse, me, left­ists — huh, does that make the oth­er side ‘right­ists’?) blogs…

  4. David I don’t get it. Are you say­ing that DL is a reli­gious blog. Per­haps you are con­fus­ing it with mine. One of the edi­tors of Dis­card­ed Lies is an agnos­tic the oth­er is Greek Ortho­dox. The posters there agree on noth­ing, reli­gion espe­cial­ly. Chris­t­ian kooks like me are gra­cious­ly tol­er­at­ed.

    Any­ways the invi­ta­tion was­n’t to read the blog, but do a guest post. Diver­si­ty of view­points, remem­ber?

  6. Good after­noon David,
    I read sev­er­al of your posts as I was enjoy­ing my lunch today.

    “Things I’ll miss:
    #6 Liv­ing in the Intel­lec­tu­al Capi­tol of North Amer­i­ca”

    LMAO! I sure hope that you did­n’t design their T‑shirts.

    (Sor­ry… I just could­n’t resist that one)

    BTW, I like the sub­way car anal­o­gy. I still sus­pect that you my be ‘off your rock­er’ though : )

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