ICE’s impact in US’ cities today is similar to what happened in Iraq twenty-two years ago.
This just occurred to me as I was having a morning chat with my niece, over coffee. With me, the way my brain is wired, one thing (topic) leads quickly to another. Trump calls this “the weave”.
[In session, Psych-girl will refocus me back to the fundamental topic–my health and well-being. However, she does get it and understands the way I am. Which does abate my intellectual loneliness … temporarily.]
Setting that aside 🙂 it’s (ICE and war) worth thinking about. Regardless of which side of the divide, any divide, you’re on. War is hell is a universal fact, except if you’re a sociopath or sadist. Can we agree on that?
The Imprint of War
was an essay I wrote twenty-two years ago and published in my first book Sounding Off In Echo Hills: Essays, Letters, & Arguments. The essay was inspired by an article I read from an embedded journalist during the Iraq war. At the time, I had just shuttered my bookstore in Evergreen, Colorado. Because of lack of traffic and sales following 9/11.
Most people then, as now, (even readers) were incurious as to the ultimate causes of events. We in the US were at war, having just been ruthlessly attacked. We wanted to feel safe. Nearly everyone was for the war. I wasn’t.
Then, I was very much a liberal, progressive, feminist, Democrat. Now, the opposite. I’ve switched sides. Which makes me … ? Unmoored? Adrift? No; but yes–intellectually lonely. Because today you have to pick a side and adhere to their beliefs/values. Maybe that’s always been the case.
Then and now
war is hell, especially for children. They cannot pick a side and are totally helpless, dependent on powerful others. It doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong; but war’s impact imprints them as all trauma does all of us. (To varying degrees.)
In Conclusion
Now as then, I want this war to end. The “War on Terror” has now come home to our American cities. I don’t think it’s been like this since the Civil War. Moreover, that ‘s 160 some years ago. Eight generations! Before we even gave names to generations.
This is crazy. And, it’s something I can’t work out in therapy. It’s not about me. I don’t live in the war zone.
In Thomas Sowell’s book A Conflict of Visions (1987), he argues that there are two basic world views–restrained and unrestrained. The former is that human nature is fixed–unchangeable. Selfish. The later is that that is untrue. Because people are malleable and perfectible. It’s that old nature/nurture debate.
Sowell’s not wrong. However, the argument is, ironically, simplistic. Nevertheless, it is a good place to start. We as individuals are far more complex. Which is really far too complicated, ambiguous, and time consuming for people to grasp, especially politicians. And academics. And scientists, engineers, etc.. We like right and wrong. Additionally, we believe that right makes might and will fight because of that.
And but so, I’m scared. And sorry. ICE’s impact on US’ cities is like war, and war is hell.