I made a very stupid mistake today.

[camwyn]

It'd have been just as stupid if I'd read Reuters Newswire, or the New York Times; it just happened to be the BBC News because I trust them to tell me the truth. The British tell it like it is - the news sources over here pander like two-dollar whores. So I thought I'd check out a few world news articles. Try to avoid unnecessary reading of stuff related to September 11th, because most of that would just be the same material over and over.

Big mistake.

Every news division I clicked on - Health, Technology, Asia-Pacific, South Asia, UK, you name it - carried one or more news stories to the same effect, namely:

People hate Americans.
People hate America.
America got hurt last year, but (pick one) they deserved it/they engineered it/they did it to themselves on purpose to justify themselves going to war/they're a bunch of powermongering snots anyway so why should we care about them.
All Americans are like their President and should not be trusted.
Americans are dishonest, self-absorbed, disgusting people who want nothing more than to spread their capitalistic, hedonistic, utterly amoral way of life over every corner of the globe at the cost of every other way of life in sight.

You get the idea. The link from Health was a story about the psychological impact of September 11th around the world, or something like that. From Technology it was a story about Iraqi hackers launching attacks at American systems in protest of the coming War of Dubya's Inadequacy. Asia-Pacific? China and/or North Korea, mad at us for their own reasons (China somewhat justified; North Korea I ignored because the North Korean government is institutionalised madness if ever I saw it). South Asia? That's the category that includes India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. UK? British Muslims. Between that and Iraq cheerfully announcing that we had deliberately crashed the planes into the Towers ourselves so that we could go out and stomp all over Iraq and how every Arab on the face of the planet ought to rise up and destroy us RIGHT NOW or at least in revenge for anything bad we might do to Iraq, well...

This is directed to the people these news stories reference. If somehow you're reading this, I would appreciate it if you'd listen, because:

I am SICK AND TIRED of you people hating me. Of ANY of you people hating me. Don't you DARE tell me that you don't hate me, you hate my country or my government or my way of life - you hate me. It is impossible to hate a group but not hate its members. Sit back and look injured all you want; smugly console yourself with the knowledge that you are somehow morally superior to the great festering morass you think this country is; whatever. When you do that, you are hating me, individually, a lone and solitary person who is one of two hundred and seventy million, just as much as you're hating that entire two hundred seventy million. And you know what?

I never hated you. I never hated any of you. I was angry when I heard about Iraq invading Kuwait and killing people, sure, but I had been raised to believe that civilized countries and civilized people had means of settling problems other than blowing heads off. So when the invasion of Kuwait happened, I was angry, because that wasn't the way things were supposed to be. I was sick to my stomach when I saw the Towers fall, but I didn't hate the ones who did it. I wanted to grab them by their collars and scream "why?". That's all. I wanted an answer. I wanted to know why they hated so many people so much that they killed them without so much as a warning, so much as a message. I wanted to slap Jerry Falwell and his minion whose name I have forgotten when they said that lesbipagahomoabortifeminism was responsible for America no longer being under divine protection, but I didn't hate them. I thought they were stupid. I thought they were mean. I thought they were cruel. I thought they were being hatefully inconsistent and allowing their own assessments of what was morally unacceptable to overrule what really was morally unacceptable. So God gets angrier over two women banging each other than over Africans by the hundreds of thousands being enslaved, beaten, tortured, raped, sold and killed? Abortion causes God to allow people to invade this country, but slavery and the Civil War weren't enough to make him mad? I don't think that's a God with his priorities straight, and I don't want anything to do with that god, and I don't want anything to do with people who have that kind of priority. But that's all; I didn't hate them for saying it, I just wanted to tell them how stupid they were, then walk away.

I am an American. I am a woman. I am an independent human being. I am a Christian. I believe that human beings ought to love one another and act on that love, live their lives as if they truly cared what happened to one another. I drive a seven-year-old, battered-up, American-made car. I give blood without caring who gets it. I give money because people in other countries - be it Argentina, Iraq, China, Angola, I don't care - need what I have and I cannot be there to give it to them myself. I have read a fifth of the English translation of the Koran and I admire any holy book that exhorts its readers to pursue greater understanding of the world around them. I admire the art of more nations than I can count, and I can make mujaddarah fit to please any Lebanese grandmother. I do not drink or take drugs; I do not smoke; I am celibate. I honor my mother and my father and my grandparents.

I have never - NEVER - done the horrible things the world seems inclined to accuse all Americans of doing. The next time you plan on opening your mouth to denounce the filthy scumwallowing prostitute Americans and say they deserve anything the Middle East wants to unleash on them, I want you to remember this:

I am one American who has nothing to do with your idea of how degenerate Americans are. I am one decent American, and all I want from you is an explanation of why you hate me so much.


And now that I've ranted, I'm going to be quiet. I've said about enough for today and I fully expect to hear from people telling me how wrongheaded I am, but for now I've got work to do, and then I have to leave to work at the memorial concert. I'll be back later.