(no subject)
Sometimes I wake up in the morning and wonder if we are at the crest of some massive geopolitical changes which will dictate the future course of human history. Perhaps the world has always been this unstable, except I was too young before to realize it, or understand the dynamics behind it. I remember when I was in 2nd grade, and my teacher told us that they had declared the Gulf War, and tried to explain it to the class. Iraq was the bad guy, and they were invading Kuweit. We had to stop them before they became like the Nazis during WWII. Now of course, as a 7 year-old, I didn't know too much about WWII either except that some guy named Hitler was really bad and tried to take over the world, but we had stopped him in some almost Ninja Turtle-esque sort of way (the closest contact I had ever been to war) I knew a lot of people had died - it was true because we had a memorial statue beside the municipal library. I knew about the Korean War because my grandfather had been in it; I wasn't quite sure who were the good guys and who were the bad guys in that one, but surely my grandfather would naturally be on the good side, because he was my grandfather. You don't really question those things when you are young. As an 80s child, I never heard about war going on in Central and South America, but I knew there was a rainforest there and it was being cut down. People in Africa were poor, but you never heard about AIDS cause at that time it was just a "gay problem," which is why my dad's uncle died from it. I asked my mom once what U.S.S.R. meant, and why they chose a name that was so long, and what "soviet" and "socialist" was. My mom, the queen of oversimplification, who knew absolutely nothing about politics, said that they were crazy over there and walked around the streets with big guns, and anyone could get shot. Some children in that part of the world were also very sick because something exploded and now they all had cancer. When my parents came back from their trip to Acapulco in '90, my mom told me that over there, some little boys had no shoes and sold Chicklets because they didn't have enough money for food, and that some people lived in little sheds without electricity or running water. A few years later, in '94, I also remember watching the news and not understanding why the U.S. was angry at us for buying products from Cuba, since it wasn't any of their business, and the Cubans had never done anything to us. At that age, I was completely oblivious to the fact that my country had just signed the NAFTA treaty, outsourcing thousands of Canadian jobs to sweatshops in Ciudad Juárez, where young woman would then be kidnapped, raped, and killed after their exhaustive 12-hour workdays.
I somehow wish I still had that childlike innocence. If I didn't understand or hear about what was going on, maybe it wouldn't break my heart so much to know what's going on in the world, what a mess we've made of it, and how cruel we can be to one another. But alas, I do read the papers, browse through political blogs, and watch the 9 o'clock news. I must say; this world causes me so much pain. I say this from the convenience of my private bachelor apartment, complete with small refrigerator, decent-sized closet, and indoor plumbing - and I am aware of that. But I often wonder how am I going to explain this to my children. Should I tell them the following:
- we went to Afghanistan because some people from there crashed planes into some buildings and killed a lot of people
- there is a war in Iraq because rich countries want the oil there so they can make more money
- a lot of people die of AIDS and hunger in Africa because no one wants to help them because they are Black and they are poor
- the U.S. wants North Korea and Iran to get rid of their bombs, but they want to keep their own
- Israel killed a lot of innocent people because Bush, Blair, and Harper said that it was okay
- People in Cuba are sad because they have to stand in line all the time for chicken, and can't leave the country, not even on vacation
- In France, some people from other races who live there are angry and break things because the French aren't nice to them
- In most countries, two women or two men who love each other can't get married or raise children because some people believe that it concerns them
- The rainforests are being cut down, and animals extinct because we like mahogany coffee tables, and Jennifer López wants a leopard-skin coat
- People in China work very hard all day for very little money so that you can have you can have a free toy with your Happy Meal
What AM I going to tell my children?