Cassandro

Posted on October 16, 2002 in Anxiety Citizenship Crosstalk Neighborhood

Last year at this time, we worried because we felt that we could do nothing to stop terrorists from attacking us. This year we fret that we can do nothing to stop our government from doing whatever it pleases.

Several people have written about their lack of something to say about developments in Washington: Raye, Skits, kd, Jason, rainbow, chari, and wKenShow have — sometimes weakly — all registered opinions that can be classed as anti-war.

For some it is a break in form from their usual chatter about music, clubs, and films; for others, it is the cry of a Cassandra seeing as before the terrible future and helpless to do anything about it except prophesy, apparently unmovingly. (Scott has stopped his jeremiads because his father suffered a heart attack and died.) I remember how different I felt after 9-11 from most, including some of my closest friends: not enraged, but scared, very scared that people would lose their heads or, in the narrow interest of not feeling sad, do nothing as others wage war in their name.

It has so happened.

Even more disturbing is that Canadians have been averring that the United States is setting up to annex them, like Germany annexed the Sudentenland in 1938. Jennifer gasps when she reads about the U.S. reaction to Canada’s plan to decriminalize the possession of a joint.

The silence of others is notable, but understandable.

I wrote to Raye:

These times have been hard for me. As the darkness falls earlier each night, I wonder if this is a sign of the last days of humankind. They’ve got me — an agnostic — half-wondering if the Son of Man is going to come and purge the earth. I took too much xanax last week because of these fears: this week I am struggling to go it without the aid of medications except for my Prozac and my Metaformin.

Oh, everyone is wondering and hoping that if they just go about their lives — ferrying the kids to and from school, shuttling in and out of work, keeping to the boring tasks, drinking in front of the television — it will all pass safely. But you can tell there’s a sickness about: go to any place of joy and count the number of people congregated there. People stay home, away from happiness, because they fear that between their government and the terrorists, they will lose what they have.

I can’t fault most bloggers for not writing about it. I, for one, prefer to listen to the faint wind and the rumble of the auto engines. Blogs tell us that people still eat, fuck, drink, go to clubs, argue about movies, and think not on the affairs of congressional representatives, cabinet secretaries, presidents, and generals. Only the war-mongers — especially those pressing nebulous ideological or religious reasons for the upcoming shrapnel fall — annoy me.

Recently, I have kept my verbiage about events in Washington to a minimum, concentrating more on the splinter behaviors up front and at home. I keep my blinds down for privacy and keep an ear trained to the sounds coming through the open screen.

Here, kids are playing “Jackpot” in the street. Cars clank and squeal in and out of garages. Heavy clouds, impregnated by steam rising from the sea, hang in their second trimester over us, and the brush below remains as dry as it was before. My head keeps turning two ways: towards the possibility of fire along these metropolitan fringes and towards Washington, where a larger Holocaust of the Spirit destroys my hopes for leaders who work for the people, not for Big Oil.