I was at a meeting called to discuss what we could do locally to influence what is happening in Gaza, specifically, to bring about a ceasefire, a real, lasting one but, if one does no happen now, how to help get all monetary and military support of Israel ended, while, of course, having the Palestinians protected even from Hamas to get peace.
Members of a local community hoping to do what they can to end the horror in Gaza.
Having spent my adult life in the world that is made of such meetings on a variety of topics, I understand the almost exaggerated exuberance of some that will never end because it is the correct level of it, with, in some instances, there being some adaptation over time, called for by the realities unknown earlier.
People have varying levels of enthusiasm toward the minor parts of a larger issue but are united in the whole.
And there are those whose enthusiasm becomes extreme as they see things only from their point of view and begin to add anger to their enthusiasm when others are not at their level because of certain realities. Basically, for them, everyone is expected to be at their level of enthusiasm even though the level that person is on is based on their realities regardless of those of others.
Self-centered exuberance.
At a certain point of the meeting, when we had discussed public actions, like gathering in front of the local offices of various local, state, and national politicians throughout the area, letter writing and phone call campaigns to those politicians and to their constituents to get them involved, and where and when to hold stand-outs at highly visible areas, the suggestion was made to send an election message that we were not pleased by only voting for the down-ballot offices, but not that of president, if there was no ceasefire by November 5. The justification being that this would eliminate either candidate getting a landslide victory which would hold the implied message, “we are watching you”, the winner, who probably really does not care what anyone thinks after the election anyway..
I recalled back in my youth that, because Michael Dukakis had angered people by his not fulfilling his too many campaign promises, people chose to deny him a second landslide victory but a win nonetheless. Too many voters had that idea and sent the message in the uncoordinated, grassroots, leaderless action, and we got his opponent.
This could happen in this case, and my reality is that I spent my adult life in many places fighting for my rights as a Gay man and, regardless where I have Iived, from the most liberal to the most conservative, I finally got my Civil, Human, and Constitutional rights at the age of 61 when I returned to Massachusetts, and I do not want to take the chance of losing my rights, the cost of which I knew and paid, to make a point.
I was suddenly put in a position to have to choose between people in another country, and at my age I have seen that a country of concern at one moment does move on one way or another so an immediate concern, no matter how great at the time, becomes a misty memory or piece of rewritten history, and people in this country I know have suffered for the life of this country and were ignored and stood to return to the days and conditions we fought to get away from depending on the outcome of this election.
For that reason, I informed those present that I will not leave the president-bubble empty. It would be a betrayal of friends and loved ones.
I was accused of being pro-genocide.
I was so typical. I have no problem watching a genocide take place because I do not identify with these people because they are not like me and this difference is accentuated because I see things from my privileged position, and understanding the realities of a genocide is foreign to me.
However, it was a useless attempt at a guilt trip.
Although for me my being in college, along with my Draft Lottery number being 364 and the old guy at the town hall who had taken my draft registration card so that I had fulfilled the law by filling out the card as he had done his duty in accepting it, then skirting the law by placing it in the shoe box with all the other registration cards to be discovered after the war was declared over because he had fought in the “war to end all wars” but was part of a system sending kids to a war that should not exist, I was spared, my peers faced the Draft immediately upon graduation.
The Class of 1968 graduated to death.
That could have been me.
A number of years later, after connecting dots, missing and seeing signs, resolving inner turmoil, and all that goes with self-acceptance and coming out, when I finally accepted my realities and entered the Gay Community to live the life that was me, my Welcome Wagon Hostess greeting me at the door was an epidemic with AIDS in the basket.
From 1981 through 1990, AIDS took the lives of 100,777 persons with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), “weeds” pulled by God to clear the Garden with the help of the evangelicals and conservative politicians who wanted their votes and refused to save lives in order to get them. Almost one third of these deaths, 31,196 people, were reported during 1990. At that point the allowed spread of the disease became apparent. By 1988, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection/AIDS had become the third leading cause of death among men 25-44, and was estimated to be second, surpassing heart disease, cancer, suicide, and homicide by 1989.
I entered the Community just in time to see the people I should have gotten to know begin to die away because the government wanted us gone. I do not have to see pictures of a genocide somehere else to know what one is and what it is like, whether a bang or a whimper. I saw one. I got through it. My losses were not the people in pictures, but the people.
It is from a position of privilege that someone dismisses another’s experience with a genocide because they choose not to see it as what it was.
Genocides do not always use explosives.
Carefully consider the importance of this coming election and how it will affect you for the rest of your life. Be careful not to become a one issue voter without seeing the full effect of that position on the totality of your life.
If the people who were in power during the first genocide return to power they very well may try another way to commit a quiet genocide and, just as the first time, there will be no guarantee that convenience will not let it happen again.
But, it has been decided that I don’t know what genocide is.
And DO NOT let anyone attempt to guilt trip you into voting against your own best interest, your best self, to keep them happy.
Separate head from heart and empathy from suicide. Those with little to lose and have always had what they have can easily advise others to lose everything they finally have.
VOTE FOR YOU
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