Oh look, it's Dietrich

It's nights like this that I'm proud to be an American. Or something.

Tonight, my beloved imlad and I kept to a tradition we'd been exercising for a few years. We have these friends who live in Beacon Hill, and from the rooftop of their apartment building, you get a spectacular view of Boston's fireworks display.

Now these friends are people imlad knew before he met me. That is, well, they're mundanes. Mind you, they're awesome mundanes. Smart, funny, interesting people, into ancient Greece and modern art, who invite people over who are usually the same sorts of mundanes. We are, in a sense, their pet freaks, and we enjoy being so, and now and then we meet people there who look like they could be pushed over the edge with a feather.

This time, though, the gathering was smaller. Our favorite couple there was now a single, the wife having split and moved to Atlanta. The cooler people we'd met in the past were absent. Our host's busybody older sister and her obnoxious husband were there. We had some chit chat and some nice food, and then headed up to the roof to await the fireworks display.

All around were the other denizens of the building, most of whom seemed to be young and annoying, the types who yell inane things like "YEAH baby! DO it!" every time a big firework explodes. And as I sat and waited for the festivities to begin, I realized a profound truth that doesn't often occur to me anymore in my life: I was bored.

I had spent the afternoon surrounded by people I know and love. My people; my community. I'm very lucky to spend so much time in their embrace, enveloped in their love, sharing food and booze and touch and watching their kids run around underfoot. I don't think I express my gratitude often enough for the fact that, essentially, I'm shielded from the world by a different, smaller world that is being created, day by day, by the awesome people who surround me.

And here I was, on a rooftop in Beacon Hill, surrounded by the kind of people who would bring a television out onto a roofdeck so as, presumably, to watch the fireworks on television and in real life at the same time.

As if to make the final point, the fireworks began. And while at first they were very lovely as always, as the show went on, it began to generate so much smoke that eventually the fireworks couldn't be seen at all. The finale was a series of degenerate booms ringing out over a cheering crowd, who were probably actually crying out their dying breaths before they asphyxiated. Even the one thing that seemed like a guaranteed good time failed us this year, the spectacle we'd come for literally lost in a puff of smoke.

We flowed down the stairs and flopped on the couch, where we watched the post-processing on the local news while we waited out the first wave of people leaving the Esplanade. After a hyper-cheery report on the just-finished fireworks display, which apparently thrilled everyone to death (maybe literally) in spite of the fact that nobody could see it, the news did an editorial piece on why people in Massachusetts are really patriotic, in spite of the fact that Massachusetts is one of the bluest states in the nation.

Let me just say that again so it sinks in.

Even though Massachusetts is a really blue state, its citizens love celebrating their patriotism!

Because we all know that liberals and Democrats hate America.

So this was the idea of the report. The substance? Showing the happy people gathered on the Esplanade in front of the Hatch Shell, bedecked with styrofoam Liberty spikes and waving the American flag, smiling empty, vapid smiles while listening to the Pops grind out Tchaikovsky for the nth time (a tune, by the way, commemorating Russia's defeat of Napoleon in 1812, not our defeat of the British) while fireworks explode over their heads (or at least that's what it sounded like). Then, showing people in other cities, protesting the government's actions! Gasp! Horrors! People who disagree with the government!

How unpatriotic. Juxtapose that with a heartwarming story about a father and son who just came home from serving in Iraq together (they're so proud), and there's your dose of news for the night.

By this point I was so depressed I started to fall asleep, so we said our goodbyes and walked out onto the street, where a sinister police helicopter was circling, shining a searchlight into the alleys below. Streetlights flashed and the sidewalks swarmed with happy patriots trying to return to their homes. Outside of the Charles MGH station, these masses stood, waiting for the armed guards to let them pass in groups into the station.

Yes, really.

On the train home, my feet aching, I stood listening to the conversations around me. A loud man behind me said, "That's your problem, you're so negative about everything. That's why I hate my family. I hate them, because they're always so negative about everything, you know?!"

Do people even listen to what comes out of their mouths?

I don't have broadcast TV at home. The local news is telling people that dissent is unpatriotic, that they should be afraid to walk the streets at night, that being an American is about war and triumph and F15 flyovers and not about what freedom actually means. The circus we go through every year at the Hatch Shell celebrates all of that, and decides that the Raging Grannies in Portland Oregon or wherever are a bunch of commies who hate America.

And a 16-year-old looking kid stands outside the closing doors of a train and says, to someone safely crammed inside the car, "I'll kill you. I swear it. If I see you around, I'll kill you." I watch his dead eyes, flickering cold blue light like TV screens, as the train pulls painfully out of the station.

Back in Davis Square we meet somebody we know almost instantly; she comments on imlad's kilt as we mount the escalator. On the brick-lined street, a passing kid is singing "Holiday in Cambodia."

At last we're home, and I feel again the tenuousness of my position, the baby-fine but strong filament on which I soar in love. Those threads that weave themselves over me and my loved ones, in a web that I wish weren't necessary.

But it is. Because every time I venture into the larger world I'm reminded of one of the things that depresses me, and that I so wish weren't true: the vast majority of people are sheep. Docile, stupid, reactionary, ugly, greedy, empty-eyed consumers fueled by beer and fear. They're living the American nightmare. And only a very few will awaken in their lifetimes.

As we rounded the last corner to our house, a bumper sticker on a parked car caught my eye. Incongruously but piercingly, it said only, "Sift."

[Scene: we've recently eaten pizza for dinner, D's containing both olives and an abundance of anchovies]

D: Could you please do me a huge favor?

K: What?

D: Could you get me a huge glass of water or two?

K: Yeah, you just had all that salt.

D: I feel like I went down on Lot's wife or something.

Okay, it's long. But if you haven't yet, read this NY Times article about Bush, faith, and what makes his particular brand of leadership work for so many people. It's frightening - possibly more so than anything I've seen yet, and contains many private exchanges between Bush and advisors - many of whom are no longer invited to the White House because they question him too much.

EDIT: The following was the quotation from the article that I wanted to use. Thanks, cos!

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
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More anti-Franceism, more hatred toward Muslims, more clueless protestors! Yay! I can never get enough!

So the sidewalk across the street from my work seems to be a popular spot for idiot protestors. Today it was a Jewish group, once again protesting against France. When I emerged from the building, they were yelling, "End the hate! End the hate!" Good idea, I thought. Then a woman handed me this leaflet. Watch carefully for the hidden message, kids!

***
France: Arrest the Arab Thugs

On the Sabbath afternoon of March 22, three French Jewish children were beaten by racist thugs.

The incident took place during a massive anti-war anti-America protest. Among the "peace" marchers were French Arabs who marched carrying large sticks and wearing keffiyas. They spotted a Jewish boy on a sidewalk and beat him. The Muslims then raced down a street leading away from the line of march, shouting 'there are Jews over there.' When they reached the door of the JCC (the Centre Benard Lazare), they beat two more fourteen-year-old Jewish boys arriving for a Sabbath youth group meeting.

The marauding Muslims actually shouted anti-Semitic verses from the Koran as they beat the Jewish boys. They were attempting to batter down the door of the Jewish Centre when police arrived.

No arrests have been made despite the presence of numerous witnesses and the existence of television film shot by a French news crew that filmed the entire incident.

This attack is far from isolated. There were four times as many violent racist attacks in France in 2002 as in 2001, a wave of violent assaults on Jews not seen in Europe since before WWII.

We demand that the French government arrest the Arab thugs who beat up Jewish children.

***
Now, I won't even go into the little dig at anti-war protestors and the implication that this war is just. But I did go up to the little crowd and address the people who seemed to be in charge.

"Excuse me," I said. "I just got handed this leaflet. Can I ask you something?

Sure I could, they said.

"This is terrible, of course, and of course these people should be arrested. But does it strike you as ironic at all that while you're over here chanting 'End the hate, end the hate,' your literature refers to 'Arab Thugs' and 'Marauding Muslims,' and implies that all Muslims are bad??" (I wanted to say, "implies racism toward Muslims and obliquely implicates that religion and thus all of its members, rather than a small group of zealots, in the current wave of violence toward Jews?" But I don't think that fast on my feet.)

To their credit, I got some mumbles, an agreement from an older gentleman who said he had objected to the language in the leaflets, and no angry response.

Still. Calling for the arrest of these racist scum while at the same time pointing out as many times as possible that these racist scum are Arabs, down to describing their dress and hypocritically pointing out the hatespeech in the Koran? (Have they looked at their book lately?)

"Reactionary tactics don't make for very effective protests," I called over my shoulder as I crossed the street.

I know I'm probably going to get skewered and roasted on a spit for this, but it just made me hopping mad.