When exactly is it, that we stopped questioning ourselves? Society? Each other? When do we decide the crazy is acceptable? I’ve found myself suddenly going back to my high school thinking. I wanted to change and save the world then, and now? I want to do it now. I find myself going back to the literature that changed and moved me then, now. Where is our radicalism? Where is our outrage? Which we most especially need now more than ever! Our daughters have thrown off the vestige of our fight and the mantle of Betty Freidan in order to emulate Paris Hilton and MTV’s “My Super Sweet 16”. Our sons are now the soldiers of feminism. I consistently run into young men in their 20s that lament the lack of ‘real’ women that they were taught to respect by their single hard working mothers.
We’ve become so fucking inundated with information that we’ve actually become sheep. I remember clearly in the early 80s that we thought that is we knew more we would be more proactive. Now that we know everything, the second it happens; and at the same time we know almost nothing, we don’t care anymore. We just want to hide.
God, I just want to cringe. In high school, I was so outraged and incensed about everything, and then I got out in the world and had to deal with real life, and money, and surviving and I… it’s not that I didn’t care, I just was so busy trying to survive. Now I’m comfortable so I’m concerned again. And it’s not even just about recycling, it’s not even about Freeganing,
We’re such self involved assholes.
I’m watching “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”. I’m crying. For so many reasons. Oh how this book touched me when I first read it, how this movie touched me. I’m wishing so hard that I know where my copy of this book is, while being destroyed by how fabulous the movie was. We think we are so revolutionary right now. When I watch this movie I realize how fucking lame we are. The late 50s to mid 70s were actually revolutionary. Now we’re just twats.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the internet and all it’s done. But back then news was more weighted. We’ve become so used, so immune to everything. We have a greater voice but we’ve lost our timbre. In the 60s and 70s yes there was fluff and socialites, but our voice, are art had meaning. Our maybe it’s not different, maybe we are different, and we just pretend to care more and actually do less.
Cheney has become our Nurse Ratched, because lord knows GWB is a moron with no say and is out of control. But where is our McMurphy? Where is our Chief? Where is our hour of discontent?
We are so caught up with Lindsay, Britney, and Paris that we have lost our real moral outrage. Where is our civic duty and public outcry? We continue to steep ourselves in celbutantes to avoid social obligation. We put our fund raising and awareness in the hands of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. We crown our cele”brat”ies with our responsibility!
We obsess about dumbass Britney and her attack umbrella, and only remember Katrina victims when Brad Pitt Shows up. Celebrities aren’t the new reality! They are the new pull focus!
We’re such assholes, we forget so easily in such a short time. Believe me, I’m not casting aspertions, I’m the worst. Tonight, after many glasses of wine, I am all Green and holier than though. And tomorrow I will go to brunch with a friend and be a total douche.
I’m not thumbing my nose at America, because despite trying to change me ways, I am that person.
I want to be McMurphy in my small sphere of the world. But on a day to day basis, that’s really not easy. But I hope that my passion to oppose The Nurse Ratched of our society is strong enough to keep fighting.
He stood there, as a shield. He was a Holocaust survivor. He had survived the worst of the worst, known the worst ever, and he knew what he was doing now, was more important. He shielded his students, he told them to jump.
I obviously never knew him. I will now never, ever, forget him.
Professor Librescu.
The bravest man I never knew.
We went through something on April 16th, that we’ve never gone through before. I am of about 33 minds to the nth degree of it. Which is cowardly, because I don’t have to be anyone of them. This time it doesn’t touch me. This time I don’t know.
I don’t know any of these people (so far as I know). I know; I hope I will spend the rest of my life asking: What Would Professor Libresco would do? What would any of them have done? (I also ask that no one make one more of those bracelets) I would like to emulate him. I know myself, I know people, we’re lazy and off. I doubt I will often, but I hope when it is important I will. I will spend the rest of my life hoping I will, and probably forgetting. He was a much better person than I am, not because he tried to be. And not that I know that, I just know that he was a truly beautiful and amazing person from what his friends said, and I now know about him. I know for sure, I will never be that amazing.
I like to think that Professor Librescu immediately ascended to his ‘heaven’, and when he got there he said to alleged St. Peter or whomever guarded his gates: “I already survived the Holocaust, if I saved even one more life at my age in the last few minutes on that earth I’m happy. I gave my last minutes for one more child, I was ready… they weren’t, I happily gave all that to them. My family knows my love, my family knows my strength. My family is angry right now, but they need to be at peace, and being my family, they will. I did this for them, and they’ll get that. (Proefessor Librescu obviously didn’t say this, but I imagine he would, even not knowing him, he’d be more than okay with it. More than that, he’d want us to understand Cho.
I know again, I didn’t know him, but from what I’ve read he would want us the people to not want us to punish Cho. He’d want us to reach out to Cho, if Cho would have let us. Which he wouldn’t..
I “knew”. I have a brother, which could have been him, without the right help. He now has a family and is fine. Remember, this isn’t evil, it is subjective. This isn’t a admonition at his parents, it’s a plea. His parents knew. And they were scared.
Remember, this is the first time this has happened with this technology. Try to impress on your minds, the rescue workers had to listen to the cell phones of the dead ring over and over. And they had to think to themselves, do I answer it. Am I the one that says this to this parent.
Cho’s family needs to be surrounded now. Not in a territorial or angry stance. In a comforting and supportive stance. Did they probably know? No. Did they suspect? Maybe, almost probably but not like this. It sounds to me like they were quiet, scared immigrants. Before you blame his parents for letting him get this far, think about all the things your parents pretend not to know about you. Too much booze, too many partners, exposing yourself to too many risks. A lot of people died yesterday, doing those same things, without doing any of those things as the cause.
Please don’t turn what this one terribly horribly destroyed person did against a race. Look back on those before, he’s the first non-white that did this on our radar.
Let’s try to remember in the pain, what his family is feeling too? I’m not defending him. But please try to remember, out of the 33, he was one. His parents didn’t apparently know (let’s give them the benefit of the doubt) And now the parents and friends of those 32 will always blame them. Probably sue them. And they didn’t know. And now they think they should have, and now they blame themselves. And now they hurt more than he did because he couldn’t tell them.
Please let his parents and family walk in peace. Unless other reason to blame them is shown.
Don’t punish his family for what he did.
Let’s just help ourselves heal.
