IMAGINE

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 19 Feb 2009

David Pérez

I imagine being in a room of maimed, deformed and tortured Iraqis, Afghans and Palestinians, accompanied by widows and orphans mourning because their entire family has been exterminated. I imagine this roomful of walking dead sitting around while my friends and I discuss how “realistic” we in the U.S. must be with our electoral politics, how our expectations need to be “practical,” how peace is just so damn “complicated.”

I imagine these victims looking at us with blank, scarred faces as we congratulate ourselves for selecting a new President who talks about “our God-given right to lead,” about our duty to spread U.S.-style democracy throughout the globe, and how we are now just so “proud to be American.”

I imagine our guests listening intently as we discuss “What do you think of who should head the CIA?” and “Isn’t it we great that we have a President that speaks in complete sentences?” and that “We are all in this together.”

I imagine these charred visitors with missing limbs bowing their heads and wondering if they should somehow envy us for always finding a way to celebrate and party and bask in our entertainment-soaked culture – even when it comes to our “handsome” President being sworn in at the same time their homes were being incinerated, courtesy of our state-of-the-art weaponry.

Perhaps these “unfortunate” sufferers will understand that we can’t prosecute our own war criminals, because, you see, we simply “have to move on.” And maybe they’ll understand that not one U.S. leader has ever – ever – called our bombings and invasions a terrorist act.

Maybe they’ll understand us when we shake our heads and say, “Well, this is just how politics work here. Sure it’s corrupt but, hell, what can we do?”
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David Pérez is a journalist, actor and editor raised in the South Bronx, New York, and currently living in Taos, New Mexico. He has investigated and written on social justice issues, the environment, the U.S. electoral sham, and the struggle against imperialist war. He also enjoys writing about the joys of fatherhood.

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