Let’s talk about 9/11. Or not. We are the anti-war movement. We don’t talk about violence. We talk about Violence. We don’t talk about how it’s in the alley and around the corner and in my bedroom and in a father’s fist to his child’s face.

We don’t consciously walk around with targets on our backs. But in our dreams we see the apocalypse of our lives. We uselessly take cover under cars while nuclear explosions ravage the landscape. We fall out of Eiffel Towers. We stare at gun shot wounds in disbelief.

We die and die and die. Then we wake up and go on as if we have not died, as if we are not living in terror.

I joined the anti-war movement for selfish reasons: I wanted to live. I did not want to be a walking target. I did not want to be ashes in Manhattan. I did not want to die, not like that. I half-heartedly hoped that if we shouted loudly enough the right people would know that not everyone is in on the imperialist insanity. Maybe I would be spared.

Later, I gave up on all of that. I started to see that people are not beautiful, not like that.

It wasn’t the violence in Afghanistan/Palestine/Iraq that made me give up though. It was the violence of our interpersonal lives. The cruel abandon with which we abandon. Ourselves sometimes, each other almost always. How can I ask anyone to worry about the closing of a homeless shelter when they will not touch the suffering in their own home? How can I ask them to look to the stranger on his knees when they cannot look to their friend?

I can’t.

It seems too small to say: we treat each other like trinkets. Fun while they are novel. Fun while they are clearing your garden or doing the other shit job you didn’t want. Fun while they are providing you a home or an adventure. Then discardable, human garbage that’s lost its shine.

So brown people will be rounded up. Oil will spill into our mouths. Unnecessary suffering will continue to be outrageous and outrageously common. And I know why: I have hate in my heart now too.

Thank you, my friends, my loves, for teaching it to me. Baby, this is a cold war, and I have no idea who I could possibly be fighting for.