Perhaps prepared?

Good old SFO, at any time of day

In two hours I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to fly to Europe. Well, given that I’ve been to 34 of its countries, lived over yonder for a couple years, and work as a Best of Europe tour guide, I should amend that.

In two hours I’m going to do something I’ve never done before: I’m going to fly to Europe in the company of a five year-old. Now that, that is going to be a new experience. Luckily for me, he’s a remarkable example of the kind (Dutch pun intended) and we are well stocked with a game-thingy, colored pencils, reusable pirate stickers, and as a backup: homeopathic sleep-assisting herbal spray. Left up to my own devices, I would bring one of those Amazon blow-dart thingymajigs, but the buzzkills at the TSA would probably “confiscate” it to give to their kids. But all things considered, I consider us terribly well prepared. Which begs the question:

Are we terribly unprepared? Will the other passengers reach Holland to the announcement “Please use caution when opening overhead bins, as contents may have shifted during flight when they were pushed aside to fit either a five-year-old captive or a thirty-five-year-old asylum seeker”?

What else should we bring? Now that it’s far too late to do anything about it. But I can land, near the dam on the river Amstel, and see if any of your perceptions, predictions, and predilections were accurate. And perhaps add additional supplies for the return trip. Are kindergartner-sized hamster wheels VAT deductible?

And in case that beloved foreign land below the sea (level) snacks on minutes and devours hours, as I know it can, I wish all y’all a very happy holidays. In whatever way that means to you as an individual. (And if the holidays are not as chipper for you as the advertisers whisper and wail is obligatory, you can check out four things you can do if the holidays are hard for you.)

Has it really been a year?

I genuinely love these people

I have no sense of time. Made a salad last night, went for the dressing I bought a little while ago, and found, to my dry-rucola’d dismay, that the dang thing had expired. Last April. The bottle looked embarrassed, kinda deflated, the kid in the Jedi robe caught hiding in the back of the theater to watch it again.

And I guess I’m not under the threat of an arrest warrant anymore. Because, again to my surprise, a year has gone by since I was arrested at a #BlackLivesMatter protest. A year since I felt a sliver, a splinter of a sliver, of what it’s like to not trust the police, to see their uniformed bodies as menaces.

“If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear from the police.” (Always white) people soberly informed me. Was I doing something wrong? By peacefully exercising my fundamental American right in support of my community? By trying to get to my bicycle so I could go home? And the guy next to me, hands going blue in his plastic zip-ties? He’d been walking home from BART. He hadn’t even known there was a protest going on.

And in black neighborhoods, where standard police procedure is to pull up next to a man walking down the street, detain him, handcuff him, sit him down on the ground like a naughty child, in full view of his community, maybe his kids, treat him like a dangerous criminal, and only then actually talk to him? To ask what’s going on today. How does that feel? What does that do? And how does it feel to see, again and again, officers not even going to trial after they kill somebody like you? No matter how many eye-witnesses say it was an execution, no matter if the bullets go in their back. Or maybe they merely beat you into the hospital.

I kept going to those protests. And when I’d pass the ranks of police, faces hidden behind riot gear, hands gripping weapons, my body would release adrenalin. My body getting ready to react. Overreact? Survival mechanisms pulling me away from deliberation, the indefatigable animal asserting control over the precarious grip of higher human functions, the amygdala overruling the prefrontal cortex.

But what’s happened in the last year? If there’s been progress, it’s been shy. Perhaps under-reported? The Terrible seems to slide right into the news, while the Wonderful has to fight its way on. Plenty of terrible to see, from Trump supporters’ racism and determination to avoid thinking, to terrorists attacking Planned Parenthood and BlackLivesMatter demonstrations yet receiving only innocuous labels. But I have to believe in progress. I have to hope. I have to. I have to believe that Bernie can win, and can drag our self-sabotaging country forward. I have to believe that humanity’s progress will eventually be reflected in its structures. Because that is one thing I still believe, humanity, in its prefontal cortex, when given peace, wants peace. So with everything in me, may peace be upon you. Peace be upon us all.

Do not wail against the flow

My favorite of all the translated signs I've seen.
Rule #4: Do Not Wail Against the Flow
(All today's photos are from Hong Kong)

I tried to manufacture “poetry” one time by google translating a couple sentences through a few languages and back, hoping for bizarre and accidentally artful articulations. I think I had the best results with English → Chinese → Arabic → Japanese → English, but to my consternation (and nearly admiration) the sentences came out boringly similar to how they started. Or just garbled.

-“I will try again to make a good example” comes back “I will try again a good example.”

-“To my consternation (and nearly admiration) the sentences came out boringly similar to how they started” comes back “Boring of (close to longing) panic I similar resolution, whether it began how to.”

-And "Giant gooey gobs of snot" comes back "Huge nose of viscous tailings." That one's pretty good, actually, but still, not quite poetry. (Unless you’re in college. Then anything passes.)

Not sure what would happen if you tried to translate "GoFukU"
Tower, but Hungry Eyes Restaurant seems like a good idea

When the sentences came back largely unchanged, maybe just simplified to various degrees of error, it felt ominous. If computers can swap among languages, that’s bad news for language teachers like me. But beyond that, it’s bad news for anyone who values human-to-human contact. Like me. Like you.

But I think the programs are assigning the human utterance a syntactic structure, then just shopping that through. While functional, anyone who speaks more than one language knows the delightful and maddening truth that languages are not code for one another, not even on the syntactic level. There is just too much beautiful nuance in language.

So teachers still have jobs, and as far as generating the sort of accidental wisdom and slippery profundity that one finds, like caches of chuckles, as you roam around the world? That takes real humans, speaking real languages. God bless the semi-fluent.

Cute feet? Quiet feet? Better than either.
And what drives someone to write that? I love it!

The move towards machines feels inevitable, but I can trust that humans are always going to have a warm, fleshy leg-up on the devices, so I can relax in the face of our techno-progression. To say it another way, I will not wail against the flow.

Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter

I’m bushed. Today will be a day of heavy eyelids, caffeinated beverages, and standing up on a regular basis to maintain consciousness. And it is so very worth it.

“You should read something fun!” My lady enjoined me. But all reading is fun! That book about medieval history was fascinating, though it added a two thousand year old dimension to my fear of the Republican Party. And that last book of travel-writing was very interesting, though admittedly the parts from the Sudan, Afghanistan, and the Ivory Coast were a tad depressing.

“No,” she specified. “Not history for your tour guide job, not travel writing for your travel writing, just something for fun. No other motive.”

That did sound appealing. My traditional just-for-fun books were fantasy though. Swords and spells and species. And those tend to run long. Like 3-10 books of 800-1200 pages. But it is winter, after all…

Vernazza, last July

“Here. Read this.” She handed me the book she’d just finished. On the cover I recognized Vernazza. Arguably the most beautiful, and certainly the most photographed town in Italy’s Cinque Terre is not hard to spot. Uh-oh. Would that jeopardize the Not For Work rule? “Part of it takes place in the Cinque Terre, but that’s not really what it’s about, so you’re good.”

What kind of book was it, anyway? “It’s a love story.” She answered. Oh. Those are swell and all, but wouldn’t they be better if at least one of the characters wore a sword?

There was still a rather large segment of the book left when I got in bed to read last night. I might have chosen something else if I’d known that I’d be sending her a text at 1:57 AM saying “Jesus that’s a good book!”

She was right. It’s good to read something, just for fun.

Highly recommended

Sign language

Malaysian freeways are not for bikes. Nor ox carts.

So I’m riding down the street yesterday, right-hand lane like I’m supposed to, directly over the big puffy-paint bicyclist symbol that tells reminds cars that bicycles have a right to exist in three dimensions, and this morbidly obese land-yacht of a Caddy behind me starts honking at me. I know, right? Like I’m supposed to fly, or something. Plus, I’m already going as fast as the car in front of me, just call me Lance Armstrong Greg Lemond, but the peak fuel bugger behind me honks again. I would think it was that old urban legend about the car behind flashing his lights every time the murderer in the back seat rises up, except as fancy as my beautifully battered bicycle is, it ain’t got no backseat. But so I point right down at the symbols as I ride over each one. Bicycle lane, buddy. But no, he keeps tooting at me the whole way home. Toot toot you mother pheasant plucker. Some people.

That's one dangerously rugged floor you got there, Hong Kong

The only thing I can think is that the individual in question had at least one of four afflictions. One: terrible vision, couldn’t see the signs, in which case they shouldn’t be driving a car anyway. Two: couldn’t see the road over that urban Serengeti of a hood, in which case no one should be driving that car. Three: they’re lazy, stupid, and hate cyclists. Four: just don’t see signs anymore.

Signs can be informative. If only I knew which one
was being proscribed, on a train in Myanmar.

That fourth one I can kinda understand. We urbanites, especially in litigious and don’t-expect-people-to-use-their-thinky-parts societies, live in a forest of printed instructions, a melee of designations, a clusterfudge of prohibitions, demarcations, and condemnations. If one were to stop and read every sign, they wouldn’t have the literary bandwidth left to read more than tweets. (I may just have solved a mystery that’s been driving me cynically insane.)

But sometimes, one really should read the signs. For example when threatening the corporal well-being of someone who is doing nothing wrong, nor inconveniencing you in any way whatsoever. Or, when the signs are just plain awesome.

Wait, what don't you want me to do, tuktuk driver in Sri Lanka?
The hoodie mafia flashing....gang signs?...is extra credit.

The Wizard of Oz and I

(This will make much more sense after part one, here.)

Outside Il Mago's shop, in Orvieto

An eruption of sound, light, and motion, as the world below my eyes kicked into life, overlapping music box jangles and blinking lights. I’d come to see the Wizard of Oz, tucked away in a side street of hilltop Orvieto, Italy, and now that same gruff wizard was standing beside me, lights reflected in his glasses and smile.

“This carousel is in the Jardin du Luxembourg, in Paris. The oldest in the city, from 1879.” Looking at his tiny faithful reproduction, I could imagine the generations of children that have sat and shrieked on the original Parisian horses.

“Here is a ride from Coney Island, in your country.” The little roller coaster car rose to the top and slid down the track, tiny wooden figures throwing their arms up in an unaging joyous thrill. His artisan finger worked down the row. “This is the ice skating rink from Toronto. The ferris wheel of London. The tea cups of Disney.” We moved among the world’s remembrances, sharing each one whether we’d ever seen it or not. Each tiny world, handmade by this artisan.

“When I was a boy, I knew what I wanted to be.” My assumption was beginning when he filled in the answer. “A cowboy!” He watched my grins over his bifocals for a moment before continuing. “I wanted to so much, that I did it, I ran away! I left my home and started towards Texas." Let that moment linger. "My mother caught me ten seconds down the road, gave me two big slaps, and brought me home. So instead of running away to be a Texas cowboy, I began to make things."

Orvieto is the sort of town where doing
things the old way makes sense.

Together we looked out over the delicate wooden toyscape of figures and memories. On the corner of his desk, beside the antique cash register, I noticed a familiar book. Seeing my glance, he picked it up. “Yes, Rick Steves. I am in his book. He came here and liked my work. Other companies want me in their books too, but they want money. It’s a commercial. Advertising. I am in Rick’s book because he liked what I do, so he put me in. That’s it. But I haven’t seen him in years.”

I told him Rick was my boss, that I was a guide, and that I’d learned of the toy shop in the current edition of the book. There was a hint of melancholy in the Wizard’s voice when he repeated “I haven’t seen him in years.” I assured him that even if Rick doesn’t have time, someone from the company comes around at least once a year to make sure we still believe in our recommendations, so we still appreciate his work. But there was something else.

Rick Steves and the Mago di Oz have something in common. Both are among the rare few who have created exactly the career they wanted. My eyes returned to one of the Wizard’s handpainted signs. Make your reality like your dreams, and your dreams into your reality. These two men have done that, and I can only imagine they recognized something in each other.

Nothing against minions, but compared
to the 12th century Moor's Tower,
they seem a tad chintsy

I was feeling a peaceful sense of satisfaction and happiness in the presence of this gentle man when the door opened to admit a woman and her son, from one of the bigger bus tours that feed people through Europe’s Express Lane. Her hand held the cheap plastic Pixar balloon he’d wanted for a moment, and neither greeted Il Mago as they entered his space. I watched him monitor them with the same tolerant caution he’d initially shown me, and was thinking how nerve wracking it must be to have unknown entities always lumbering among your treasures, cheap balloons bonking into handmade zeppelins, when the woman took out her phone and lifted its little factory eye.

“No photo!” The Wizard’s snarl was instantaneous and sharp. Blunt force reminder at an Italian volume. “No photo!”

How does one bring the fragile lightness of childhood into the tenacious heaviness of adulthood? Not easily, I thought, as I watched mother and son endure that awkward pause to save face before fleeing the shop. But it’s only appropriate for a wizard to be a little scary. Booming voices and flaring flames of castigation, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, with his gentle love of a gentler life.

No, the Wizard of Oz doesn’t let you take photos. But when a reminder of the texture of childhood is on offer, photos are not what you want anyway.

The Wizard did allow me one photo.
(Photo credit: some woman who did not take out her phone.)

The Wizard of Oz is Italian

The Wizard of Oz doesn’t let you take pictures. Looking around his close-shouldered toyscape of fragile wooden forms and clustered vintage artefacts, that was understandable. Besides, I already had enough photos from outside, Orvieto, back in normal Italy.

The walls of Orvieto

Out there, looking through a lens brings the whole world more into focus, reminding me to notice the textures of the quotidian, and aiding a more deliberate examination of our scrambling world. But in Il Mago’s workshop I didn’t need that precision, in his world I was better served by the flitting fancy of a childlike eye, overthrowing the diligence of inspection for the relaxation of entertainment.

Around, above, and behind me, colors clustered and shapes lurked in delicate extravagance. Art nouveau iconography lounged in evening wear behind nostalgic paraphernalia in pajamas, stained glass butterflies hovered above Betty Boop’s Route 66 diner, and a parade of metal giraffes and jugglers was on their eternal way to childhood’s circus. Hot air balloons drifted up among Spitfires and B-12 bombers held en route to battles uncountable. Cowboys and Indians with stagecoaches to match, while the flappers and mobsters surrounded stylish cars in a sudden sense of speakeasy jazz.

No photos in Oz, but Ippolito Scalza's
Pietá is too beautiful not to share.

Such was the cacophonic harmony of an unexpected piece of this world, created by that man, who watched me from under alert eyebrows like foxholes. There was something of a residual frown on his face, until he saw the smile on mine. Then he approached, real casual like. Was there a wisp of the masked diffidence one might find in an unapologetic adult who was once a teased child? I couldn’t be sure.

“Let me know if you have any questions.” He offered, smooth but stern as old wood.

“Thank you,” I answered, and for a moment he watched while I gazed. “But truth be told, I’m not even sure what questions to ask.”

Maybe not all passion is easily shared, but the Mago’s is. His artisanal fingers pointed here and there as he explained that he finds some of the pieces by careful search through trusted sources, but that he makes most of them himself. That alone was impressive, in our modern age of Made in China stamps and supply chains redolent with karmic consequences that may last even longer than the plastic we buy and throw away.

Tragedy! Crisis! Death! Don't read
such things, cara Nonna.

My brain wanted to walk down those familiar penal paths of today’s dire adulthood, but from his basics beginning, “They come from me”, he quickly transcended to a more dreamlike place, where his various mottos, handpainted on slats of wood, were the rules of the game: “Make your reality like your dreams, and your dreams into your reality.”

Maybe it sounds better in Italian, but in that place, it made perfect sense to me. I was nodding to the notion, but that didn’t seem to be the reaction he was looking for. “Put your dreams into your reality,” he encouraged me, and swept his hand at the array of silent creations. I had weeks of tour-work still to go, and putting one of his pieces of art into a backpack would be empirical blasphemy, but it didn’t seem like a sales pitch.

“Reach out and touch your dreams!” He was enthusiastic, expectant, and I felt like I was failing a test. “Reach out! Touch the dreams!” Reach out and touch? Was there a button hidden among the delicate arms and fragile beams? Feeling lame, my finger reached out, unsure whether to go left or right, so plodded straight ahead until it landed, just for a moment, right on the...

(Oops, late for work. See you tomorrow.)

Happy Thanksgiving Mr R!

Happy Thanksgiving Mr R!

It was a pleasure to meet you a few months ago, and I dearly hope that your first American Thanksgiving is a happy day, when you can join me, join the nation and anyone anywhere who wants to participate, in giving thanks for the good things in our lives. I am thankful for the chance to meet you and your wonderful family. I am thankful for the chance to (hopefully!) teach you all some English, although your daughter already speaks impressively well.

I am grateful for the wonderful people at the International Rescue Committee, and the noble work they do, important in the best of times and crucial when things are running off track, when a small percentage of people abroad are pursuing inhumane agendas, and too many people here are doing the same. Violence and intolerance; intolerance is violence.

I am grateful that my country is still the sort of place people would want to come to. I believe we have been welcoming too few, but I am grateful and hopeful that we are moving in the right direction.

My patriotism

I am grateful that Obama is a much better example of our country than some of the people who want to take his place. For a long time in this country, people would sometimes compare each other to Nazis but it was always overblown and inappropriate, since at our worst, we were far from that vile. I have to apologize that you have come at a time when the spokescreature for half the political establishment is actually advocating Nazi policies (and citing Nazi fake statistics to scare up the paranoia required for the abdication of one’s mind and soul.)

But please don’t be scared, as off track as some of my nation is at the moment, I cannot believe we would ever actually pursue a Muslim database, or close your places of worship, or any of the other headline-grabbing idiocy with which our lowest element is currently hijacking attention in their competition to see who can be the least intelligent, the least sane, the least humane.

The only database she belongs
in is a list of happy humans

They are not this country. We have nutjobs, just like everywhere else! Come on over to my place, and we can shake our heads in disgust, laugh in disbelief, and shiver in fear. It will look like we’ve invented the world’s weirdest dance move. For a moment. Then we can move on, come back to earth, connect as humans in a beautiful corner of the world, and give thanks. That is required on this day. Turkey is optional.

PS. But cranberry sauce is obligatory, so since you, your whole family, and all of your friends are welcome in my home, just let me know how much I should make. Happy Thanksgiving!

I thought it was just a photo

I wasn’t expecting a lesson in male privilege. I thought I was just decorating. But one of the candidate photos was from a late night wander through September streets of Venice, complete with its ancient arches, golden light, and salt-faded nostalgia for an age that might have been greater, must have been horrific, but undeniably had flair. It’s not the most interesting photo, but I like the reminder of that unique city after dark, the quiet shifting of its sirocco air, and the sense that you’re seeing Venice itself wake up after the humans have gone to bed. The question was with human silhouette, or without?

It’s not a very romantic silhouette. If a woman in a gown had been walking home, that would have been better. Or a gentleman, paused with the yellow light on the brim of his fedora. This was some schlub with a daypack and an awkward gait. Hardly romantic, just right place right time.

So I posed the question to my lady. “What do you think of this one?” I gave her a moment to look. “And with the figure, or without?” I clicked over for comparison.

Bangkok was at its best after dark

Normally her first response to these questions is pursed lips of consideration, but this time she flinched. “Oh no, those are creepy.” I was flabbergasted. How so? They’re sepia-textured memories, or tilting recollections, maybe boring, but not creepy.

“No, they’re definitely creepy,” she informed me. “They’re walking home alone at night through empty streets with lots of dark doorways and alleys, hoping you get home safely.”

Because why not wander the closed market of a border town?

When I walk around a city late at night, as I love to do, and pass a darkened doorway, my thought is probably “Is there a photo here?” if I notice it at all. I don’t think “Is there someone in there about to jump out and attack me?” No one wants to live in fear, but choosing not to is much easier for me, through no effort of my own. The stakes are just lower. If I’m wrong? I lose my camera. Maybe a black eye. I am not forced to confront the thought that the very sanctity and safety of my body might be taken from me, by a monster that actually exists.

Okay, Havana is safer than my kitchen, but still.

The difference between my lady’s perspective of that midnight street and my own was a shock. But that’s the problem, the disparity is so...quotidian. Ubiquitous and insidious. I try to be aware of my privileges, in the hope that awareness is an important step towards extending them to everyone, but the manifestations are sneaky and constant.

So did I print the photo? No. I don’t need to post an image of menace in my everyday life. But I do hope I can take the lesson, repeated as often as it takes, that we have not yet reached our goal.

Step by step.

[Did I post too late on Friday? It's here.]

The good thing about terrorism.

Here’s something you already knew: the Dark Ages were F’ing brutal. I’ve been studying those terrible centuries for my job, and they were worse than I realized. Someone doesn’t like you and says they saw you talking to the devil? You’re probably going to be burned alive. Sometimes slowly, on a pile of dried feces, maybe after they rip your tongue out. (These were all Christians, by the way.) There are lots more examples, worse ones, but let’s move on.

It was a privilege to be in El Salvador to witness their election
last year, and congratulations to Myanmar in their fairest
election in a quarter century.

Back then, each town, family, and even guild often maintained their own armed force, and violence was the point of entry into the political process. You basically had to be violent in order to have a voice. Violence was assumed. Normal. And life was terrible. Then, magnificently, over the course of multiple centuries, we created a world in which political violence became nearly absent. (In parts of the world, that is. The parts where I’m sitting, and you most likely are too.)

This accomplishment should not be taken for granted, lest we can forget that we’re living in the safest time and place in human history. That gratitude and perspective are essential in combating terrorism. For millennia, violence was random and rampant, with no accountability or even reason. Then nation-states arose, and for a while they went to war, supercharged by the mechanization of murder. Now, with rare exceptions, Vladimir, nations do not invade each other anymore. We transfer immense amounts of power through entirely peaceful means. Our elections are still far from 100% fair, but they’re a helluva lot better than settling inheritance by the sword, as was the rule for centuries, in kingdoms, families, and even monasteries.

"All" Muslims are whatnow?

Now, in this peaceful world, where vast numbers of people cooperate on a basic level, terrorism has found a new potency by virtue of its exceptionality. If religious nutjobs killed twenty people in 1215, it wouldn’t have made the papers, partially because there were no papers, but also because it wouldn’t have been particularly interesting. Terrorism only exists when we’ve gotten used to safety. That’s the good news, that we’re actually incredibly safe. The bad news is that in our strength, we face the risk of being toppled by a relatively insignificant threat.

Because terrorism is the technique of the weak. It belongs to those groups who know that they cannot win, cannot even fight a real battle. They are weak, so all they can do is provoke you, hoping that in your response, you will make them strong.

ISIS wants a religious war, Muslims versus everyone else. That is not the current reality. They are a small minority, massively disapproved of, even in Muslim countries. Everyone hates them. And they’re weak. Yes, they took over a lot of territory very quickly, but it was territory that was barely held by anyone else. And at the time, the people thought (as they always do) that “The new guys will be better!” That illusion didn’t last long. (My lady and I heard a similar story about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, when people, unhappy with the status quo, welcomed a change, until they saw that the news guys were worse. Then it took a few years to get rid of them.)

ISIS wants us to lump all Muslims together and blame them all, and they want us to “protect our freedom” by sacrificing it. They want us to reject refugees, and so far, 30 Republican governors and one Democrat have come out strongly in favor of ISIS. By opposing the victims of ISIS, they are effectively aligning themselves with it.

Is that how we will respond? Will we do exactly what ISIS wants us to do, and be manipulated into hating the wrong people? Will we take our anger and fear, and turn them into mistrust and segregation, and in so doing, work far more effectively than ISIS ever could towards creating the Islam vs Everyone Else war that they seek?

Responding to Paris. Islam is not the problem.

Inside a mosque in Malaysia

What can one say about what happened in Paris last week? How to adequately address this manifestation of humanity’s darkest potential? I’m not sure how to do it well, but I’ve seen some examples of how to do it incredibly poorly.

So, as John Oliver said: “after the many necessary and appropriate moments of silence”, I want to shout that this, as all of these incidents, is not a situation of Islam versus The West, nor Christianity, nor democracy, nor anything else. This is a case of Extremism versus Human Decency.

If you’ve met any Muslims through any medium other than TV “news” you know that they are people. Not terrorists, not extremists. People. Just like you and I. I wish I could take anyone who says differently with me to my class, where tables full of Syrian, Iraqi, Rohingya, Eritrean, and other refugees show me the true face of human kindness, the profound depth of human decency. They are solidly on “our side”. The talking heads of the TV networks on the other hand, seem solidly on the side of extremism. The danger of that is insidious and shameful.

Being a boy in rural Turkey

This misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict is what allows “our” government (and its business interests) to pursue the “War on Terror.” The tragedy of that strategy goes far beyond my ability to express. You can not go to war with Terrorism. It is an idea, not an opponent. It’s like trying to dry your clothes by spraying them with the garden hose. It only makes the problem worse.

We’ve seen, time and time again, that “our” bombs don’t just land on extremists. They land on innocents, and bystanders, and angry people, and sad people, and markets, and schools, and hospitals, and weddings. For every extremist “we” kill, we create a dozen more. We’re standing in the sun, hoping it will cure our sunburn.

Somewhere in Tanzania

You already know this. Every child knows this. Little Jimmy says Tommy is a doodoo head. The other kids aren’t so sure, Tommy seems fine to them, though he doesn’t share his potato chips very well. Then Tommy comes up and punches Jimmy in the face. Now everyone agrees, Tommy is a complete asshole.

It would be funny, except we do that with missiles.

So how should we respond? That’s the challenge of our age, to somehow improve the rampant inequality that fosters this anger, the widespread lack of education that allows extremism to take root, and most of all, the profound absence of hope for any better option that makes someone pursue the type of indiscriminate violence that I believe is fundamentally against our human nature. We don’t want to kill, but if you saw only bleakness ahead for your children, what wouldn’t you do? And as if that isn’t difficult enough already, we will have to do it, for an extended period, even in the face of the ongoing attacks that are already growing. It seems an impossible goal, but given the world’s capacity to generate wealth, I bet we can do a step or ten-thousand better. Call me an optimist.

Growing up in Diyarbakir

But for starters? How about we stop making things worse? We stop blaming an entire religion for the actions of a few. (We can talk another time about the truly insane quantity of violence perpetrated by each of the religions of Abraham, but for now, do the Westboro Baptists represent Christianity?) We can acknowledge that Islam is only a religion, not a personality type, and certainly not a psychological dysfunction! Once we stop actively producing more terrorists, we can start to heal the deeper wounds that are producing them in the first place.

Not terrorists. Just people. Good people.

I’d like to give it four years. Just one presidential term. Instead of spending billions of dollars on bombs to kill Middle Easterners, we spend it helping those people who want to help themselves and each other. Pour ourselves into peace and improvement, instead of death and Halliburton. If you think there is no one left in the Middle East who wants peace, wants safety, wants a better world for their children? Then you’ve been watching the wrong TV.