Something unexpected and totally normal happened today

I was well into my lineup of questions and answers, ordinal numbers and time sequences in class today, blue marker and red marker, hoping my students were getting something out of my antics when something unexpected happened.

She’s maybe three years old. She has the brightest eyes and incredible laughing smile, and she’d lost one of her shoes somewhere. She plays for most of my English class, blocks and panda bears, while her mother learns at a truly incredible pace, moving rapidly from knowing few words when she got to America two months ago to now, when she helps me teach the other Arabic speakers.

But the little one eventually gets bored and wanders off. She loves opening and closing doors, usually with herself on the other side, and the entire office knows her name and laughter, and soon someone will bring her back, a smile on their face, and deposit her at the table where she’ll look around, find her mom, and exclaim with the purity of a child’s joy “Mama!”

She’d snuck out during my lineup, somewhere around “Who arrived third to class today?” and I was just writing “Who got here next to last?” when she popped out from behind my white board easel with a giggle. Someone had given her a multicolored abacus, and she proudly presented it to me, setting it up with a three year old’s precision then stepping back to make space for my admiration and looking up as if saying “Can you believe this incredible thing!?”

And it was. It was an incredible thing. Because there I was on a Friday afternoon in Oakland, every cell in my body feeling heavy with the ominous portents for my country’s future, but here was this little girl, a Syrian refugee who had been through hell without even the words to name the horrors, and she was giggling up at me and presenting an abacus for my enjoyment.

It was something unexpected, and yet absolutely commonplace. I am privileged to spend some afternoons with these people, these incredible, beautiful human souls, and though the ostensible reason is so I can give them more English words and usage, the reality is that they give me hope, gratitude, and a love for our species that can be hard to grasp in the screen-shaped world.

So yes, I’m terrified for our country, but absolutely, I am confident in the human spirit. I am confident that we will continue to move forward. And I’m confident that we as America will continue to make this the kind of place people like this wonderful little girl and her mother want to come to for safety and a better future.

I still can't comprehend supporting Trump

Let’s call them Brad and Linda. I met them a little while back, found them generally likeable people, some good jokes, some less-lovely behaviors, but we got along. They live in Texas, have a daughter, and are retired. Then something fascinating. I learned that they are Trump supporters. I was delighted.

What about you, Tongue Cat?
Do you understand?

A couple weeks ago I blogged about the hope Trump gives me, and only after I posted it did I think to check my facebook friend count to see if anyone wouldn’t read it before un-friending me. Because the fact is I don’t really know anyone who supports the global political clusterfuck of idiocy that is Donald Trump.

I see them on TV. They’re...well...they’re idiots. A profoundly dangerous tide of anti-intellectualism has been growing in America for years, but Trump? He’s a whole new low. Just...stunning. A level of idiocy, immorality, and statements so preposterously infeasible and irresponsible that they damage the standing of the US every time they’re repeated.

So how on earth can a third of Americans support him? I am utterly baffled. But here, in Brad and Linda, was my chance to find out. Because Brad and Linda, for all their peculiarities, clearly had brains in their heads. They had a fundamental level of intelligence that I expected to preclude support for the walking imbecility of Trump. I stocked up on patient observation to figure it out.

It took awhile. The first clue came when they suggested that Trump disclose who he’d put in his cabinet. “For example he could put The Black Guy in charge of medicine.” I wasn’t sure who they meant until they remembered The Black Guy’s name. “Carson, Ben Carson.”

A relic of Sri Lanka's past, or a glimpse of America's future?

The Black Guy? That seemed odd. Nevermind the idea of having an Attorney General with peculiar opinions about pyramids.

But better understanding was close behind, in a story they told about their daughter. “Well, we found out she was dating some guy, you know, with a funny last name. So we put a stop to that of course.” I didn’t ask which ethnicity that funny last name belonged to. Didn’t matter.

It wasn’t that they thought Trump’s policies were strategically sound. Or that they figured a terrible businessman with a track record of fundamentally un-American values and actions would be a good leader. And it wouldn’t matter if I pointed out the contradiction between the statements “I like him because he says what he means” and “I don’t worry about his crazy comments because he doesn’t mean most of what he says.”

In Sri Lanka it's laundry detergent.
In America it's apparently still a political platform.

They were just racist. How terribly disappointing.

Racism like theirs isn’t an opinion, or an ethos, or a belief structure. It’s just a moral failing. A default of the intellect and human spirit in favor of small-mindedness and a refusal to address actual problems.

And as I watch Trump "talk to black voters" in a way that is not remotely actually about black voters, but is clearly an attempt to convince white voters that he's not racist (click here), it's all just so...sad. Maddening. Vile. And televised.

So in the end, I am no closer to understanding how anyone with a brain could possibly support Donald Trump. If you know the answer, please let me know.

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.

I have a problem with Baltimore.

What's going on in Baltimore is important. Vitally so. But as a global citizen, how exactly do I hold it in mind when so many are suffering and dying around the world? Thoughts on Baltimore and elsewhere, on today's vagabondurges.com post, here.

My Day In Court, Practicing Nonviolence

Too many names, outside the Alameda County Courthouse

“Appear in court on December 26,” they said. So I cut my family’s Christmas short to be back in Oakland, security-screened by 9:00 this morning. I try not to predict the future, but I was eager to hear the consequence of my peaceful protest. Dismissed? Fined? Charged?

The grumpus behind the glass pushed the words through her frown: “We haven’t received your paperwork yet. Go to the DA’s office to be rescheduled.” No resolution. My three guesses were all wrong. Instead, I have to call in every week for a year, to find out if they’ve charged me. I told the clerk I was going to be out of the country for the next couple weeks. “If we charge you and you do not appear, a warrant may be issued for your arrest,” and she went back to her desk.

Not an ideal arrangement for a traveler, especially one who plans to work abroad for weeks at a time. But also, I find myself reluctant to participate in any more demonstrations. They are pushing me away from the exercise of my Constitutional rights, and into...let’s call it trepidation. My government is engaging in Trepidationism against me.

Trepidationism for me, but make no mistake, the system engages in Terrorism against black people. Or perhaps people of color. Or perhaps the not-rich. When the police, George Zimmerman, and who knows who else, are allowed to kill black people with impunity? It’s time travel.

Because this is what Martin Luther King achieved. He took away the terror of being black in America, in a time when they could be charged with assault just for looking “recklessly” at a white person, or not taking off their hat. (Read this.) I’m reluctant to cite MLK, since I have lived with white privilege my whole life, and despite my best attempts at empathy, have never felt for myself the terror of living in a society that oppresses you this way, but when I see our country sinking backwards into a time of systemic terrorism, I am willing to reach for any heroes I can find.

The list of heroes includes all the civil rights leaders, from Dorothy Height to Claudette Colvin. Does it include Malcolm X? The man whose legacy is clear in our civil religion, the violent alternative to King’s nonviolence? Absolutely.

Some say King’s message only got as far as it did because the establishment looked at Malcolm X and saw the very real possibility of rage released in violence, so took the offered path of peace. I don’t know if that’s true (and though it’s inherently flawed to compare wildly different circumstances, I can’t help but notice that Gandhi had no violent counterpart...or did he? And Mandela?), but either way, the frustration and anger of those who have been too-long abused by this system are very real, and very strong. Undeniable.

The danger is that this possibility of violence, for all its rational origins, ends up being another face of the Terrorism that I denounce. When the system, through police or vigilantes, threatens violence, it’s Terrorism. But when they force those opposed to present the same threat..? That feels like a loss, understandable as it may be.

And then there’s the bloodsoaked example of the French Revolution punching us in the face. Violence to end oppression, that betrayed itself, consumed itself, and only led to another form of oppression.

So, I’ll spend the next year in trepidation, with the looming threat of a misdemeanor (oh my!) and people of color will live under the constant menace of assault, humiliation, exploitation, and outright murder. I don’t need any help with my vague discomfort, but the racial Terrorism in our system has to change. We just have to figure out how.

Oakland Protest, Night Four: What now?

I had my perception of the Oakland protests.

Night One: people upset over the state of race relations in our country, and police impunity in reflecting it, demonstrated in the streets with signs, chants, compassion and anger. It was the purest form of democracy left in our plutocracy.

By the end of the night, things got out of hand, understandable with that much emotion and the way crowds work. The police showed admirable restraint at first, and I thanked them for it. People were wrong to throw bottles, and the police didn’t need to respond with tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades against a civilian demonstration. I was disappointed to see the night end that way.

Night Two: perhaps a result of the prior mayhem, the crowd was smaller, and more militant, the message diluted in petty vandalism and burning garbage, faces hidden behind masks to enable counterproductive hooliganism. I’d seen enough, left the contested street and was waiting until I could reach my bike when one cop, maybe looking to make an example, maybe filling a quota, or scariest of all: having lost control and lashing out, had me arrested. I spent the next few hours with my hands zip-tied behind my back, seeing a side of the law that I thought was reserved for those who deserved it.

Night Three? I stayed home, angry at those I felt were damaging our desire for change. I felt I had my understanding.

But last Thursday the rhythms of a protest drifted in my window. I’ll go look, real quick, real careful, to see how things are going. I found a march, resolute and disciplined in the statement of their message, no mayhem, no excuse for police action, demonstrators I’m proud to have as countrymen. It felt good to see.

Then I looked left to a line of face-shielded police blocking a street, ready to arrest us...if we blocked a street? A cold feeling took root in my core, with cracks of anger and flecks of fear. Instead of cops doing their best, they seemed like ominous soldiers of suppression.

And every nauseous cell of my skin felt my white privilege. I had been inconvenienced for a few hours, my shoulders stiff and achy from being pinned behind me, and have to show up in court, once, for what I feel are unjust reasons. So many deal with so much worse, yet there I was, disturbed by the sight of the police.

What is it like for those who live under constant threat of police abuse? How the hell do we expect people to remain calm who have watched their brothers beaten, their fathers humiliated, their whole demographic thrown in prison (while the real criminals go marching on)?

A friend told me of his police ride-alongs where procedure is to stop (black) men on the sidewalk, handcuff them and sit them on the curb, THEN start to talk to them, ask what’s going on today. That has never happened to me, not in my white skin, in my relatively affluent neighborhood, where, despite being racially mixed, every driver I’ve seen pulled over since moving here was black or latino. Every single one. A few hours being treated like a dangerous criminal when I hadn’t done anything wrong and I was sickened; what’s it like when that’s your everyday reality?

So what do we do about it? Politicians are clearly not going to lead, and the police aren’t going to break the cycle of aggression by themselves. And the courts? In 2010, out of 162,000 grand juries, 11 did not result in indictments. 11 out of 162,000. Yet now we have two out of two deciding there’s no need to even have a trial. I see that as the courts declaring that it is not a crime for a cop to kill a black man. This cannot go on.

So again, what do we do about it? Smash Starbucks? Shake our heads and go back to watching Jersey Shore? Or maybe we, those of us with hearts and souls and self control, should spend some time in the street. Do you think it’s a crime to kill a black person? Do you want some punk smashing a window to speak for you?

So how do we affect change? Protest responsibly? Burn shit? Run for office? Do nothing? Vote on the vagabondurges.com version, here.

There are worse things than having been racist

The contractor was measuring the ceiling in my lady’s house when he noticed he’d tracked dog poo all over the kitchen floor. It was awkward, but he helped clean it up, cleaned his shoe, and we all went on with our day. He did not go deliberately step in more and lay fresh prints.

What if his coworker had left the smudges before he arrived? Should he say “Well, I didn’t start it” then go find a steaming fresh pile of Rover’s Revenge to spread around? It’s easy when we’re talking about puppy poop, but what if it’s something worse?

In episode 349 of The Savage Lovecast, Dan Savage talks about the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when asserting the virus was an STI could get you in a fight, as people resisted the guilt of having inadvertently caused harm. But eventually they accepted the facts and evolved. He compares this to those who still deny climate change. There comes a time when you have to accept that what you've been doing isn't right anymore, and update.

He doesn’t advocate convictions for past mistakes, or tortured guilt for things done when we didn’t know any better, but to double down and willfully continue them once you do? That’s a problem.

Scaling back from lethal disease and global catastrophe, how about being accidentally offensive? Tonight in the Netherlands, and tomorrow in Belgium and Luxembourg, Zwarte Piet will help Sinterklaas deliver presents to all the little boys and girls. Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) is basically one of Santa’s elves, with one glaring difference: he’s in blackface, big red lips, afro wig and everything.

Controversy over the figure has been growing for decades. The (white) majority says “But it's our tradition!” (True.) “We don't mean anything racist by it!” (Good, thank you.) And sometimes “If I meet you you’ll get a bullet through your head.” Charming.

I know people resist changing traditions, but just a couple sentences for perspective:

-Halloween was long based on vandalism, not changing to its current emphasis on costumes and treats until World War II

-Thanksgiving is increasingly about family, and less about genocidal religious extremists, or is that just me?

-Even Zwarte Piet himself didn’t show up until 1850, his name not standardized until the early 20th century, around the same time Sinterklaas stopped kidnapping naughty kids into slavery. And did anyone grow up believing Saint Nick came from Turkey? Well he did, but we changed it to the North Pole (and Sinterklass moved to Spain) without undue rage. So why cling so fiercely to an outdated racist icon?

(Zwarte Piet briefly took over the child slavery racket, though that’s been phased out too. We’ll talk about the function of a black character selling white children into slavery another time.)

This is all very easy for me to say; I didn't grow up with Zwarte Piet. Also, I don't really give an enraged caboodle about changing holiday details (no, I don't watch Fox News' preposterous War on Christmas either). My lady, on the other hand, grew up in The Netherlands in the days before people saw Piet as racist. She had those happy childhood mornings, when the friendly character threw candies and handed out gifts. She loved that character, but when age and perspective showed her its racist overtones, she adjusted. In her words: “A short moment of nostalgic pain is MORE than worth it for doing the right thing.”

Now want to hear something cool? The Netherlands is showing its impressive character yet again. Not waiting for everyone to find their empathy, they are changing, slowly but steadily. In previous years they’ve toned down the blackface by removing the big red lips (and earrings), consciously avoiding portrayals of him as inferior to the white Sinterklaas, and this year they’re adding other colors of Piet, including cheese yellow and (gasp!) white.

I can only imagine it’s a matter of time until people look back and say “Remember back when we had that awful racist character? Nutty!” (Though I expect the overtly racist and anti-immigration parties like the PVV and Vlaams Belang will cling to their crusty obstinacy far into the future.)

So as America roils, burns, and shatters under the weight of our own racism and malfeasance, the sickness in our system that seems unwilling to change, and I figure out my own minuscule part in it, I’m going to look at the waffle-striped Piet this year with a smile, and hope that the arc of history might speed itself up a bit here too...

Dear fellow Oakland protesters, and others.

The type of legitimate protesters I went to join

Dear fellow protesters in Oakland, thank you for coming. I know you’re angry, so to not waste your time I’ll get to it:

What is the point? Your point. Your purpose. Your goal. Why are you here?

Are you here to express your frustration with race and class relations in this country, advocate for justice and change, and oppose the militarization and impunity of a segment of the police?

Or do you just want to burn shit?

Because the two are mutually exclusive. Standing for the former entails NOT doing any of the latter, and doing the latter destroys the voice of the former.

Are you here to protest, or riot? They are fundamentally different. Is your enemy hate crime, or Starbucks? Do you want to build something better, or just smash what’s here? Do you want to oppose those responsible, or just harm your neighbors?

My opinion? This War on Trash Cans accomplishes nothing but toxic fumes. This aggression towards all police officers does nothing but further inhibit dialogue and progress. I see demonstrators and police pushing each other into simplified extremism, and it makes me sad. I’ve known good cops. Men and women who I was glad were there to back me up.

When will you learn that violence does not have the effect you wanted it to when you were an angry 16 year old? It’s time to grow the fuck up.

Just an excuse for their ugly little tags

As you may have guessed, angry violent “protester”, I am sick of your shit. You are not a protester. You are a hooligan. And I will not stand by you. So tonight, as the helicopters again drift overhead, despite my desire to finish what I’ve started and demonstrate my conscience, I am staying home. It’s not because I’m scared, not afraid of being arrested again, but because last night looked to me like a movement degraded, a legitimate grievance lost in petty vandalism, and I will not participate in that, even tacitly.

To those actual protesters, both previous night, and probably tonight too, I thank you for caring. Apathy is the great enabler of discord and abuse.

And to those who have come to Oakland to hide behind your coward’s mask and make trouble in someone else’s community… Violence breeds violence, so please don’t tempt me.

Hemoglobin, non-terrorism, and adorable despite a little racism; in Panama City

Arterial roadways and Panama City

I was a happy little red blood cell. Biding my time before entering the veins of Venezuela, I was promenading through the pulse of Panama, crossing arterial roadways to meander beside the lymphatic mud flats of the capital’s southern, maybe eastern, western-ocean-facing harbor. It’s a tidal maelstrom of a place, Panama City. Currents of South America hit the breakwater of Northern dominance, while the West Indies just try to get through to reach the Orient.

"A great friend of Panama"
statue was downtown until
it was damaged in a protest.

And I was just another particle, a nutrient perhaps, life-giving at best, parasitic in the end, and enjoying the ride in the meantime. Franklin Delano Roosevelt surprised me, baptized in pigeon shit, cracked by revolution, and now exiled by urban planners to a scenic and irrelevant perch between oncoming and outgoing traffic.

The floatable tools of tenuous livelihoods were stranded in the muck of low-tide, pretty and hideous, colorful and infinitely drab, appealing to my eye but forbidden to my camera in this post 9/11 world, where armed guards were too bored to acknowledge me, but their supervisor, obliged by rank, called me back from lens distance. “Why are you taking pictures of the harbor?”

Panama City harbor at low tide

“Cuz it’s pretty.” Did not satisfy him. So I pointed out the circles of oil drums against the linear wanderings of boat hulls, the prehistoric muck of the ages patiently reclaiming the trappings of modern conceit, the camaraderie of hulls at rest.

He waved me away. A nearby Rastafarian found the show hilarious, and called me over. His skunky smell and laugh-lined eyes made me feel at home, though most of his words were unintelligible. I’m pretty sure we agreed that nowadays people take themselves too seriously. He’s my friend.

Playground they were ignoring

It was too early in the trip for loneliness; I was still lubricated by the renewed flow of travel vivacity in my veins, jolly in my joints, melancholy unable to find a place to oxidize. This made it easy to dance with the kids, finding joy for themselves aside from the paternal provisions of playground planners. These kids had too much swing in their steps to need swingsets for their butts.

“Hello!” They cried like seagulls as I approached. “Hello! Hello!” Then in the precision of classroom lessons transferred to the real world, word by word, they added “Where. Are. You from?” Laughter as punctuation.

My Panamanian pals of the promenade

I answered, and as politeness decrees, returned the question. “We are Panameños!” replied a big voice from a small body. “Except him” and a tiny finger pointed to the boy in the blue shirt. “He is African.”

A glance at the face above the stylish blue collar showed this was not true, was not welcome, was another incidence of the scraping search for understanding of childhood, accidentally abrasive, sharp with the latent racism of Latin America. The boy in blue hid most of his reaction well. It’s probably not the first time.

What do you say? How do you push back, perhaps instruct, be a nutrient and not a parasite? Tiny feet were ready to run off again, my seconds clicking short. “I’m African too” was my best try. This paused their feet. Is the gringo crazy?

“I am African. So are you. We all came from Africa.” I’d neglected to pack my notes on the migration patterns of early humans, but I dare to remember a slight smile on a darker skinned face, and there was no malice in the laughter of any.

They held the pose for 1/32nd of a second

Besides, more important concerns were on hand. Namely, a request for a co-photo so vulnerable, so tender and murmured that it very nearly broke me with its innocence.

Race relations, cultural exchange, personal evolution. Nascent love. We’re all doing the best we can, for ourselves and for each other.

What would you have said, in the face of a child’s unhateful brushes with the legacy of inequality?

Pussycat love and opinions in Israel

So yes, Jerusalem felt like it wanted to hate me. But I still fell head-over-heels in love in the city.

I suspect he was a male. He had clean teeth, big feet, and the sort of insightful eyes that see right into your thoughts. I passed him on a thin street behind some big important church or other.

“You feel like this whole city wants to fight, don’t you?” He asked me as I walked past.

“Yes! And that troubles me. It doesn’t seem like a healthy way to live.”

“It’s not, but you have to understand, there has been so much suffering here, so much tension, in both history and living memory, that everyone carries the scars of memory and fear. The spirit has trouble thriving in that environment, but it’s possible.”

“Do all cats know this?” I was curious.

“Of course. We’ve transcended it though; have you ever heard of cats seeking genocide against dogs? No.”

“But dogs have never denied cats’ right to exist.” I thought I had a winner point there.

“No, but nor has anyone in their right mind ever claimed Israel doesn’t have a right to exist. Sure, it’s in some papers and some rants, but does any rational person actually believe that?”

“Well, no. And personally I’ve only ever encountered the idea from pro-Israelis who were shouting that it wasn’t true.”

“Exactly,” purred my love, “because only extremist nutjobs would say it in the first place, and you don’t talk to many extremist nutjobs. Know why? Because if you respond to the extremists all the time, let them shape the dialogue, then you tend to become an extremist too.”

“Kinda like a violent/homicidal version of the Tea Party?”

“Exactly,” his eyes squinted shut in feline pleasure that I saw his point. “Your country argues about whether or not to pay its bills while everything goes to shit, because you listen to a group of people whose platform is defined by the rejection of rational thought. Climate change deniers have no place in governance.”

I agreed with that statement so completely that I had to spend another few minutes scratching under his chin.

“But what about all those people who hate Israel?” I asked, concerned for the fate of a nation.

“Sure, there are some who hate Israel, as we talked about, but hell, there are probably some who hate Canada too, and those syrup-sippers are almost as loveable as I am. But what are the statements that you hear depicted as anti-Israel?”

“Well, people who talk only about the approximately 1,416 civilians* who have been killed by Israeli airstrikes, versus the 3 Israelis killed by rockets, one of which died of a heart attack. And then what’s worse, don’t talk about the violence of something like ISIS!” I was passionate.

*Based on this article’s stats of casualties and civilian percentage

“Dude. Here’s the math. If the number of Israeli civilians killed is X, and the number of Palestinian civilians killed is Y, and the number of UN Workers or any other group killed is Z, then if (X + Y + Z) > 0 then it’s too damn high. Killing anyone? Bad. Those three Israeli civilians killed: awful, shouldn’t have happened. Those 1,416 Palestinian civilians killed, and the fact that we have to estimate since aerial bombardment is so indiscriminate…Awful.”

I couldn’t deny his math.

“And about the ISIS thing? Have you watched the news? Good news? They’re talking about that too. A lot. A lot a lot a lot. And rightly so. If you think no one is talking about how wrong those executions are, then you’re only listening to the voices you find most offensive, which is basically the same mistake as listening only to the extremists.”

Three nuns walked past and smiled at my clear love of this feline sage.

“But all these criticisms of Israel are just more of the traditional anti-Semitism that has plagued Judaism for centuries!” The nuns turned around and gave me worried looks at seeing me argue with a cat. I smiled at them, hoping they wouldn’t come back to perform my exorcism. Those really get in the way of conversation.

“Ah yes, here’s the heart of it, no? The idea that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic.” His big beautiful eyes grew sad. He paused. “Do you love America?” I nodded that yes, I love my homeland. “Is everything perfect there?”

I gasped, at a loss as to where to begin. “We haven’t been a democracy in decades, if not longer, and our Supreme Court doesn’t even pretend to hide the fact that we’re a plutocracy anymore, government by the wealthy. I genuinely believe our former president and all his cronies should be facing charges of Crimes Against Humanity in The Hague, and I would like to see an investigation about our current one as well. He, in turn, the man who made me so hopeful I literally cried when I heard his campaign speeches in 2008, has followed a policy of unlawful detention, deported more people than anyone else, nominates cable industry lobbyists to head the FCC, gives MASSIVE corporate handouts to multinationals who don’t pay taxes, and didn’t do squat to prosecute the bankers who nearly crashed the world’s economy, and-”

“Whoa there tiger, that’ll do. Pet me until you calm down.” I did so, breathing deeply. “See, you are a patriotic American who recognizes and criticizes certain actions of your government. That itself is patriotic. The old adage ‘My country, right or wrong’ is treason against both the nation and humanity as a whole.”

“So?”

“So calling Israel out on bad behavior is not the same as hating the country itself. You can support a nation, and still think something like the Dahiya Doctrine of deliberately targeting civilian populations with disproportionate force is wrong.

But that’s not the most important thing.” He paused for a second, then asked “What armed conflicts can you remember?”

“Well, Iraq and Afghanistan of course. The violence in Ireland. Bosnia in the mid-90s, I was reading about Srebrenica the other day…”

“Right,” he said, vertical pupils intent. “Notice a theme in those? Sunni v Shiite in Iraq? Taliban in Afghanistan? Catholic v Protestant Ireland? The massacre of Muslim Bosniaks in Srebrenica?”

“Well yeah, religion often drives people into horrible acts, but it also leads people to higher states of altruism, compassion, and kindness, not to mention giving meaning to many people’s lives.”

“Of course it does, I’m not saying religions are bad. But just maybe, linking a religion with a political entity is a recipe for disaster? Mainly because if you believe you have ‘The Right Answer’ to God, it’s a shockingly short step (for many) to believe everyone who doesn’t agree with you on the specifics to be wrong, and therefore lesser. Crusades, anyone?”

“Oy, don’t even bring up that 1000 year old can of worms.”

“Righty-o. But also, if you say ‘State X did a bad thing’ that’s one thing, but when people can twist that statement into ‘Religion X is bad’, you have a huge problem. Hard to talk to people if you feel like they’re attacking your faith in God.”

“But they’re NOT attacking your faith in God, not at all.”

“Sure, but people feel like you are. And that’s enough.”

“Oy vey,” was all I could think to say.

“Yeah, sorry, kinda went long there. To sum up: only lunatics deny Israel has a right to exist, and lunatics should not be allowed to set the discourse.” I nodded.

“Any group who kills civilians should be held accountable for it.” No contest.

“You can love America/Israel/Djibouti and criticize its government. And most importantly: equating a nation-state with a religion is a very dangerous thing.” Agreement, and sadness.

“You poor human. Want a little pick-me-up? Shall I give you the answer?”

I perked up like a tabby when you open the can of tuna.

“Humans are inherently good. Y’all don’t actually want to hurt each other. There are basically three things that make you do it.

1. Bad experience. They killed/attacked you or your family? You may want to hurt them.

2. No experience. You don’t know ‘Them’ so you believe what you’re told about ‘Them.’

3. Fear. Fear for your future or that of your children, in terms of violence, economic well being, whatever.

The good news is: the first two are really easy to fix. 1A: Stop killing each other for a little while. 2A hang out together. Did you ever see that documentary about Israeli and Palestinian kids playing soccer? They were best friends after a few weeks. Let the kids be friends, and they’ll grow up into adults who are too.”

“What about the third one?” I asked, hoping he had an easy answer.

“Oh that baby’s hard, though not as hard as you think, or as your media and lobbyists want you to believe. But you have to figure that out for yourself. Right now, the sun is warm: it’s naptime. One more belly rub and then you may go.”