Who Are These People?

I know I'm not the only one receiving a flood of spam allegedly from Russian girls who want to have my baby.

"I Think that there has come time when each person in this world reflects to create happy family for a birth in the future of remarkable children which will be surrounded with caress and care of parents."

It goes on, and it's signed "Russian girl IRINA." The suspicious JPEG pinned neatly to the top of the email suggests that IRINA wants to show me her ample bosoms and maybe eyeliner application skills. But I know that she, who probably isn't even a she, really just wants to hijack my computer. The goal is probably to slow things down and cause me mild inconvenience until I do a system restore.

If you're trying to bring down the financial institutions of the Western world or steal my credit card number, I see how that can be accomplished with nefarious programming. I get it. You're really into jihad, or you really want a new big-screen TV. But who spends days programming viruses that mildly inconvenience a few people?

I've been saying that a lot lately, in various situations: Who are these people?

My parents visited this past weekend, fluffy white dogs in tow. And during our visit to Mount Vernon, some woman beckoned a security officer and told him that one of our dogs had pooed on the presidential lawn and that we had not cleaned up. The dog had not pooed anywhere. At all. And I had to fight the urge to track down this lying woman and command both dogs to poo on her face. I successfully fought the urge, because I am not one of those people. But she, apparently, is.

Who makes up shit about dog shit?

Last week, we watched the 4.5-hour mindfuck that is "Bush's War," a PBS documentary about the run-up to and execution of the Iraq War. The documentary is brilliant and shocking and deeply reported; it's the facts that pour into your ears and mix into a combustible solution of lies and then explode your head into a billion pieces all over the living room couch. I'm one of those annoying People Who Do Not Allow Talking during certain programs, but again, I couldn't stop asking The Mouse: Who are these people? These people who run our government and hijack our government and send boys to die in a hot, dry, sandy hell for the privilege of escorting a private contractor's load of supplies?

"Nightmare at Guantanamo Bay" on 60 Minutes pushed me past my limit.

I know that a lot of people have outrage overload, which is why we don't act all that outraged. Once you hit overload, you acclimate. If the madness of the world won't go away, your brain has to somehow make that madness normal. And normal isn't so bad, right? It's just the way things are.

But when a little computer programming mischief makes me question human nature, I think that's a sign that I've gone beyond outrage overload. I've reached outrage fatigue.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to an acquaintance about how The Mouse and I eloped. She asked why, I glossed over the religion thing, and she pressed for more. I groaned inwardly, because -- although I don't know her well -- I know that she is an avid church goer.

"Why wouldn't you get baptized?"

"Because I don't believe in it."

"Well, what are you?"

"Atheist."

"Oh...... Really?"

She spent the next few minutes attempting to uncover the rotten root of my godlessness somewhere deep in my past. I spent the next few minutes doing everything I could to tiptoe around the issue. I do not debate the merits and demerits of religion with strangers, rarely even with people I know. It's a one-way street to a flooded cul-de-sac. But the result this time was that I tiptoed too lightly, was overly deferential, and she interpreted my views as things that I resent, things that hold me back, things that make me sad. She looked at me sorrowfully, as one might look at a heartbroken child, and told me that her god would give me blessings.

I despise feeling misunderstood, but I let it go. It wasn't her fault.

Today, I was telling a good friend that I sometimes feel that transcendent happiness may be more accessible to people like that acquaintance -- people who believe in a god or a divine purpose or an afterlife. I do not want blind faith, I find it dangerous and counterintuitive. But I do admit that blind faith in some omniscient, omnipotent divine being might be quite handy in the battle against outrage. Why be outraged if everything has a purpose that we can't know?

That's overly simplified, of course. Most of my religious friends will say they are also outraged at the world because they believe in free will, and the world is full of assholes who exercise free will in a most despicable manner.

Which puts us all, once again, in the same pitching boat. A boat that has been commandeered by a gang of people we don't know, don't recognize. Who are these people?

I give my time and my money to causes I believe in. But even those efforts can feel hollow. And I don't know what to do about that. Sometimes I long to see outrage on the faces of others. I ache to hear it in their voices and feel it in their words. There's nothing so unifying or comforting among humans as a shared extreme emotion.

So if you want to come over, we can take the elevator to the roof. We can scream angry, improvised poetry through the night air. We'll be able to see the White House and the Capitol Building and the monuments to the people who died for purposes both right and wrong, but our words will likely reach only the next block where the same homeless man sleeps on the same park bench every night. We can scream at them, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, WHO ARE YOU, and no one will answer. We won't have changed anything, least of all the propensity for bored, pimply-faced teenaged boys to write silly email viruses. People will still lie about dog shit and weapons of mass destruction, and then volunteer the idealists to take the bullet. In the shadowy corners of our government, people will still be tortured and denied due process and sometimes killed.

But maybe we will feel better for having screamed side by side. For having defied the isolation that comes from watching 30-second clips of enraging news stories that are bookended by commercials for cars and bacon burgers and shampoo. For having connected in an honest, feeling way that seems increasingly infrequent but is as important as ever.

I don't know about you, but I really need that.

Comments

[All Adither]

What a super great post. I have a hard time saying that I'm athiest. I prefer the term 'agnostic'. Because I'm all wishy washy like that.

[Schnozz]

This is a GREAT post and I have so much to say about it that I don't even know where to start, so, uh, have dinner with me sometime and I'll bring a whole list. (Item 1: Transcendentalism Research and What It Means To You ...)

But what I wanted to say here and now is that no one in their right mind would feel happy a day in their life if they were capable of grasping the depth of the horrors that occur in everyday human existence, right now, even as I type. But in a way, that too seems like one more horrible waste.

And sometimes I think I've just gotten tired and would rather do good works while just skipping the outrage altogether. It has been a surprise to discover how much further that approach has gotten me, both with people and in my own ability to make progress.

But sometimes it's hard. Oh, it's hard.

[Beth]

Must admit I was getting a little worried about you, you hadn't posted in such a long time. Now I realize you had a lot to say and needed all that time to put those thoughts together. I wonder if writing it all down was therapeutic, or did it just leave you more dismayed?
As for the religion thing, over they years many have tried to "comfort" me (I swear I wasn't really needing, or asking for, comfort!) by tellin me God Never Gives Us More Than We Can Handle. I have learned to answer, "Then why do people commit suicide?"

[cadiz12]

sometimes i take my rage out on people who don't know me but give me unjustified pitying looks by praying that somebody else gives them a taste of what they're dishing out.

[Xteener]

I don't understand why it's OK for someone to judge another persons personal beliefs. Imagine how she would have reacted if the roles were reversed. "What are you?" And when she answers catholic/christian/buddhist or whatever you respond: "Oh..... Really?"

I'm just saying.

[Nothing But Bonfires]

I'll be right there. I could do with some rooftop screaming.

[katie]

Please save some space for me in the elevator. I'm with Schnozz where the longer convo is concerned. Sometimes I feel almost desperate to discuss this with a sane, yet equally outraged crowd.

A few weeks ago I felt utterly paralyzed and was having an impossible time figuring out how I could be so frustrated and angry and apathetic at the same time. You absolutely nailed the palpable sense of purgatory out there (pun intended!).

Also, when I find myself in a squirm worthy convo with a perky preacher, I smile and nod and think to myself about that time on Seinfeld when Elaine dismissed the annoying fiancé at the party by saying, "maybe the dingo ate your baby!" There’s no reason why you should ever be pressed for having a different set of beliefs, especially when you weren’t within a mile of asking her to explain or defend her own. Snaps to you for being gracious and letting it go. EVERYONE could learn a lot from that kind of behavior.

[Librarian Girl]

Totally.

[Meredith]

Your post was brilliant and Schnozz's comment too - there is a lot to think about and a lot I nod in agreement with and a lot that I wish I could scream from the rooftops too - instead I might just sleep.

As for me, I am always so relieved when people tell me they are atheists.

[Jenny]

I wish I could come and yell off the rooftop with you. As it is I will yell from my corner of the country and you yell from yours and maybe someone in the middle will pick it up where we fade out.

Great post!

[nicolien]

Thank you for writing this.

Sometimes I have no hope left. And then I decide: the only thing I can do, is try to change it. And I try. And nothing really changes. But what else to do? Nothing?

Tonight I might scream from my rooftop. Maybe we'll hear each other...