I fold the dinner napkins and place them on the dining table. This life, my life, is just as it was yesterday and the day before.
We talk, my little group, family and friends. “Tomorrow, here,” I say. And when they arrive, we hug. I pop a bottle, pour bubbly. We sit on the balcony, talk our talk, reminisce, laugh.
Earlier, today, the U.S. dropped the “mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan. The. Mother. Of. All. Bombs.
I think of Afghanistan and Afghans as I remove plates from the cabinet just as I thought of Afghanistan and Afghans as I folded the napkins.
What’s left? What’s left in the area where a bomb that size explodes? I don’t know shit. I can’t imagine. We can’t imagine.
My motions are perfunctory, the folding of napkins, preparing the cheese board, crushing garlic, grating this and that, whatever. I’ve done this, these same activities so many times and for as long as I can remember. This life, just as it was yesterday and the day before.
My guy asks, “What is that?”
“Sweet potatoes, roasted in coconut oil,” I say.
What does a 22,000-lb bomb explosion smell like?
What does the detonation of a 22,000-pound bomb sound like?
What?
How?
How can this happen?
How can we unleash barbarism on other human beings? On our planet?
I think of Afghan mothers, fathers, their children. What can they say to their children? How can they promise tranquility, hope, a future, security? How can they say, “Everything will be alright?” How can anything ever be alright again?
How can it be alright for us? How can anything be alright when the U.S. is the greatest purveyor of enduring savagery?
I want to scream. I want to scream. To separate from this. This government, this country.
The world shouldn’t have to suffer one more day of American exceptionalism.
I clear the table, put the dishes in the sink, stare at the water running into the drain. Drain the swamp.
I want to scream.
Fuck you. Fuck you, Trump. Fuck you. Fuck all of you with your might-makes-right bellicosity. Fuck Obama. Fuck Hillary Clinton. Fuck George Bush. Fuck Dick Cheney. Fuck all the fucking warmongers. Fuck corporate news. Fuck the war industry. Fuck the war profiteers.
Fuck the United States of Fucking America.
Missy Comley Beattie has written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Baltimore. Email: missybeat@gmail.com.
that was the most useless piece of writing i’ve read in a long time. and its not the profanity- that was the high point of the article.
if she feels that strongly? get off her ass and ACT to stop all these wars. get involved and DO something, instead of just whine
She did do something. She wrote an article. Sounds like you are the whiner.
Real action starts from the heart.
Get off her ass, and do – what, exactly? Protest? You think that’s going to work? We protested against the Iraq War and we went to war anyway. We voted in “Not Bush” (Obama). And he protected the previous administration from prosecution for War Crimes.
Short of venting, and sharing opinions, there’s very little that can be done. Seriously, how do we change this country for the better (and, please, don’t say “vote”. At least not on a federal level.)?
And what exactly would you suggest that she do? Protest…useless, email her congress critter…useless, organize a resistance group…the fbi and cia would be on her in a heart beat due to massive spying on the american people. So what is left for her to do…YOU tell me if there is anything except taking arms and start killing our exceptional leaders. Just a suggestion.. Why aren’t you doing it? I would say she did do something because it triggered your stupid response.
One good reason to NOT leave the United States is that there are a lot of guns & ammo here. These might come in handy someday.
Thank you for your sentiment. As bad as the psychopath war mongers, who’ve taken this country, are the masses of asses. Aloof, greedy, on the dole or just plain dumb. Try to talk about the globalist game played on Syrians, Libyans, Ukranians, Egyptians…and the ever happy, egocentric American consumer gives you the stare. “You’re so neeeeegative”. Selfish pigs. It’s cool to be a fool in America.
You should go to Russia. There, they’re working together. Wish I could go there. Good luck. It may seem you’re alone, but there are a few of us. Not afraid to speak the truth, even if we’re ostricized from the sheeple. Wish there were more like you.
Missy:
You took the words right out of my mouth!
Thank you!
On Saturday–the Saturday that Christians call HOLY SATURDAY, I was listening to Pope Francis’ Homily. His words touched me to the core. Maybe the words he said, my faith, the soft intonation of his voice, the reflection of his heart into our present day atrocities … the link he makes between Mary Magdala, Mary Magdalene and present day women. The role of women in society now and then .. Bev, I know Christianity is not what this site is about but his words in my mind touch on the same sentiment of horror and compassion as reflected by Missy Comely Beattie in this article. I am pasting them here. If it is not appropriate for this site… you don’t have to post them. If on the other hand there is, as I think there is, a nexus between his compassion and that of MCB and of so many human beings currently living, maybe then, they will be appropriate to publish here as a comment, response to MCB’s article.
Here is the English translation of the Pope’s homily which follows the proclamation of the Easter Gospel::
“After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb” (Mt 28:1). We can picture them as they went on their way… They walked like people going to a cemetery, with uncertain and weary steps, like those who find it hard to believe that this is how it all ended. We can picture their faces, pale and tearful. And their question: can Love have truly died?
Unlike the disciples, the women are present – just as they had been present as the Master breathed his last on the cross, and then, with Joseph of Arimathea, as he was laid in the tomb. Two women who did not run away, who remained steadfast, who faced life as it is and who knew the bitter taste of injustice. We see them there, before the tomb, filled with grief but equally incapable of accepting that things must always end this way.
If we try to imagine this scene, we can see in the faces of those women any number of other faces: the faces of mothers and grandmothers, of children and young people who bear the grievous burden of injustice and brutality. In their faces we can see reflected all those who, walking the streets of our cities, feel the pain of dire poverty, the sorrow born of exploitation and human trafficking. We can also see the faces of those who are greeted with contempt because they are immigrants, deprived of country, house and family. We see faces whose eyes bespeak loneliness and abandonment, because their hands are creased with wrinkles. Their faces mirror the faces of women, mothers, who weep as they see the lives of their children crushed by massive corruption that strips them of their rights and shatters their dreams. By daily acts of selfishness that crucify and then bury people’s hopes. By paralyzing and barren bureaucracies that stand in the way of change. In their grief, those two women reflect the faces of all those who, walking the streets of our cities, behold human dignity crucified.
The faces of those women mirror many other faces too, including perhaps yours and mine. Like them, we can feel driven to keep walking and not resign ourselves to the fact that things have to end this way. True, we carry within us a promise and the certainty of God’s faithfulness. But our faces also bear the mark of wounds, of so many acts of infidelity, our own and those of others, of efforts made and battles lost. In our hearts, we know that things can be different but, almost without noticing it, we can grow accustomed to living with the tomb, living with frustration. Worse, we can even convince ourselves that this is the law of life, and blunt our consciences with forms of escape that only serve to dampen the hope that God has entrusted to us. So often we walk as those women did, poised between the desire of God and bleak resignation. Not only does the Master die, but our hope dies with him.
“And suddenly there was a great earthquake” (Mt 28:2). Unexpectedly, those women felt a powerful tremor, as something or someone made the earth shake beneath their feet. Once again, someone came to tell them: “Do not be afraid”, but now adding: “He has been raised as he said!” This is the message that, generation after generation, this Holy Night passes on to us: “Do not be afraid, brothers and sisters; he is risen as he said!” Life, which death destroyed on the cross, now reawakens and pulsates anew (cf. ROMANO GUARDINI, The Lord, Chicago, 1954, p. 473). The heartbeat of the Risen Lord is granted us as a gift, a present, a new horizon. The beating heart of the Risen Lord is given to us, and we are asked to give it in turn as a transforming force, as the leaven of a new humanity. In the resurrection, Christ rolled back the stone of the tomb, but he wants also to break down all the walls that keep us locked in our sterile pessimism, in our carefully constructed ivory towers that isolate us from life, in our compulsive need for security and in boundless ambition that can make us compromise the dignity of others.
When the High Priest and the religious leaders, in collusion with the Romans, believed that they could calculate everything, that the final word had been spoken and that it was up to them to apply it, God suddenly breaks in, upsets all the rules and offers new possibilities. God once more comes to meet us, to create and consolidate a new age, the age of mercy. This is the promise present from the beginning. This is God’s surprise for his faithful people. Rejoice! Hidden within your life is a seed of resurrection, an offer of life ready to be awakened.
That is what this night calls us to proclaim: the heartbeat of the Risen Lord. Christ is alive! That is what quickened the pace of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. That is what made them return in haste to tell the news (Mt 28:8). That is what made them lay aside their mournful gait and sad looks. They returned to the city to meet up with the others.
Now that, like the two women, we have visited the tomb, I ask you to go back with them to the city. Let us all retrace our steps and change the look on our faces. Let us go back with them to tell the news, in all those places where the grave seems to have the final word, where death seems the only way out. Let us go back to proclaim, to share, to reveal that it is true: the Lord is alive! He is living and he wants to rise again in all those faces that have buried hope, buried dreams, buried dignity. If we cannot let the Spirit lead us on this road, then we are not Christians.
Let us go, then. Let us allow ourselves to be surprised by this new dawn and by the newness that Christ alone can give. May we allow his tenderness and his love to guide our steps. May we allow the beating of his heart to quicken our faintness of heart.
Puh-leeze!!!! N.P. fucking R.??? Really? Without quislings such as National Propaganda Radio and their phony progressive agenda, none of these monstrous, demonic presidents would be able to unleash their reign of terror and evil – such monstrous things as geo-engineering and HAARP, elite pedophilia and human sacrifice, CIA and Mossad false flag events such as 9-11, Oklahoma City bombing, and Sandy Hook, genocide in Palestine, Depleted Uranium, MK-Ultra, Project Monarch, Project Paperclip, drug running, toxic vaccines – the list goes on and on. Fuck the mainstream media, and totally fuck National Propaganda Radio for sure. You want to scream? Look in the mirror, and scream at yourself!
you got it exactly right!
NPR is more OWLCIADUH/MOSSAD pornoganda. this is agitprop citing lame scum and villainy which the jooz push.
It is indeed a tragedy to see a once great country which contributed so much to the world go down the toilet. As a non American, it absolutely astounds me to watch as you commit a slow, self inflicted suicide. when did collective stupidity take over and become a national trait. I watch in stupified amazement at the endless wars waged on anyone that does not surrender to the will of your moronic, morally bankrupt and utterly corrupt so-called leaders. America murders millions yet preaches democracy and freedom. One could fill a library with examples of US hypocracy and lies. I could go on and on, but what is the point. The American public has the power to change the current course of events, but I doubt it will ever happen. It seems as though collective stupidity has reached a tipping point. It may well be too late.
I could not agree more, fuck America.
FUCK AMERICA.
and fuck anyone who is offended by “FUCK AMERICA.” i hope the bombs drop on your filthy, ugly children next.
“Israel controls the US Senate. The Senate is subservient, much too much…we should be more concerned about US interests rather that doing the bidding of Israel. The great majority of the Senate of the US. somewhere around 80%…
is completely in support of Israel, anything Israel wants, Israel gets. This has been demonstrated time and again, and this has made foreign policy difficult of our government.” Senator Fulbright told CBS Face the Nation on April 15th,1973.
If you don’t know who puts you to sleep, you can’t wake up….
Since November 22nd, 1963 the USA has been ruled by an illegal regime, as a vassal state to Israel.
Very insightful – going through the usual routines of daily life – but thinking Fuck this damned country I am in.
We ‘re just not getting it. All but just a few governments on this planet are not for profit corporations. We have been taken over by international corporations. The monetary systems are owned and operated by the IMF, a private corporation. And the IMF is owned by the Crown. It’s all legal fiction. Your NAME, the one that appears on your driver license is a legal fiction. The bills you receive with the all caps name that looks like your name are addressed to the fiction. Everything is fiction including what you think is government and all is deceit. And you buy into it thinking it’s real. We are simply human resources to them, cattle to be sold at market. Until the species Man wakes up to this truth there will be no progress toward peace.
‘What can they say to their children?’
“Remember little one, It was the Americans that did this. Never forget, never forgive. Your Mother, your father, your sisters, look at them, look at their bodies and remember. It was the Americans. It was the Americans.”
“i SHOUTED OUT: WHO KILLED THE KENNEDYS? WHEN AFTER ALL IT WAS YOU AND ME….”
PLEASED TO MEET YOU.