the center cannot hold

I just read Kerry’s concession speech, and my face is sticky with tears. Sitting here in my cubicle, glasses slightly foggy, I sniffle and wipe my chin, trying to keep the tears from dripping on to my desk.

My heart aches, and the panes are hard to swallow. How am I supposed to be “inspired” and “keep fighting?” All I want to do is go home and sleep. At least in my dreams I can pretend none of this brouhaha is happening.

This morning, I walked down the street feeling like I was in another dimension. Something gravely wrong had happened. Anger, sadness and shock all coalesced to put my mind in a surreal plane.

But when I heard that Kerry conceded, my heart sank, and now I’m just overcome with profound sadness.

I don’t know which is worse: Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court promoting George Bush to presidency, or the country actually electing George Bush to presidency. The idea that power rested in the hands of a few disturbs me immensely. But the idea that millions of people continue to want power to remain with Bush destroys what little faith I had in humanity. And I say “humanity” instead of the American public, because aren’t Americans supposed to embody all that is good in the free world? And there is the rub: what’s supposed to happen in theory doesn’t always happen.

And maybe I’m just naïve. But even before I moved to the States, I grew up with the rhetoric that America is great, America is wonderful. And I believed it. For seven years, I wanted so much to become a citizen of the United States. Now that I can call this land of the free “my country,” all I want to do is leave.

But there’s no reason to be optimistic now. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. You can’t trust anyone but yourself. Maybe you can trust those who are reading this raw rant, but that’s probably about it. And Barack Obama. I think I still have faith in him. But that’s really about it.

There is nothing more dangerous than the feeling of helplessness and despair. The combination, coupled with strong conviction and political passion, is what prompts people to pursue suicide bombing. Obviously I wholeheartedly condemn such acts of violence, but I can now fathom why somebody would resort to terrorism. Perhaps the only thing more precious than freedom is life itself. To make a poignant point, you have to take some lives. Even if it’s your own. And tragically, it’s often others, too. Some people may disagree, but the ingredients that nurture terrorism is the probably the same as the ones that prompted the Columbine shooting.

There’s nothing that justifies what happened on Sept. 11. And I still maintain that there’s nothing that justifies what happened in the election of 2000. Both are prime examples of injustice, except in the latter example we manifested the unjust paradigm upon ourselves.

Last night on the subway I saw a Yeats poem that I first read in high school—The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.

That was always the one line that resonated with me when I think about this poem. I read this poem when I was reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Now, what little I learned to analyze in literary analysis is coming back to haunt me.

The best lack all conviction… the worst are full of passionate intensity.

It’s all too scary. The country just elected an administration that epitomizes mendacity and intransigence.

Somehow the phrase that “at least you tried” or “we fought hard” doesn’t comfort me.

My senior year in college, I wrote a feature article for my journalism class, profiling a law professor at NYU who helped write the appellant brief in Roe v. Wade. To this day, Norman Dorsen remains one of the most inspiring individual I have ever met. He was once the head of the ACLU, he fought for the indigent, and he was a part of the defense team in the McCarthy hearing. Now I shudder to think that the rights he fought for us will be obsolete.

a story out of The Onion

The sad thing is, this is not a story out of The Onion... this is a true story. Out of my frustration with the government and its retarded policies, I'm starting this blog while the First Amendment is still part of the Constitution...

My story begins Memorial Day weekend, 2004:

Danny and I had a 6 am flight out of LaGuardia to Detroit on Saturday.  Our car service came at the butt crack of dawn (read 4:15 am).  We get in the car, and the driver is some 12 year old looking gangsta kid, who had his seat reclined back so much as if to accost the passenger in the back seat.  To make matters worse, his car smells like smoke, and you know how much I hate smoke. 

Then, we get to the airport, and we're going through security check.  For some reason, my suitcase never came through.  And I saw the monitor watching lady point to something on the screen and laughing.  When my bag finally came through, an airport personnel told me that he had to inspect it.  But instead of opening up  my bag, he stood there for about 5 minutes.  Apparently he was only a lowly bag-checker and we had to wait for a "real" security person to come by and inspect my bag.  So I'm standing there thinking... all I have in my bag is dirty clothes and dried sea cucumber and dried guava.  I'm going to have a field day explaining to them what all the Chinese food in my luggage is. 

So, as they were going through my bag, they pulled out the ninja star that I bought in Japan, which I was going to give to my little cousin. 

Instead of putting it back in my bag, the ex-cop told me I had an illegal weapon and he had to inform the police. 

Did he say, "illegal?"  Shit.  I work at a law firm.  Why would I knowingly do anything illegal?

I told him that it's a toy and I bought the damned thing for like, $2 in Japan.  I'm pretty sure they wouldn't sell weapons for $2. 

Well, regardless, 2 cops showed up.  Yes, you read correctly.  Not 1 cop, but 2 cops.  Apparently I looked menacing enough to warren 2 cops.  

I told them that I flew all the time and if I realized this was a problem, I wouldn't have brought it with me.  I told them to confiscate the $2 toy and I didn't want any trouble. 

But typical of stupid cops who have superiority complex, one of them was really rude.  He scoffed something to the effect of, "well, this IS a problem."  Blah, blah, blah.   Again reiterating that what I had in my suitcase was a WEAPON. 

Well, how the hell am I supposed to know that?  It's not like they put up a poster at security check and lists ninja stars (a toy one, at that) as one of the no-no items.  I had other souvenirs from Japan in my bag, and really, if I wanted to hijack a plane, I would've brought more than one ninja star. 

Then they asked for my drivers license and took down my contact info.  I said to Danny, "great, now the FBI is going to put me on watch because I had a toy ninja star in my bag." 

We stood around while people made calls.  And the 2 cops were saying to each other, "have you ever found this before?"  The other one said, "no, just knives and stuff."  And then the other one said, "what do you even do with this?"  I wanted to interrupt and say, "it's a toy. You PLAY with it." 

It was like, barely 5 o'clock in the morning and I had only 3 hours of sleep, so I was borderline cranky... but I recognized that the cops and the airport people were just doing their job, I tried my best not to talk back to them. 

Luckily, the airport security ex-cop person was really nice and tried to make me feel more at ease.  He told me he was just following procedure.  But unluckily, the guy was really dumb.  He said to me, "I understand it's a novelty item and it's a part of your culture, but it's illegal in Brooklyn." 

Well, last time I checked, LaGuardia was in Queens. 

And also, ninja stars are not part of my culture.  You copied down my drivers license info.  CHENG is a Chinese last name, you retard.  But I bit my tongue and decided not to correct him.  But above all, I bit my tongue to keep from laughing in his face. 

God, can you imagine if I was a 24 year old Arab man?  They probably would've linked me to the train bombing in Spain. 

Eventually, they let me go and I went on my merry way to Detroit Rock City with a John Kerry pin on my carry-on bag.  Which, in my opinion, the pin could cause more injury than a toy ninja star, by way of puncture wounds and blood loss... but hey, I'm not the one with the security badge. 

---
Fast forward to July 14, 2004
---

I just came home and found a letter from Homeland Security.
They are fining me $800 for the violation.  I am cited to have brought a "weapon."

---

I have 30 days to respond to the letter.  My options are to:

1.  Pay the $800 fine and waive my rights to a hearing
2. Request an informal hearing with one of their attorneys, via telephone, or in person, at LaGuardia airport
3. Request a formal hearing, by which the DHS will file a formal complaint

If I opt for 2 or 3 and don't pay the $800, whoever presides the hearing could decide that I actually have to pay more than $800, as the maximum penalty is $10,000. 

I mean, what is the likelihood that the government is going to admit they were wrong and decide that I actually don't have to pay anything?  I mean, if the government is capable of putting innocent people on death row, what's keeping them from fining me $10,000?

I guess since I've never had a speeding ticket in my life, it's now my time to pay my debt.