The President is right about one thing: WE are at war. We. That is, all of us. And, even if Mr. Bush is able to "grieve for every death" without so much as shedding a tear, even if this swashbuckling he-man of a man can somehow turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the Cindy Sheehan's of the world, I cannot. Because it's not just about Cindy Sheehan. It's about us.
It's about our need to grieve, to mourn the deaths of our fellow citizens""about our desire and our willingness to show the mothers, the brothers, sisters, wives, daughters and sons that our hearts are breaking, too. And, unlike the President, we are not afraid to look them in the eye. We are not afraid of looking "weak"""we will stand by them, weeping with them, sharing their grief, not just "thinking" about it. And if even that doesn't move the President to tears, well then we know. The bastard's been lying all along, not only about the big things""WMD, noble and not-so-noble causes, blood and oil, failed intelligence""but also about the little things, like his itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny unbroken heart.
George W. Bush may not give a damn about Casey Sheehan or his mother, but we do. And we do care enough to cry for them""collectively, with or without the President.
Lilian Friedberg friedberg@chidjembe.com is a writer, translator, editor and performing artist from Chicago, IL. She recently completed her PhD in Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared in such venues as American Indian Quarterly, African Studies Quarterly, German Quarterly, New German Critique, Denver Quarterly, Chicago Review, Transition and various other venues. She recently co-edited, with Sander Gilman, a volume of selected essays by German Jewish journalist Henryk Broder, (A Jew in the New Germany, Univ. of Illinois Press). Friedberg is artistic director of the Chicago Djembe Project, an arts organization dedicated to respect and cooperation across cultures and genders through the African djembe drum tradition. http://www.chidjembe.comNext Page 1 | 2
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Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)