Where do I belong?

"Our fear that communism might someday
take over most of the world blinds us
to the fact that anti-communism already has"
Michael Parenti(1)

My first blog *see (A week of natural disasters below on Turkey) had quite an impact on a friend of mine who replied personally to it, rather than comment online. I wish that he had actually posted as he had some valid things to say. So let me see if I might translate them into something for all. When I first read his feelings over the comments made by a so-called friend of mine regarding Turks, my only reaction was one of complete and utter agreement. Then I cried for the simple acknowledgement that these days I feel more and more isolated from my own culture, what do I do? Do I deny that I have a family and friends back home? I sometimes feel I am stuck between a rock and a cold place. I am day by day becoming more isolated from the world I come from. While I wish I could say I have happy family support as a child of this world, and that I belong somewhere, I can't. I remember my friend saying to me, "You are all alone. You chose the easy way to run away from your family instead of staying with them." I can say that it is not easy to go it alone, of course I wish I could wake up and eat breakfast with my mum and dad, and feel the security that comes from that moment, but the truth is that these days I can't seem to relate to or agree with anything they say. Christmas will be the toughest this year, I expect, as everyone heads home for the holidays. Am I being disrespectful? Or am I trying to step away from a sheltered ignorant life and find a kind of truth that goes beyond listening to what is being handed down to me?

This week I got an email regarding the "fallen US soldiers" from my dad. It was the most disgusting example of US patriotism I have ever seen. The title said it all, "The Real America". And I thought, yeah the real america of dead soldiers and millions of lives lost. I don't want to celebrate it and turn the perpetrators into heroes. I'm not saying that the life of one US soldier is worth less than the life of one Vietnamese, that would be racists of me to make that distinction – something which I am not, but what I am saying is that I can't romanticize about why these lives are lost: "For Our Country". It's utter crap. My friends here always tell me, " But he's your dad, you have to respect that". Well, it's just so deeply complicated that I wish it were as simple as just respecting him, and while I have for a long time. I just can't find myslef to accept the ignorant ideas that are a product of comfortable western lives. I remember the day he complained when gas prices went up to over $2 a gallon – I mean what a total disaster! I was so compelled to reply to him on the subject of US patriotism. This is what I wrote:

"Sorry but I won't be forwarding on ur mail to fuel the patriotism that makes Americans ignorant to their government's foreign policy. Did you know that under Clinton .. Yugoslavia was bombed for 78 days.. turning the once industrial country into a back water.... did you know that the US originally invaded Afghanistan to provoke the invasion of the soviets to end the cold war ... please read more scholars and leave the media alone!!!! wake up .. it is the patriotism and well-skilled media propaganda that keeps Americans like yourself free from holding the government responsible for their actions abroad, which ultimately turns into terrorism at home!"

Now to my friend's comments on the stupidity of my so-called friend. These are just a few of his comments that I strongly agreed with when I read them.

"Your friend'stereotypepe ideology burnt 100 K japs in Tokyo, 1,000 K in Vietnam, 55,000 K in World War 2, not the brownskinned-muslims... please tell now, what kind odelusionon is the west in??? They, most of them, have still no respect for their race...And irrespect brigns violation of the rights...how do I know these? Thnx god to some great thinkers of the west, who tried their society to change so...The geography of great ideas in favour of humanity, which is again a creation of these great thinkers in the west, does not effect all the people living there..."

"She may have read Brave New World, but guess she is lack of implying what she read in reasonable ways to her acceptance of life... So that the ruling great powers do not afraid of any critical thinking to their system, coz the sheeps are so much annihilated of reviewing ability."

And the words that ring most true are:

"I think you must consider your friendship with her so, coz who can gurantee that she doesn't feel the same for you...
how can you predict that she, from the heart, lets you to lean on her shoulder...just another steoreotype without honesty..."

"But as Marx said, every organism carry its death inside...this will be the end of white-rich-civilized-west, inshallah..."

Yes, my friend is right, but as I was born in the west and my friends and family are westerners. What do I do? I never felt comfortable there which is why I find myself living in Turkey. A country that knows what it's ills are and is able to discuss it. I have become much more politically aware since living in this country, something that I had been ignorant of for a long time growing up in the cushion of a western middle class home.

I'm not saying that all western households are politically ignorant, I know many that are not. But just mine happened to be that way.

And as a reply to my forward to my dad came in from my sister, it demonstrates my point.

"I'm sorry I have no idea what you guys are talking about. We don't talk politics in this house, too busy watching my family grow up."

There's another generation of people who will not be critical of the government they reside under, a government that will continue to bomb other countries under the name of "the war on terror and human rights", don't they know that communism can not rear it's head again, the world is a changed place. It would be hard to reverse the wheels of open market economy! In the 20th century we have seen the development of organisation of unity between countries in the world and I would find it difficult to believe that these structures would just cease to exist. The US should respect the rules of these organisations. If Slobodan Milosevic can be put on trial for war crimes in the Hague, why then do we not try the many presidents of America? They have violated almost every crime against humanity on a much larger scale. General Colin Powell (not a president I know but part of the machine) said when asked on the number of lives that had been lost in Iraq, "It is not a number I am terribly concerned with." Clinton illegally bombed Yugoslavia, Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan and Afghanistan.

So I find it difficult to be so happy go lucky about the US these days. In fact I find myself shying away from my Americaness, I am also a British citizen and feel fortunate that I grew up in the UK, not the US, as the Brits do at least have a sense of pessimism and cynical thinking unlike the "unreal optimism of the great states of America".

Brits say, "Fuck off. You're full of shit."
Americans say, "Really? Wow, that's interesting!"
More stereotypes I know, but well worth their weight in gold.

My parents were both hippies, who grew up in the states. These I feel are the worst type of Americans as they tended to be part of a movement that thought they could just spread love around the world by sending positive thoughts and energy! With no real political backbone. I mean my mother when broached on the subject of Palestine said to me, "You just have to send positive thoughts to the region honey." While I must admire her own sense of self delusion, it is just a little disturbing to think that she has never had any stance on her own political system. Is it as my friend suggests she was just so well-comforted by her great lifestyle that she didn't need to think about it?

I feel that there was a generation of Americans who just thought that sending peace, love and happy thoughts across the world would be enough. It obviously wasn't when you look at Vietnam.

I'm not completely down on the west, there have been and are many great thinkers. Here's a quote I leave you with – that my friend reminded me of – from a great western writer Aldous Huxley, who replied when some academics criticizeded him of being bad.

"I want to dig a big plate to the ruins of Europe and write on it "thnx to the educators of this society" to stay there forever...and hail the good people of the society." Written in the 1950s.

One last note as my friend quite rightly put it: "So a fake respect in west and no respect here in this part of the world (ME), both are suffering, one needs phsycologists, one needs a stop to bloodshed..."