Jesse A. Schroeder

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Our older vehicle finally bit the dust, and so I've spent almost all of the past two days searching for a replacement car - online, in the newspaper, on the streets, on car lots, on the phone with friends, parents, mechanics and informants - always looking for a good deal on a good car.

Meanwhile....Israeli Gaza Bombing Continues; Deaths Near 350. Brian McLaren posted an article from a journalist friend living in what she calls "the largest prison in the world" (Gaza). She also writes,

"Please, please, stop what you're doing and go out on the streets in protest. Write to your newspapers. Especially those of you in the US. Today everyone I talked to told me the US streets are silent...the US is doing nothing...But please, do not continue as usual. 1.5 million people who have been under siege in the largest prison in the world for months, even years now, are now being bombed indiscriminately. We have ignored Gaza for too long. Every day, every hour, every minute counts."

I've seen the headlines, and I'm immediately frustrated by the (lack of) response by the U.S. government, I'm saddened for the loss of life, I pray for the people who are suffering, and I wish I could do more to help. But after another day spent on car lots and thinking about how best to spend my dollars on a second car to park in my garage, I felt imprisoned in this American lifestyle.

What else can I do but shop for a car? I work only 3 miles from home, but I have to cross a freeway and several major intersections to get there, with no public transportation nearby. I don't live in a hip metropolis and I don't have a job that offers the time, the financial padding, let alone the political initiative to even care about global crises like Gaza. My car breaks down - I have to buy a new one - even though I would rather be helping all of the people around the world who are in need, all I can do is read the blip in the paper, shed a proverbial tear, and then return to my self-serving, American consumerism lifestyle, essentially ignoring, and continuing to imprison and injure the rest of the hurting world.

So I sit in my wide open, free, excruciatingly suffocating American prison - the life that I don't know how to escape and don't think I will ever be able to. And I look out the window of my 17-inch computer screen at a world that is bright, alive, and thriving with life (and death) and calling for me to come and be a part - but I can't get out. I've been in the darkness of this cell for so long I don't even know which way the door is.

While walking through my safe, side-walked, suburban neighborhood with my overly hyper husky, I was thinking about one of my favorite short stories from Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron. You'll have to read the whole story to really get the profound impact of the final paragraphs, but the story ends this way:

George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying?” he said to Hazel.

"Yup," she said.

“What about?” he said.

“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”

“What was it?” he said.

“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.

“Forget sad things,” said George.

“I always do,” said Hazel.

“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.

“Gee – I could tell that one was a doozy,” said Hazel.

“You can say that again,” said George.

“Gee –” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.”
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Now playing: The National - Start A War