Where We Are This Week

disappointment, campus protests, and Hamilton Hall.

Disappointment will hunt you down. Its chickens will almost certainly come home to roost and when they do, you’ll be faced with that familiar, exasperating feeling.

English football fans have a particular phrase that is rather apt for our moment. It’s the hope that kills you; meaning, you know, letting yourself dream of winning ways and better times. The trouble is that not everyone can be a winner, and the expectation for something greater only makes each loss, each miserable season, that much more soul-crushing.

Just when the monotony of mediocrity and acrimony proves too much to bear, the faint prospect of a brighter future might appear in the distance. That’s the hope all right. But getting there is slow-going and fraught with misadventure and dejection.

Change seems as if it would be easy to affect in theory. Voting every once in a while, and sharing your opinions with your friends (or strangers online) seems like enough to shift political and public opinion one way or the other. The more you learn, or the more you observe, however, you notice things move at a glacial pace.

Russia invaded Ukraine over two years ago and we’re still playing nuclear chicken, the Chinese have been interning Uyghur Muslims since at least 2019, and it’s been over six months since October 7th and the war in Gaza began sparking a new wellspring of antisemitism in the United States.

The encampments and demonstrations across college campuses over the past two weeks have been as laughable as they are deplorable. Intimidating Jewish students, chanting ‘death to America’, and barricading themselves inside buildings on campus while demanding an ‘end to the occupation’ are all hallmarks of the unparalleled levels of ignorance that have been displayed. We’re half a year into these protests and the only thing that has changed is the idiocy of their actions, not their opinions.

Fortunately, growing up is a simple remedy for ignorance and there’s always the chance that as the years go by, these faux revolutionaries’ radical beliefs will be tempered by reality and — gasp — responsibility. Conversely, professors and administrators have been aiding and abetting these protestors all the while — so, the very real possibility that everyone becomes more entrenched in their asinine beliefs might be the likeliest of outcomes.

Still, as November approaches, I find myself hopeful that the dam will break; despite the fact that the man leading our nation into this brave new world will either be Donald Trump or Joe Biden. At present, we’re just barely keeping democratic lights on in the West — and that’s just with batteries powered by a handful of potatoes. Just think about what we could do when we discover fission.

Yes, it’s the hope that kills you. But what they don’t tell you is that it’s the hope that lets you live in the first place.

Until then, this:

Hamilton Hall
I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by false belief
if you could even call them minds at all
those who chant in the libraries and yards
repeating: 'I will fight for justice, I will make my mind
I will not say what others say' - compliantly noncompliant
fueled by piety and self-righteousness and espresso
drunk on fantasies of revolution they don
overnighted keffiyehs and tank tops
and clever signs with the right amount of adopted euphemisms
praying to a plastic, shapeshifting deity
where nothing but the self is sacred

who hate all nation states but the ones
who hate gays women and jews
and cry for indebtedness and welcoming
but never citizenship
behind barricades of trash and meaninglessness
singing songs of karl marx and woody guthrie
this machine would kill fascists if I knew how
this machine belongs to the movement but mostly me
begging for an oppressor, longing for wronging
recalcitrance made easy by sympathetic authority

disappointment will hunt you down
like the dog you are, chasing the car
down the wrong side
of a one way street
waking up after your trip you learn
the shaman was only a vagrant in tattered robes
luckily for the rest of us
the communal guru was ordained online
defiled conscience and tongues
where the only shame was being told to stop
where we played civil disobedience but turned into vandals
where we played soviets but found the Trotskyites
too charismatic and yellow
where we tried to write a manifesto
but didn't know how to spell the word in Arabic

resistance demands defiance!
resistance demands conformity!
resistance demands sacrifice!
resistance demands vegan sandwiches with the crusts cut off
for we can't intifada on empty stomachs
nevermind the 1200 killed
nevermind the women raped
nevermind the children stolen
from the arms of their dying mother
all sins will be forgiven from the river to the sea
and courtyards and campuses
where geniuses used to roam
will finally be rid of the petit bourgeoisie 

where Hamilton Hall was made a cathedral
for rebellion, for uprising, for Hamas
where we had a triage tent for
bruised egos and fractured ideologies
where hatred for zionists (jews) and whites (whites) 
was sanctified
where the fall of the west would be consecrated
and where no lessons would be learned

To a better next week,

Cheers,

~FDA