good americans

i see that i am too negative. i always see the worst intentions in people. i don't trust anyone.

so i'm trying to see the good in americans. today, i went to the ymca and had a pretty good conversation. i tried to talk about my concern with tribalism in the united states and my concern that it may break out into violence like in the old days portrayed by the godfather. there were the black gangs afterward, then the spanish gangs. some central american gangs are coming into the US and making sex slaves of teenage girls. they rob them at parties, drug them up and sell them to US customers at some garage shop or something. they're not afraid of the law and some of them kill americans who cut them off on the streets. they know that there is a market for sex in america. perhaps some of their sisters or brothers served as sex slaves for american consumers.

i think he knows what i am trying to get at. i've talked to him maybe a dozen times and sometimes i know i have a thick skull. i'm always trying to push my own agenda and not listening to others. i'm trying to listen more to others now and some of it goes in now. i've always assumed that people are trying to fuck me over.

i'm asking him what really makes the US unique now. tribalism IRAQ is something that seems to confound the US military. did they expect ideology to bind the people? do they expect consumerism to bind the people? do they expect US militarism and imperialism to bind the people?

he answers me in a funny way. he agrees with me and then the discussion flows to israel and the balfour agreement. the truth is i really don't trust how history is written. things are spoken most of the time and i really don't believe that israel and palestinians were really given totally separate pieces of land in the middle east by england. even movies like lawrence of arabia seem to express the deceited duplicity of the english, doubletalk in orwellian terms perhaps. i really believe that there was confusion over who owned one piece of land and that's where the fighting really started. in one palestine, this confusion breaks down into chaos and the author is simply saying that all moral laws went out the door and the struggle for existence was what took over.

sometimes i try to convey this to him but i don't know whether he believes me or not. we could have read different books or it's difference of perspective. but i cannot reconcile his attitude with his distrust of the the anglo-american world order. this is what bothers me.

he's a good man and he lives a simple, admirable life. i would be much more conceited if i had his intellect, but he's not. he tries to tell other americans about what's really going on right in front of their eyes but they don't listen. americans want the simplicity of sports, winner and loser, good and evil... they can't seem to dig their heads into the complexity of a situation.

i'm going to miss him because i'm leaving the ymca due to financial pressures.