“I am angry!” I typed in a search bar and I found numerous articles, poems, and vignettes of writers around the world who have begun their essays with this exact statement. In fact I’ve written a blog post with the same title in the past. Today I begin another rampage of thoughts in the same fashion and it is not the first time I have purged my anger unto a piece of paper and shouted in maddening rage. The anger has always been justified though because, well, let’s face it, it’s been about ME. Who is to say I can’t be angry?
However, today I wanted to write about something other than myself. I wanted to talk about something greater than me, something of importance, something worth being angry about. So, in retrospect, why have I begun this piece so egocentrically? Is it human nature to be so self-absorbed? So self-centered? Or is it this individualistic, materialistic, “Me, myself and I”, consumer world we live in? Can I really be blamed for beginning an article about something important by using an “I” statement?
“I AM ANGRY?” Is it even important how I feel? What I want? What I write about? Does my anger even matter when Britney Spears’ 16-year-old sister is pregnant? Could I possibly have something provoking to say when Paris Hilton just lost all of her inheritance to charity? Can I possibly have something more enraging to be angry about when so and so just got engaged and the other couple from last year’s wedding filed for a divorce? I mean who cares what I have to say? Everyone has so much to worry about already. JC Penny’s “16-hour post holiday sale” is ticking down and Macy’s has that “two days only end of the year, new year special” going on right now so why would anyone in their right mind be reading this instead? Who cares that I am angry? I bet you are angry too! For heaven’s sake, your central heater is too loud, or was it your refrigerator? And your laundry takes too long. I bet you’re angry too, I mean isn’t it outrageous that you didn’t get an extra day off this year and that Hanna Montana tickets were sold out before it was supposed to go on sale?
Well I’m going to tell you what I’m angry about anyways because why would I care that you have your own problems? I’m going to express myself anyways because isn’t that what we are supposed to do? Aren’t Myspace, facebook, YouTube, blogcentral, etc. etc. all there to make us feel like we are expressing ourselves freely and someone cares to listen? I’ll probably put this up on my Journals on OkCupid so I can seem like a better catch and wipe out my competition. I mean isn’t that what it’s all about? This game, this race that we are running to be the best, the first, the biggest, the smallest, the richest, the most powerful, I don’t know, the youngest, the oldest? Isn’t it all about the winners? Aren’t they the ones who end up writing history?
Isn’t that why you’ve never heard of the girls whose breasts are cut and then ironed onto their chests in order to desexualize them? Wouldn’t you rather see pictures of a D-cup breast instead? Oh, you were saving up to buy some, how else are plastic surgeons and porn stars two of the biggest money earners in this country? They are the winners. You wouldn’t know the San Fernando Valley and Beverley Hills if it weren’t for them. Isn’t that why you’ve heard of the Holocaust but never about the genocides in Armenia, Kurdistan, Rwanda, Darfur, Cambodia? I mean you just upgraded to Cable. While you had dial-up and DSL it took too long to watch the videos shot by a cheap hand held camera by an unknown journalist who was trying to give you an image of what the circumcisions of 130 girls in a village in Africa looks like. The Victoria Secret show downloaded faster and let’s face it, it was full of eye candy. It wasn’t your fault, it never is!
I am angry! I want to shout it on top of Mount Everest and I bet just as many people will hear me then, as the number of people who will read this vignette when I put it up online.
My father always tells me “you can’t be angry at the ignorant but of those who know and look away.” Is that called oblivion? I am angry because half this world is oblivious to the fact that every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger? I mean your anorexic daughters and sisters are hungry too so why would you care? I am angry because your ignorance is not an excuse. Because isn’t this era called the information era? Shouldn’t you know more than ever, now that you spend at the least 12 hours a day online? I mean it wasn’t so hard for you to get the latest news about the release of the video games you play 5 hours a day, every day. How come you have no idea that more people die of suicide than those murdered or killed in war? So who cares that I am angry that my search results for “statistics on childhood sexual abuse” is not even 1/3rd the size of the search results for your favorite television show. I bet you are angry too that you didn’t get the new iPod during this holiday season. I’m not judging you. I mean, I myself have useless conversations on a cellular phone that costs more than what 300 people live on each day and I walk around wearing a Bluetooth headset to make myself feel important!
UNICEF just put out this statement: “Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion – a majority of humanity – live on less than $1 per day, while the world’s 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world’s people.” Is that just a random fact I copy and pasted?
I am angry because we couldn’t collect more than $100.00 for those hungry children you couldn’t care less about while we stood all day in front of a shopping mall in Calabasas where the shoppers drove no less than their pimped out brand new models of Mercedes Benz, BMW, Lexus and guess what? That’s the Middle class man’s car in those areas. Their 16-year-old daughters who all look alike drive Maseratis and hold $1,500 purses that “daddy” bought for them for Christmas. It’s much cooler, trust me.
I am angry! At you, no, not you the reader, but me, the girl who stares back at me in the mirror. I am angry because I sat down to write something worth reading and all I have done is given you facts and figures you should know already. I bet you’re angry too because I am making you feel guilty. I mean it’s all for a reason right? All this madness, sadness, and chaos? Maybe if I believed in your omnibenevolent God, I wouldn’t be so angry. Maybe then I could justify through the misuse of logic how an all loving and an all knowing, an all powerful God has decided that it’s justice for little kids in the Middle East to have to pick mine bombs as a job to feed their families while your little cousins, nephews, and nieces pick daisies and strawberries for fun. I am angry, and bitter, and all fired up but aren’t you tired of all these angry liberals? I mean you hear enough sarcasm on Saturday Night Live. You don’t need another self righteous hypocrite to tell you how unfair this world is. You don’t need to feel patronized, interrogated, and guilt tripped? You didn’t choose to be born in this country, or with a silver spoon, or ignorant. All you can do is feed yourself and your own family. Life is a struggle, you didn’t decide for the rest of the world to starve. It’s all for a higher purpose anyways, right?
Listen, I am angry! I am angry that I walk through Berkley, the supposed liberal heaven and I see Che Guevara on sale. Google him, I bet you’ve already seen his pictures amongst your little brother’s band shirts. No, Che isn’t a band. He was a guerrilla fighter against oppression, or to please others he was a terrorist and guess what? They sell him now! Capitalism prints his photos on bikinis and Adriana Lima proudly wears it on the catwalk for the pleasure of your senses. You can now pre-order Rebellion, Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, and all your ideologies can be shipped free to the comfort of your door at no extra charge. And while you’re at it, why don’t you send Democracy to Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine and Afghanistan? They will gladly take your imposed ideas and wear it to their Intifada.
So now that our heroes and idols are sold on the shelves of our highly glamorous bourgeois malls, who are we supposed to worship? I mean this is a hero-worshipping land right? How many super hero movies were blockbuster hits this past year?
I am angry and let me tell you why. So us women, if we need a role model why don’t we idolize Angelina Jolie? I mean, she’s beautiful, sexy, a humanitarian, she even has an environmentalist boyfriend and a multi colored family. She deserves my respect for being a sexually liberated woman with her own opinions. What else can I strive to be?
So I am angry that for the first time in the history of the most powerful nation in the world, yes, The United States of America, we have a major female presidential candidate and she is not supported by the majority of her gender because she isn’t woman enough! What does that mean? And in other news, our other candidate, a man of color, isn’t black enough for our tastes! If those are the criteria by which we vote for our leaders, I now understand why Bush was selected president, the Jesus-loving, homophobic, hypocritical man IS indeed white enough!
I am angry that I know injured veterans who still swear by their military, and when they are trying to impress you they talk about how they marched with their over sized rifles in ROTC at the age of 14. I am angry because people dare talk about freedom and responsibility, they dare look me in the eyes and tell me that this war we are fighting is a “war on terror” and it’s about humanity. Since you happen to know the truth delivered to you by FOX news, since you seem to be convinced that our government is the best in the world, tell me then why in 1988 when Halabja was bombed with nerve agents Sarin, Tabun and VX, as well as mustard gas, when 5000 people literally dropped dead, and thousands are still suffering today, no one started looking for “weapons of mass destruction”. There is in fact half a page on the event on Wikipedia, your convenient reliable source of choice. That’s right. You didn’t even know about Halabja. You were watching The Young and the Restless while that happened. A decade later, the 3000 people who died on September 11, 2001 are forever remembered and the world is never the same again.
Tell me again, tell me how this war is justified so that I can tell you how many gallons of blood equals a barrel of oil. “Oh! She is one of those conspiracy theorists”, you’re probably thinking. I mean we all know our SUVs waste a lot of oil but we have Alaska, no need to go overseas. I am angry because you complain about gas prices while you’re driving your brand new Hummer and you’re not at all worried about global warming. Let Al Gore take care of that.
Tell me again how this war is about the people so I can tell you about the thousands of refugees this war has created, so that I can tell you about the tents and the cargo ships and the group shacks, not homes, they live in. Tell me it’s about the future, so that I can tell you about their living conditions, which even films labeled “Quentin Tarantino Presents” couldn’t envision. Tell me again how wonderful this freedom-loving, democratic, secular government is, so that I can tell you how the Kurds put their lives in danger to help our cause during the war only to see our lovely Condoleezza Rice shake hands with the prime minister of Turkey and watch them bombard the already ruined homes of the Kurds. When did betrayal become ethical? Thanks to the Patriot Act even torture can be considered lawful. Tell me again about civil liberties in this country so that I can tell you just how much respect our queer families receive. I am angry because human life isn’t measured equally. Your life is worth far more than the disposable human guinea pigs of Africa and Asia. While you’re at your baseball game and eating $8 hot dogs, little children in downtown LA, not Africa, but in LA, go to sleep hungry.
I am angry because it’s Saturday night and while you’re out with your buddies downing a 6-pack or on a date, all I’ve managed to accomplish is look like a pessimistic passive writer. I am not considered a brave, courageous, rebellious activist because if I were, I wouldn’t be here. I mean with my psychiatric history, thanks to the Virgina Tech. massacre, not only would I not be able to buy a gun, but quite easily they can claim an “accidental“ suicide as the cause of my death tomorrow morning. No, I’m not paranoid because I don’t think they are listening; I know! What am I complaining about? I mean there are men and women out there who are fighting in Iraq so that I can write propaganda and feed your illusions of freedom, so that I can make you feel like something is being done by someone. Go ahead, call me a bitch! Oops, was that politically correct? Let’s talk about freedom of speech for a second. I am angry because censorship has taken a whole new meaning. It’s not about approving a script or book before it’s published, there is a much better mechanism in effect. It’s called self-censorship. We’re all so afraid to say the wrong thing at the wrong time that we just don’t say anything at all. Well I’m so angry that I’m going to say it all. Racism exists and slavery is far from over! “Did she just say what I think she said?” Yes, I did. Next time you see your amigo go to work on Labor Day and pull off an 18 hour shift at minimum wage, you’ll know just what I mean. I am angry, no, not at you the religious fanatic, no, not at you, the cheerleader and sorority sister, no, not at you the baseball star, I am angry at these pseudo liberals who are outraged by the West Bank fences but end up volunteering to “protect” our borders from illegal immigrants and vote for their deportation. I am angry at these double standards. I am angry that you shout and riot about labels and stereotypes, yet right and left you call everyone names. I am angry that you’re willing to stand in line 12 hours, all night, in front of a retail store, but it hasn’t occurred to you to spend an hour with an ill child at a local hospital.
So all this said and done, what I am really angry about is that on Thursday morning my idol was assassinated. I bet you heard about the Pakistani leader who was shot; she did have quite a photogenic face. Although there hasn’t been half as much coverage on Benazir Bhutto’s murder as there was for Anna Nicole Smith’s overdose. I mean you don’t see Bhutto’s face by every grocery store checkout stand. I am angry because she was a woman worth looking up to, because she was a woman worth striving to be, but when she died and I called my friend in tears, she said: “Oh my God, who died?” Last month Bhutto told TIME Magazine that she is not afraid. I am angry because she wasn’t scared. She said in one of her interviews that her Mother’s Kurdish blood gave her the courage she needs to fight. I am angry that the same blood runs through me but I AM afraid. I wouldn’t walk through a country where every day a suicide bombing has cleared the streets in the past month. I am afraid but courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s the ability to face it. I am angry because I don’t know what to answer when I ask myself: “Would I die for my people?” But a few years ago I was willing to die for my boyfriend; getting his name tattooed was the only thing off limits. I am afraid because this world is like a chess game and all they have to do when a piece is in the way is to eliminate it, terminate it, brutally, forcefully, violently, and ruthlessly silence it. I bet the western strategists who decided that she needed to be killed didn’t take into account the psychology of the region. I bet they didn’t realize that in those parts of the world the dead speak louder than the living. I bet they didn’t foresee the chaos that has overtaken Pakistan since. I bet they didn’t take into account our martyr-worshiping mentalities and didn’t realize death is powerless in the face of truth, that death is a catalysis, that it becomes a reason and ideas are bullet proof.
You want to silence people, give them drugs! Learn from the way the government is enjoying full access to one of the world’s largest opium supplies in Afghanistan and is pouring it in the streets of Iran, to dig the youth in their own self-destructive holes. They call it “the silent genocide” where I come from. Or what about the way our health care system is willing to pay for anti-depressants but doesn’t cover therapeutic sessions for your suicidal kids. I am angry because our kids are loaded on Zoloft and Prozac because our fast-food nation needs a quick fix for their blues. I guess we are all overworked and can’t afford British nannies like the ones on Nanny 911, to take care of them so instead we have 1000 channels that they can watch on a big screen TV to keep them occupied. Sure, the Simpsons and Family Guy can teach them family values. Next time their father decides to abuse them they can relate to Bart who is systematically, for your amusement, choked by Homer…
