and off i went, thoroughly exhausted after impassioned meetings with marvelous mentors, to the human rights film festival's screening of dallaire's "shake hands with the devil"(director, peter raymont, in attendance, along with co-author mjr.. beardsley). excellent. most very.
and i'm so glad they chose, during the q&a, to talk about sudan. like me, you may be wondering why we haven't done anything yet, given that few disagree that at least crimes against humanity (if not genocide) are occurring at the hands of the complicit government.
i know why. either we learn nothing, or we've learned not to care.
i ranted a bit about how we allow one ideal (in this case state autonomy, if i'm feeling generous, or the lack of political will to face the loss of a handful of valued lives for the protection of the faceless poor, when i'm feeling more realistic) to justify our failure to meet all the other ideals. but again i think i was being too kind. i don't think ideals come into it at all. ideals are myths, just like heroes and enemies and gods and love stories. we construct them to suit our purposes, and then we re-write them when our purposes change.
we can wait for all the political delay tactics, or we can remind them that voters haven't forgotten...here are things you can do, if you'd like. writing to parliament requires no stamp!
(was that me saying ideals were dead?)
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