Damn you, Seymour Hersch, for making me think again. This article and the one in Harpers has me sick to my stomach in a manner reminiscent of November.
Geez, just when I was all into the OC, and Battlestar Galactica, and going to the gym, and making soup, and reading fiction and thinking about tsunami relief, I get a reminder.
So yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Holocaust education started young for me, and in the face of these horrific narratives, I used to imagine heroic feats I would perform to save people.
I also remember reading about Stalin and Pinochet. And learning how silence can be complicity. Thinking how you don't have to be turning your neighbour over to the secret police to be the bad guy. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut.
I know this is a bombastic entry. And I know that it makes little difference to anyone or anything what I blab about here self-importantly in my semi-ignorant fog. And I don't join movements with their blunt ideas and sloganeering. And I don't know what we are supposed to do. But read some of Hersch's stuff for starters.
Remember that story in Salinger's collectin of nine, called "A perfect day for banana fish". About Seymour Glass, a fragile war vet who befriends a child on the beach. "See More Glass" is what she calls him. It is a sad story, but I remember liking it very much. And everytime I see the name Seymour, that is what I think of.
