If you're a bay area dweller, imagine it's the evening commute. You're driving up Lombard towards the Golden Gate bridge, through that funky merge by the Exploratorium, slow to 25 through the toll booths when something streaks out of the sunset and the middle of the bridge disappears in boiling flame. The concussion of the explosion cracks the windshield and when you dare to peak above the dashboard as the car slides to a stop you see a dark column of smoking rising from where the roadway, now twisted and hanging, used to be. If you're fast about it, you may even see the splashes as the cars that were crossing the span at the time finish falling those hundreds of feet to the water, and disappear into the churning waters that separate the bay from the Pacific ocean.
Hours later, shaken, as you try to find an alternate way home through a city that, but for its rerouted traffic is strangely normal, the radio announces that Russia has attacked because of some issue involving Native American rights in the Dakotas.
If you're not familiar with San Francisco, substitute your favorite local landmarks.
Although I've seen lots of email from various sources claiming to be from Yugoslavia giving accounts of the NATO attacks similar to this, I'm not naive enough to believe that the average Serb has allowed themselves to be ignorant enough of the events in their country to believe that the attacks are this disconnected or unprovoked.
On the other hand, I'm also not ready to buy the squeaky clean black and white cruise missile footage that NATO is foisting off on us as an accurate representation of reality.
Worse, as I write about not believing that citizens could be that ignorant, I realize that in this country of relatively free press many of the residents probably really are that ignorant of events. To most of the Milosovic was another vote, probably the greater of the evils, but, like many of our political decisions, really too close to call.
Please accept the following few paragraphs as statements of my position without arguing the veracity of my beliefs. That's another debate. This is about my relationship with my government, and I believe it's quite similar to that of many of my peers.
I come from a culture and a class where government feels irrelevant. For several years I was a whitewater guide in a pretty redneck area of the country, and the police were to be avoided and feared. I now live in a fairly affluent county; but in my neighborhoods when we have crime it's either a prolonged domestic dispute or some of "those interlopers from the east bay" (We're too liberal to suggest that these folks might be differently ancestored).
I have no children and tolerate public education because it's cheaper than letting irresponsible parents who have kids without the means to pay for their education loose their untrained monsters on me.
I believe that roads could be dealt with from a free market perspective, heck, all along my commute route we still have the railroad grades and other remains of a great mass transit system which crumbled when the government started subsidizing the automobile. And not only do I have ethical problems with forced "charity", I see a strong link between motivation and success and think that welfare is for the lazy.
So I grumble every April around this time when I realize just how many hours of every day goes to paying off services I don't personally use, but I live with it. Government happens, and my time is much better spent doing things other than worrying about a bunch of schoolyard thugs coming around and stealing some lunch money occasionally. I pay them off and get on with my life.
I've voted for a few candidates who've won, but mainly because I saw them as the lesser of the evils and wanted to make sure that their opponents didn't get elected. It's not like any candidate I've ever actually wanted to see elected has ever had a prayer, not to mention that if they did actually get elected they'd get so bogged down in good ol' boy bullshit that they wouldn't be able to do any good.
This is my relationship with my government.
Unfortunately, I've a feeling that this is the attitude of many of those Yugoslavs who've been writing messages complaining about how the NATO bombing has been disrupting their otherwise normal lives. They can't make a difference, why should they suffer? Government is largely irrelevant, and besides which they didn't vote for Slobodan Milosovic.
I know that my government is involved in many nefarious enterprises. Just looking at the current situation I know that there are underhanded political reasons that they chose to get involved in Yugoslavia, yet stood idly by while half a million were slaughtered in Rwanda, or that they continue to subsidize the "bad guys" in several central and south American countries.
But I didn't vote for them. I've got a comfortable life, and paying my taxes keeps them out of my hair. How responsible am I for the actions of "my" government? How responsible am I considering that they exist by taking a portion of what I produce? If I produce more for them to take, and let them take it without protest, how complicit am I in their actions?
Yes, it seems like there's a clear line between the actions of the Yugoslavian army and those of the U.S. army, but if I'm going to work myself up into some serious moral indignation against those complaining that their cities are being bombed, I've got to make sure that I'm not standing in a glass house.
I can't say that with certainty.
Friday, April 09th, 1999 danlyke@flutterby.com