Ten years ago we attacked Iraq. Bombs fell in Baghdad and the power went out and the TV networks were cut off. There were press conferences in Washington and neat little graphics of F-14’s introducing Good Morning America. What a time for our happy little nation. Ten years later we still fly over Iraq, we still drop bombs on them, and we still shake our little fist at them. Does the average American even realize that the average Iraqi is just like them, a person? Few of us ever realize that, no matter our nationality.

It’s like the woman on the bus today. She talked with the loud, white trash man, even sharing her kleenex with him. She was blind. Of course I was too blind to notice that the white trash man gave up his seat for the blind woman, something I didn’t do. And the white trash man asked the blind woman for a kleenex–only so he could hand it to me to ease my bloody nose. And the white trash man struck up a conversation with a freelance writer for Nightline who looked like a passive Black Panther. It seems I’m too blind to notice a lot of things. Wasn’t yesterday Martin Luther King, Jr. day? And I talked about goulashes.