The 2007 Video
Apr
11
Written by:
4/11/2010 7:41 AM
Yesterday somebody I had known for a long time came to me with a problem. He had just watched the 2007 video of US soldiers shooting civilians from a helicopter, He said he felt terrible and could do nothing about it. He said he had to talk to somebody. I said start talking.
He told me that he’d led a sheltered, a-political life until three years ago when he got an email from an activist in Portland seeking volunteers for a campaign to get signatures for some legislation. Apparently one of the environmental groups he had been supporting had sold his name. He’d agreed to approach a local political party. His pitch to them, while rejected, led to his joining their support for a candidate opposing Cantwell’s reelection bid. That campaign in turn had been organized by a coalition in Seattle many of whose members now became his friends. Over the next few years the email postings of that coalition layer by layer pried off his illusions about the United States. In result he actually hit the streets for a year but then backed off and contented himself with writing commentary. The drift was a story of discovery nurtured by those email postings and collateral reading notably of Howard Zinn. He came to fancy himself as a member of the cutting edge of revelation into the shady power of corporations. He came to pre-filter the growing flood of email according to his rating of their awareness, for example all environmental ngo mail he now clicks off. He came to think of himself as acutely aware of the suffering of others. Others such as war veterans with PTSD. His mornings routinely begin with a half hour of depression caused by reading his email. He became estranged from family and friends none of whom read what he was reading. He was quite the warrior. Then he saw that video.
He had heard about it for a week but had managed only to see some grainy stills and to read summaries. What he felt when he finally saw it was a despair so deep he couldn’t fit it into his life.
I asked him if he felt he had gotten a look inside PTSD and he paused and said yes.
I asked him if telling me all this had helped any. He said “I dunno, but there’s nothing else I can do. I can’t tell my family, they’d only be hurt, and … something else is going on. One of my family had experienced trauma worse than any I’d met til now. She’s chosen to bag that experience. Who am I to open that?