And what now from here?

So what is it that we are witnessing? And what does it mean to us to witness? As people? As a community? As a state? As the innumerable states of being and standpoints that overlap and sublimate each other that are encompassed by the inclusive 'we'?

What makes the current conflict in the Middle East so troublesome is its very intricately linked nature. Each conflict; having been named Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon (and one might now venture to view Iran as part of this group or as a party to each.), exists within in own historicity and finds itself inherently linked to conflicts that are simultaneously occurring. And what we find is that we as Americans are also intertwined in this conflagration. We have been backers and allies, merchants and robber barons, liberator and executioner. And we all have benefitted and suffered from this entanglement. The distances that physically divide us are no longer a barrier to our interconnectivity. At any point in time I can use a number of media to listen or watch the dropping of bombs across the world. To see the President make a live statement from mid-air. To read and comment on the thoughts of people strewn across the planet.

When we sit here on this side of the world, on this side of the port, on this side of the television, what is it that we can really see? One could make the argument that our media, ie the studios and corporately owned mega-media outlets like Fox and NBC and the rest, determines our point of view and is the lens solely through which we may experience the rest of the world. And at one point this may have been true. But now it is much different. With the birth of the internet and wireless communications we have left the realm of the then and entered the realm of the now. At any point in time it is possible to consume virtually any media from any part of the globe, and it has now become possible for much of the rest of the world to participate in this exercise. But this is all mundane, and assumed already as you are by no doubt consuming this particular media through one of the aforementioned methods.

But to the heart of the matter, for that is where we originally aimed before our foray into matters technological and communicative. How have we as the citizens of the United States contributed to these conflicts? And how we do we continue to drive them? The answers to these questions are long and far reaching. Culpability stretches from the steps of congress to the steps up the porch, from the halls of power to the freeways of the proletariet, from we as a nation with economic, military and political influence, to each one of us as micro-political agents. Each one of us lives a life of privledge and excess riding on the backs of other nations and the suffering of other people. We each consume and are nourished by the fruits of these labors. So then, in the midst of this strife and with the knowledge of our ouwn accountability, what are we to do? Where are we to go from here?