Ten years ago, I picked up On the Justice of Roosting Chickens by Ward Churchill because I was twenty, felt disenfranchised and was a budding conspiracy theorist and forbidden literature was to me what Nutella is to hipsters with toast. I never felt we deserved the atrocities that befell our nation on 11 September 2001, but I wasn’t convinced we were entirely innocent either. Ward Churchill’s book may have convinced me otherwise had it not been for the fact that I can think for myself and realized how militant this anti-militant man could act. Still, I respected him and I loved his book (for the most part), though I never read the essay that spawned it. I never saw him as an anti-American or a traitor.
I don’t know what happened to me. Maybe I became more of a moderate Liberal that I originally anticipated. I stood against for the war in Iraq because we went in based on a lie. I didn’t like George W. Bush or his favoring the rich, but he wasn’t a war criminal like most of my liberal friends stated. And while he did leave the country divided and tarnished our country’s image throughout the world over, I didn’t want him impeached, not really, because lying is what presidents and politicians do—see presidents since Nixon.
Today, I sat in the living room and looked up from the book I’m reading—The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (a book I’m still reading due to my book ADD, see last post)—and saw Churchill’s book and wondered whatever happened the controversial professor of American Indian Studies. And I remember how much he piqued my attention because he wasn’t a crazed conspiracy theorist. He didn’t write about how 9/11 was an inside job like so many deluded people believe to this day, but an act of retaliation from the bullying that American has been known for since the begin. And I chuckled because I’ve grown up so much since I was twenty—I guess ten years will do that to a person. Five years before learning about Ward Churchill or Al-Qaeda or caring about American politics and the only thing presidents were good for was getting blow jobs from interns, I thought I was an anarchist. I’m not sure if you can believe this, but fifteen years ago I stood as an aspiring anarchist Catholic teen with an interest for the occult.
Isn’t it great that I left the fantasies behind?
You can pick up a copy of On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality by Ward Churchill at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Chapin City Blues 