If I had a TV I would be yelling at it.

Every so often the news gets me all excited.
The political theorist in me gambols about like a child with a puppy.
My brain livens with excitement and I can barely keep up with my own associations, ideas and knowledge as everything is hurled about behind my eyes.

US Global Dominance is Set to Wane

And off I go....No shit Sherlock. Political theorists have been predicting this for quite some time. In what class did I learn about overextension? I read in some article that once a state begins preemptively attacking other states in the name of national security, they actually reduce their own security and, over time, will generally fall as no state is able to maintain a security force for long when using it to do more than defend.

When we went into Afghanistan I was worried, when we went into Iraq I knew it was over. There is no way a state can maintain two military expeditions that do not include an exit strategy. The economy (and my brain is lost in so many thoughts firing about at once), natural resources (and now I am jumping countries, thinking of Europe and its skanky affairs with Syria, China and its complete lack of conscience in dealing with African governments)...

So there's this: China to Raise Military Spending
And then this: China Wines and Dines Despots

Look, we played dirty for all those years of imperialism. China can do whatever the hell they want in Africa. Fuck, so here's where we are at: The US can invade wherever they see fit, but they sit back and play dumb when it comes to Sudan, pussy-footing around with diplomacy (are we even doing that....we went to the Olympics in Beijing knowing full well that not only does China purchase a majority of the oil sold by the Sudan, but they are also the Sudan's larges arms dealer). Does this make any sense? Saddam or Sudan, boy are we the Leviathan. Politics is so dirty (thinking mud and grime and trash, open sewers in Ghana, babies laying in their own excrement at the Osu Children's Home).

And what to do? I am all fired up with nowhere to go but back to work at my 9-5 job. I can't compete with arms deals and (wait once I actually watched Lord of War in a bar in Africa, a bar that was very sly about not letting Africans enter...and I am not proud of that memory). It is time for the US to turn inward. It is time for me to turn inward and use this fire for something. Graduate school, law school, more effective legislation, small, incremental changes in legislation in order to move populations, slowly and surely towards something...hopefully something better than what they have now.

And I have reaffirmed the fact that I have to live what I preach. I have to be compassionate as I expect that from the people around me, from the fucking states we all inhabit. States are actors, they are actors that dance around with their little games and they sit together at the dinner table called the UN but you know, you know they are screwing each other's wives, and passing prostitutes around and stabbing each other in the bathroom....

Wait, I wonder if its significant that I just made the female form the victim. When I meant by those statements about screwing wives was to reference post-colonial literature in which black men slept with white men's wives because they could, because the women wanted what was seen as exotic and foreign and not so straight, like their husbands who were too busy raping the black man's states to come home and make love to their own wives. And men see their wives as possessions, as things that they love and want to keep to themselves, so it is the ultimate insult to sleep with another man's wife.

No worries boys, I don't think this is true now...but during colonialism and in many other parts of the world this still rings true. So yes, they, the states sit round their table and overhand John is paying Kofi for natural resources, and on the side John is nodding to Mr. Wong about selling arms to Kofi, and Kofi is sleeping with Mr. Wong's wife and John just ....whatever this is too complicated but that's what all of this is, complication. Dirty complication.

We shove this under the table because of the business opportunities provided to us by cooperating with China: China is the largest dealer of arms to the Sudan, they also purchase a majority of the oil produced in the Sudan. They have used their position in the UN to veto acts imposing sanctions on the Sudan if it fails to stop genocide-ing.

Oh and this: China Sets Up Camp in Our Backyard

So really we have to smile at everything China does because they have us surrounded. They are all over the map and their military is exploding in strength while ours is well...as I said at the start of all this, set to wane.

My rapist has a facebook profile.
He has a facebook profile with pictures of his wife and daughter.

I found it on Monday when I was browsing through "people you may know". I spent the rest of the week abstaining from facebook and twitter, or even mentioning it on here.

Here's the thing: I thought it would make me upset, and it did initially. He has a daughter. My rapist has a daughter. But I am okay. All week I felt strange as I came to terms with the fact that I am sharing this space, the internet, with a rapist. But I am okay because I am not afraid of him anymore. I am not a victim in my own mind, to the memory of what happened, anymore.

What an amazing thing, to be liberated from the terror and stress that is one's worst memory.

I met a teacher of mine from high school recently. He taught world history and changed my life. His class was the only one that challenged me in high school and kept me from feeling completely bored. His name is Mr. Cook and we met for one short hour on Friday.

I never told Mr. Cook about finding my rapist's facebook profile but that didn't matter, somehow Mr. Cook said what I needed to hear. He told me that I have an aura, one of kindness and love, one that makes people feel like they can talk to me about anything...and people do. He told me that he has watched me transform from a insecure teen to someone who exudes beauty in the way only a truly caring person could do. I was flattered that he said these things, and in my bashfulness I barely thought about his words at the time.

This sounds banal but tonight I realized that I have love. I was sitting with three very close friends, watching Sex and the City, and I realized: He could never take this away. Being raped did not take away my love, my friends, my aura. I may have been hurt, badly hurt for some time, but I was never not whole, I never lost the part of me that makes people feel like they can tell me anything. I am more than that, I am stronger than to let one person make me feel scared or alone or anything. I have an aura that he could never suppress if he tried.

So here I am. Back to twitter and facebook and my blog.

Funny things: I don't really like Sex and the City, too much drama. I don't really believe in auras, as it were. I do think that people exude certain characteristics but an aura is defined by a certain luminescence...there be no halo around here. But yeah, for tonight we are suspending beliefs and going along with this lovely liberation I feel!