there is a beautiful full moon over our little campus tonight. it was wonderfully warm today, and it still feels like spring now, at half past midnight. somehow the beauty of this march day makes today's news even more alien and unbelievable. we live in such a pretty little slice of the world that it's exceedingly difficult to contemplate all the twisty complexities of badness going on out there, under that same moon. though, come to think of it, maybe it would be difficult for me to contemplate from any vantage point. certainly i didn't gain any traction staring up at the sky this evening. is this really going to happen?

the answer is yes, it really is, and the question now is what i should do in response. today was a day for trying to figure out the correct perspective to take. if i were a total cynic, maybe i'd laugh: this is just another stupid move in a long, unbroken chain of stupid moves by the united states government; this sort of thing happens all the time; life has always gone on and it will continue to proceed apace. on the opposite end of the spectrum resides the near-hysterical feeling that the world is being brought to an end through the hubris of this administration. as it turns out, though i have at various moments throughout the past couple of days experienced both perspectives, neither is particularly helpful. each is a recipe for paralysis, since each implies that there's no way for an individual in my position to make a difference.

so i'm not paralyzed. but still: what do i do? emails are flying tonight, telling me to meet on parrish steps the night the war breaks out; meet at the train station the following morning; go block traffic in philly, they're not arresting; descend on curt weldon's office; plan a 'nonviolent direct action;' come to a rally on saturday in new york. all of these things seem reasonable--at the very least, reasonable in the same sort of frame in which [making war on a desperate and unstable and weak little nation in order to satisfy some bizarre recurrence of manifest destiny] seems reasonable. my only question is, will i actually be *doing* anything? changing anyone's mind?

at the anti-war reading group today we had a grim little discussion of how the advent of this war will affect the opposition. will there be a bubble of support for bush's insanity? will it be long? will we look bad when the military-sponsored news shows cheering iraqis welcoming the troops? will the opposition recover in time to help save iraq from whatever it is that george bush decides constitutes "nation-building?" the only conclusion we could come to was that we must all continue to act. the administration is gambling on the fact that opposition to the war will die with the hope of preventing it, and it seems imperative that we show that this is not--and will never be--the case. the more difficult question is whether our continuing action can have any positive effect...and i suppose that the answer here is that the only positive effect we can look for here is visibility. maintaining visibility is key to the next effort: holding bush and his cronies accountable for the damage they are about to inflict upon masses of innocents.

so: no business as usual, friendly readers. go out and do something, whatever it might be in your neighborhood. and no fair worrying, on a personal level, about the possibility that we might appear foolish or heretical. i am more than proud to seem foolish and heretical in the eyes of this particular status quo.