Wonder what his politics ended up being. This really brings home the
point that the residents of the coastal enclaves really need to learn
that there is a whole lot of country between the coasts and it does not
believe the same as the people in the blue states on the coast do.
That would be a real wake-up call to the liberal Dems when they try to
ram their political government takeover plans down the throats of the
rest of the country. Wonder if the coasties will ever realize that or
will they even care. They are doing it for our own good by their lights
and we need to just suck it up and accept their overpowering wisdom.
No thank you. I would prefer they open their eyes and see what is out
there and then discuss the matter. Maybe they do have a better plan
but I personally would at least prefer being kissed before I get skewed
or whatever.
26
<http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html?permid=26#comment26>.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
<http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html#>
Yoav Peck
Jerusalem, Israel
February 23rd, 2010
10:43 am
To Roger Cohen,
Thank you for your piercing article this morning. In frenetic Jerusalem
rush hour traffic recently, a man in a Volvo aggressively tried to lunge
in front of me, and I glanced at his face as I leaned on my horn. The
lights were on, but no one was home. He never looked up, never
acknowledged that he had almost hurt us both, just stared ahead,
scouring the road for his next opening. I lost it, blocked his path,
threw my car into park and leaped out of the car, momentarily crazy.
Waving my arms outside his window, I screamed in Hebrew, "There is a
world out here!!! Hello????"
Your experience on the jury reminds me of my own jury duty and its
importance, parallel to your experience. It was 1972, I was a Berkeley
New Leftist, a Yippie of sorts, and the self-absorption of our Berkeley
lives was the water in which I swam. As fish who have no eyelids,
neither could I discern the narcissism in the waters of my "committed"
lifestyle. Until the letter arrived from the Alameda County Courthouse.
The Huey Newton was about to face his third trial, and I had been
offered a chance opportunity to serve on what would certainly be a jury
slanted against the Black Panther. I borrowed a suit, tucked my
pony-tail into a short-haired wig, and took the bus to the courthouse in
Oakland. Right on!
I didn't get onto Newton's jury, but by then I was trapped: I hadn't
tried to get out of serving because of Newton, and here I was facing six
weeks' jury duty. Helpless, wigless, I showed up the next day at the
jurors' room and began hours and days of waiting alongside housewives
from Orinda, a scientist from the Livermore Nuclear Lab, and a salesman
from Alameda. We served on whiplash trials and judged petty thieves. But
mostly, we had lots of time to talk. And once I had overcome my
leftist's resentment at being thrust into circumstances I would never
had chosen, I began listening to my fellow jurors. And the more I
listened %u2013 to worries about teenagers, mortgages, family illnesses,
and fears for sons in Vietnam %u2013 the more I realized that the
Berkeley I lived in was a bubble. A narcissistic bubble. And to my
amazement, I realized I had stumbled into the next stage of my
education. Each morning I boarded the bus to Oakland, commuting to America.
I was thrust into a confrontation with my narrow world. On my daily
visits to the reality most people live, my Berkeley life was cast in a
new light. We Berkelyites thought we were creating "the new America,"
but we were talking to ourselves. The demonstrations, night-time
spray-painting raids, the nascent men's liberation movement, the food
co-ops, even the community parks. We were a community, perhaps, but we
were not living in America. I would return to my commune in the evening,
and my comrades would hear my jury-duty reports and were sure I was
losing it. They were right. I was losing my allegiance to the bubble.
When jury duty ended, I parted sadly from my fellow jurors, returned to
Berkeley, and packed my bags.
38 years later and 10,000 miles from Berkeley, I can report: There is
indeed a world out here. I am grateful to my courthouse friends for
reminding me that mixing it up beats talking to myself. That opening my
heart to confronting the differences among us is where life is worth
living. And here in Jerusalem, the lesson from the courthouse continues
to drive me forward. Talking to settlers, dialoguing with Palestinians,
engaging with right-wing vegetable hawkers in the open-air market. This
is where I am lucky enough to be. Were it not for that distant jury
duty, I might have missed the world.
Yoav Peck, Jerusalem
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