R.I.P. Malachi Ritscher

I originally posted this as a comment on a friend's MySpace blog [1] who was posting the suicide note of Malachi Ritscher [2]. This guy burned himself alive on a Chicago freeway in protest of the Iraq war. Almost four weeks ago and I'm just hearing of it now. His final words [3] were one of the most touching farewells I have ever read.

I've been seeing a lot of sites, including the Chicago Sun-Times [4] , trying to write him off as mentally ill. Yet Malachi's prose seems more sane and rational to me than anything I read in the paper. What's mentally ill is hearing the truth yet calling it a sickness.

As a race we like to feel so enlightened and superior. But we hate the truth, don't we? The truth is our enemy. The truth is a dangerous. The truth will unravel the tranquility of our fiction and we must squash it, trivialize it, kill it ... then seek out the truth in others and kill that too.

We need our lies. Because if we were to rid ourselves of our blissful, luxurious denial, then we would have to deal with the fact that we - all of us - are to blame. Humanity is our collective responsibility and we share, even if only passively, in every consequence of our collective decisions. All of us. We all snapped a picture and laughed while torturing our Iraq brothers at Abu Ghraib. We took turns beating unarmed civilians in Haditha when we thought nobody was watching. We went hunting with Cheney to celebrate the slaughter of an entire city from 60,000 feet. We played politics with the Schiavo family's personal tragedy to score cheap votes among a venomous constituency. And we threw a brick through Hazim Barakat’s Islamic bookstore because we didn’t like his brown skin.

We did this. None of us are innocent. If you pay taxes, if you drive on roads, if you go to public school, if you work anywhere in the financial system from which the beast feeds, then you are passively condoning the actions of our representatives in government. Every day that we wrap ourselves in denial, that we feel distance from the suffering on TV, that we succumb to the certainty of our own impotence - that is one more day we shroud ourselves in guilt.

My own lie is that I'm somehow less responsible, that since I've withdrawn financial support from the U.S. government I am absolved. But this is bullshit. And I know it. All I do to feel better, every petition I sign, every letter I write, every phone call I make is merely a fraction of my potential to effect change. Malachi had the courage of his convictions - he was selfish and stupid and brave. We don't need to follow his path, but we need to follow his example. All of us.

Today.

I'm reminded of the words spoken by another selfish and stupid and brave soul, Mario Savio, who also robbed us of his potential at too young an age:

There comes a time when the operation of the machine is so odious that you cannot even tacitly participate. You've got to place your bodies on the gears, the wheels, all the mechanism. You've got to indicate to those who own it and those who run it, that unless you are free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

I'm afraid of the truth. I love my lies and I'm not ready to give them up, not even close. But I will not let Malachi's suffering be in vain. I will remember his courage and strive to do more with my own stupid little life. And I’ll end this rant with one final quote:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel unsure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Comments

jow (not verified)Thu, 2007-03-15 13:16

Re: R.I.P. Malachi Ritscher

"I'm reminded of the words spoken by another selfish and stupid and brave soul, Mario Savio, who also robbed us of his potential at too young an age" What do you mean? He didn't die until he was 53.