I must confess a few things I'm grateful for: wonderful friends, family, and selflessness in Sin City. Seeing people turn out in #solidarity to donate blood, time, and kindness blew me away. The beauty one can see in such horrific times. However, I have regrets. In a time of war, in Iraq, I had someone's back who only turned on me years later in favor of the Neo-Nazism she grew up with.
Just because we wore the same uniform, doesn't mean I have blind loyalty. You pick white supremacist bullshit over nearly dying together, and I am DONE with you. Your so-called solidarity was only as valuable as the lap you're sitting on and once you go there, you are dead to me. Today, I see white privilege not portrayed as it is - terrorism - but as coddled euphemisms: "lone wolf," "mentally ill," "recluse," and whichever excuse du jour for inhumane barbarism exists to assuage America's violent past. My daughter looked at me, wide-eyed, waking up to the local news in Las Vegas. She asked what happened to the 50+ people she saw on the news accidentally this morning before I made a mad dash to switch to PBS kids I told her those 50+ people were in a better place. She started counting to 50 on her fingers and toes, and I almost lost it. This is not the future I wanted for my daughters. Not a future of wanton violence, war profiteers, and manufactured consent. No. I've been fighting against this since 2005, only to be told my dissent was "unpatriotic." When I looked a fellow soldier in the eyes 12 years ago and said, "You are not your family. You are better than this. You are smart, beautiful, and strong," and to be proved wrong, was a huge betrayal that there is no coming back from. I cannot make allowances for people who tout piety one minute then Nazism the next. We are not friends. We never were. Our friendship...was a mistake. Don't call, don't text, my dear. I am done. What happened in Las Vegas today was not merely a "wake-up call," but a reminder of the "nothing" that had followed me for years since returning from Iraq. You can read more here.
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AuthorM.B. Dallocchio is an artist, author, Iraq war veteran, and social worker based in London. Her latest book, “The Desert Warrior,” covers post-traumatic growth, resilience, and redefining one’s own personal meaning of “home.” Archives
August 2020
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