apology where it is due
Marie e-mailed to ask what I thought of this hot new site progressives are passing around: SorryEverybody.com. I wrote back:
The site kinda pisses me off, actually, because 1) we who voted against Bush shouldn’t be the ones apologizing (and I don’t believe in apologizing on behalf of other people’s actions) and 2) the overall sentiment of the site seems to be “sorry, we did everything we could!”, which I think is really disingenuous. There’s much more work to be done - voting is NOT everything we can do.
Moreover, I think if there’s going to be apologizing, it should be apologizing to the poor and exploited people and critters of the world for the daily capitalist consumer lifestyle we live in this culture. That’s something where we would be apologizing on our own behalf. And then we should get that apologizing is not enough; taking responsibility is about more than making amends, it’s about making a change.