The War Project Versus the Nice Project

The War Project is interfering with the Nice Project. Here I am, sitting and practicing being nice while no one is around in the middle of the night, and memories of war shake in my bones.

Upstairs, it's the War Channel. It's on most nights. Screaming and yelling bloody murder. Hate and rage, crashing and smashing, mad screams of insane people. This is normal. The War is normal.

There's an Hispanic couple upstairs who are at war. There may be others at war too. I think people are on drugs. I hope no one is armed. I hear them screaming and yelling bloody murder at each other, crashing and burning across the room, like a herd of antelope on an African plain. The cops got called. A couple of times.

Inquiries are met with smiles. There are no blows exchanged, the woman is a fighter, everything is fine. Don't believe it. When people scream like that, fists and objects fly. They are trying to kill each other. Nothing will happen until some day, someone may end up dead. This is how these things tend to end.

Next to them, upstairs, are Black people. A young Black woman and her huge Black boyfriend are trying to kill each other, or at least trying to beat each other up.

It was on earlier tonite, the Fights. You can turn on the Fights here just about any nite. Just open your ears.

The war went on on the sidewalk before, earlier in the night, but I looked outside and could not see. Only voices, I heard, disembodied voices. Fighting, fighting, yelling and fighting.

The war went on outside, earlier in the evening. The police pulled up outside my window, three cars, stayed there half and hour, talking to some young Hispanic men. I opened the window and watched the friendly people in blue.

The news just came in, two local kids locked up, the War goes on, two soldiers off the streets. You cheer for the blue men who take away 16 year old POW's. Where? Anywhere but here. Anywhere.

The gangster rap pounds away a good part of the day, from computers and radios. It's not exactly a message of peace and love. It's a message of hate, rage and crime, sociopathy packaged as art. It gets into your bones if you're not careful, your inner psychopath emerging in your tensing veins.

You shut all the windows and tell everyone not to look outside. The world out there and the world in here, and never the twain shall meet, or at least not tonight.

Dammit, I'm trying to be nice.

How can anyone be nice in a place like this?

Video killed the radio star, and the War Project is killing the Nice Project. What's a guy to do? Pour another glass.

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