Soap Box

I cannot stop reading about the Uighurs. It's like watching movies like Titanic (except that I hated that movie). Tethering to reality, it's like watching the Burmese monks refuse offerings. I know how it will all end but I can't stop rooting for them (not the killings intrinsically tied to this event, their Queen of spades, but of the threat, the uprising, the attention). I know that they have no cards left, that the prolong any of this is to make life harder for themselves, their families, their ethnicity. I absorb news stories while knowing that each named source is going to face retribution. But it's hard not to root for these people and hope that this time, they will shake the hands of the giant enough. This time they will crack the gates. This time the damage will be bad enough that the government will learn to listen to prevent another. This time they will create enough little fissures that the collapse will come easier next time. (There won't be a collapse, I know. There may never be another. But we can hope for change.) And I, disconnected from these people, no more invested in their plight than anyone else, I can only offer well wishes and look to history for hope. Because oppression can't always win. Wrong will be proved so one day. One day.