What do you get when you have two ex
veterans arguing about war, politics, and morality? A time to
intervene!
I’m getting fairly sold on the idea
that I really don’t need to talk to anyone anymore on the whole
“life” issue. Here’s why. When I do, I find that they either
have some “life experience” that ultimately informs their
position in such a vehemently held way that you could just never
understand, or they have some “of course you know this” rhetoric
that blankets the issue with unsubstantiated facts or tentatively
held figures.
Ultimately, when you’re fighting, the
irony is that you want peace. Whether you want to call the middle
east a bunch of towel headed fatwa inciting America hating sand niggers
or not, you don’t want one of them to shoot you. Nor do you
necessarily want to go out of your way to make sure you can shoot one
of them. I talked to a guy tonight whose job it is to hunt down
traitors (read dissenters) and see them prosecuted (if not dead if I
understood him correctly) but could still agree that despite
differences, “America” (think South Park) was “more evolved”
than the people in the middle east and it was our responsibility to
show them how a country is supposed to be.
Can we pause and soak that in?
(Ignore this paragraph) It’s the
position of the 30 something in the bar to step in and try to qualify
the conversation in terms that are fair to both sides. Because, after
all, the youngins at the bar are all still discovering themselves and
the extra 14 years he’s had on the planet has given him this unique
perspective on breaking up potential fights and qualifying bar
patrons. But really, the guy I talked to who wasn’t the one after
dissenters was alright, but I can be condescending in my own blog
he’ll never read. (you didn’t ignore this paragraph)
When I pulled out the figures for the
amount of civilian casualties in this “war on terror” he fired
right back with the alleged number of soldier casualties. The guy who
stepped in and pointed out that neither sides’ number mattered, was
right. I didn’t pull out Google and site my shit, though I would
have, and regardless of his, dramatically inflated number of soldiers
killed, his point was that “AMERICA’S troops are being killed”
and mine was about collateral damage. Neither was reaching a point
that was going to be mutually respected and understood.
Facts don’t matter. And that is hard
as fuck for me to swallow. The culture you create around them does.
If I’m to make any difference in the world, it’s going to be
developing an environment that breeds understanding. It’s not going
to be in merely presenting the facts, but entrenching them in
someone’s life. This military guy, this republican, this whatever
the fuck label you want to give him, wants the same shit as you do,
he just wasn’t brought up in in an environment to realize it
without his fair share of bar debates or time spent in the military.
People aren’t THAT different.
The ones who are out there finding the
relative few to have informative and fulfilling semi-drunk bar
conversations don’t believe the rest of the world gets it. Really
understand this. The ones that believe or have the potential to
change and discuss things, basically don’t believe in their
potential to change things, let alone through discussion. This is a
problem for me. I overhead people qualify their conversations all the
time. “I’m not necessarily saying this or that and I don’t mean
to be this or that, and I hope you don’t take this to mean more
than what I’m saying” from the dumbest sorostitute to the public
intellectual. People are smarter than they want to believe. They
recognize opportunities to be misunderstood. They maybe just don’t
understand the nature of how smart they are?
And I don’t want to think I’m
grasping at strings for hope in humanity. I still think we’re
fucked. I just see enough to work with. Just remember that you’re
human, they’re human, and we’re all dumb fuck animals trying to
figure shit out until we die. Getting drunk at a bar or dicking
around on an instrument or mouthing off about how compelling our
feelings are, is the PINNACLE of the human experience. When you can’t
respect someone else’s right to waste as much of their time as you
do yours on shit that makes you a hypocrite and liar, you’re the
biggest kind of asshole. How wonderful it would be if we didn’t
have to keep making excuses.
