7th grade: waiting for the schoolbus after my morning breakfast-and-CNN. It was my dad's birthday, and there was a rainbow. I found that strikingly odd. There was a walkout at my junior high later that day, but I didn't participate, because it seemed to me silly -- as in, if it had actually been about principles, I might have considered walking, but these were junior high schoolers -- it was an excuse to skip class and evade punishment.
I, of course, was at the time a diehard independent/Democrat, just like my parents ;). I find it astonishing that you were a Republican. But I guess you went to the military school, too, didn't you? People never cease to surprise.
I'm also a lot quieter on politics than I was at the time. Is that part of the problem? I don't know...it was easy to say loud and absolute things when I was twelve, because I was just learning how to see in shades of grey. Now I see in so many shades of grey, and with so little confidence in my own talents for politics, economics, and prognostication that I'm not willing to speak. I have high standards for political speech; I think people should only be speaking so loudly if they understand the issues better than others, if they have a well-reasoned critique, if they have an alternative to offer. I don't believe myself capable of meeting this standard on the vast majority of issues. Is being paralyzed by indecision morally better than stating claims I can't feel one hundred percent comfortable with? Maybe, maybe not...but it's what I have in my moral universe.
I think the world as a whole is lacking right now, lacking a true and mutual dialogue on complicated issues, people willing to state complex positions. I mean, there are some of them there, but too few, and they aren't dominant voices. It's one of the things that worries me about the anti-war protesters who have been so ubiquitous of late: the same broad umbrella that lets so many people protest shelters so many alternatives to war that few are articulated. And, at the same time, certain pathologies of American politics have kept our leadership from effectively articulating a pro-war position. I think many cases on all sides could be well-made (which would leave me just as unmoored as before, unable to accept one as wholly right or reject one as wholly wrong, drowned in shades of grey), but I have seen few cases truly made at all.
(Maybe I'm too hung up on the moral and philosophical cases. It is a battle for oil -- for France and Russia as much as for America. But I'm more interested in the ideologies of just war, articulation of a moral defense for breaches of sovereignty, the proxy war fought over the shape of the post-Cold-War world and the limits on a sole superpower's strength...hopelessly abstract and philosophical things I can't get my brain around. But would it help to look at the pragmatics, the history of oil and nukes and intervention and aid? Probably not, because everyone has culpability there, too, and once again there's no immaculate solution.)
But to pick up the main thread again -- if you are a person who can articulate complex cases clearly and without vitriol, then my world at any rate would be made better, and in my opinion the world at large would be. I see your case against war -- what's your case for an alternative?
no subject
I, of course, was at the time a diehard independent/Democrat, just like my parents ;). I find it astonishing that you were a Republican. But I guess you went to the military school, too, didn't you? People never cease to surprise.
I'm also a lot quieter on politics than I was at the time. Is that part of the problem? I don't know...it was easy to say loud and absolute things when I was twelve, because I was just learning how to see in shades of grey. Now I see in so many shades of grey, and with so little confidence in my own talents for politics, economics, and prognostication that I'm not willing to speak. I have high standards for political speech; I think people should only be speaking so loudly if they understand the issues better than others, if they have a well-reasoned critique, if they have an alternative to offer. I don't believe myself capable of meeting this standard on the vast majority of issues. Is being paralyzed by indecision morally better than stating claims I can't feel one hundred percent comfortable with? Maybe, maybe not...but it's what I have in my moral universe.
I think the world as a whole is lacking right now, lacking a true and mutual dialogue on complicated issues, people willing to state complex positions. I mean, there are some of them there, but too few, and they aren't dominant voices. It's one of the things that worries me about the anti-war protesters who have been so ubiquitous of late: the same broad umbrella that lets so many people protest shelters so many alternatives to war that few are articulated. And, at the same time, certain pathologies of American politics have kept our leadership from effectively articulating a pro-war position. I think many cases on all sides could be well-made (which would leave me just as unmoored as before, unable to accept one as wholly right or reject one as wholly wrong, drowned in shades of grey), but I have seen few cases truly made at all.
(Maybe I'm too hung up on the moral and philosophical cases. It is a battle for oil -- for France and Russia as much as for America. But I'm more interested in the ideologies of just war, articulation of a moral defense for breaches of sovereignty, the proxy war fought over the shape of the post-Cold-War world and the limits on a sole superpower's strength...hopelessly abstract and philosophical things I can't get my brain around. But would it help to look at the pragmatics, the history of oil and nukes and intervention and aid? Probably not, because everyone has culpability there, too, and once again there's no immaculate solution.)
But to pick up the main thread again -- if you are a person who can articulate complex cases clearly and without vitriol, then my world at any rate would be made better, and in my opinion the world at large would be. I see your case against war -- what's your case for an alternative?