The End of Discussion, or Exile in Regular World
It has probably been this way for awhile, and perhaps I'm just noticing it now that I'm firmly ensconced in the "normal" adult world as opposed to the academic world of my youth (late teens, early-to-mid 20s being "youth" here, which makes me feel real old saying it). But it seems that you just can't have discussions anymore with people who have views different from yours. The discussions devolve into shaking heads and bouncing about FoxNews talking points as if they were true indisputable fact. Perhaps it's just my fault for not acknowledging the inherent, Biblical-like truth from FoxNews and other conservative media scripts that have taken over any discussion of anything these days. Maybe it's that, being older, I now have more conservative friends than ever, and conservatives were always this way and I was just sheltered from it during my undergraduate days.
Case in point is a very brief discussion I recently had about what's happening in the Middle East. A conservative acquaintance said that, given the recent developments in Iraq and Lebanon, I had to admit that Bush was doing some great things there. My response was--and I admit I'm not good at such debate verbally--there are a lot of dead people in Iraq and there are many continually dying. It was a party and I was surrounded by other conservatives who jumped in and sort of hit me from all sides with things like, "how can you say that?," (um, because people are dying there and are continually dying there?) and "the military is supposed to fight wars--you should know that before you sign up!" (support the troops, indeed!). This sort of dissipated--it actually turned into the conservatives touting the greatness of Bush (which excludes me) and then into the horribleness of Michael Schiavo (the flavor-of-the-month whipping boy for the right). This discussion was mild compared to some other ones, but it spurred this diatribe I'm writing.
This sort of thing might happen because of my own laziness and lack of desire to waste precious air. In the old days, I would've gone into how it's way too early to tell what good the Iraq elections will do (and that prognosis doesn't get better if they never decide on a government) and go into the ethnic powder keg that the Kurds-Sunnis-Shiites form, much less the more recent history of, what about those WMD's we were after that weren't just in smaller numbers than we thought but didn't fucking exist at all? As far as Lebanon goes, we had nothing to do with what has happened there (remember, someone assassinated their former PM) and, after we hightailed it out of there after the 1983 embassy bombing that killed 241 marines, Lebanon hasn't been talked about since in this country, most likely because that incident is a big smudge mark on the record of St. Ronald Reagan and no one ever dares mention a bad word regarding him (and, quick, how many conservatives--newfound humanitarians concerned with the plights of people everywhere--knew that Syria basically has controlled Lebanon?), not to mention that more people demonstrated in the streets courtesy of Hezbollah (former terrorist scourge now our new political "friend") in favor of Syria than were opposed to it and they've had a form of democracy for decades.
I guess we could've gone even deeper and discussed the "democracy" movement in Egypt, which is just a sham that Mubarak--a long-time friend of the U.S. whose country receives money from us in amounts only less than Israel--has done before and no one really takes seriously now. And Libya too, which isn't really moving toward democracy but is seeking to normalize relations with the rest of the world, is often discussed by conservatives as a country that has reformed in the wake of Bush's war on terror (Khaddafi is afraid of the wrath of Bush!), but, if you analyze the history, you see that this has been a decade or so long process that has hinged on settlement of the Lockerbie case. And there's the recent upswing in Israel-Palestine relations, which has come only after Yassir Arafat's death (remember, the Palestinians supported and elected Arafat), and, since the beginning of forever in this situation, there have always been lulls and periods of promise that have proceeded disastrous times. I can point out things that I have learned through paying attention during college studies, researching to sate my own curiosity, and my own desire to keep up with the news since I was in high school, but it's fruitless if the other side is clueless and has no desire to learn new information.
I'm getting away from my main point here, which was that discussion back in the day was much more tempered, much more based in history, logic, and actually knowing something about something and willing to side on the side of the average human person and what they have endured and continue to endure under the rule of world leaders regardless of political bent and not blind support of a particular leader or government or believing everything on FoxNews because it's on FoxNews or holding firmly to one political view and refusing to acknowledge contradictions and wrongdoings on your side.
Half of the time, I feel like I'm sort of an exile in this regular, grownup world. It seems like the so-called grownup world is devoid of objectively considering both sides of a debate, having your own thoughts separate from what the fearless leader and his minions have, being a student of history and politics and just knowing something at all about anything and being willing to admit you're wrong. The college days of youth were like this; the grownup adult days aren't. Ah, irony--but they wouldn't get that either.
Case in point is a very brief discussion I recently had about what's happening in the Middle East. A conservative acquaintance said that, given the recent developments in Iraq and Lebanon, I had to admit that Bush was doing some great things there. My response was--and I admit I'm not good at such debate verbally--there are a lot of dead people in Iraq and there are many continually dying. It was a party and I was surrounded by other conservatives who jumped in and sort of hit me from all sides with things like, "how can you say that?," (um, because people are dying there and are continually dying there?) and "the military is supposed to fight wars--you should know that before you sign up!" (support the troops, indeed!). This sort of dissipated--it actually turned into the conservatives touting the greatness of Bush (which excludes me) and then into the horribleness of Michael Schiavo (the flavor-of-the-month whipping boy for the right). This discussion was mild compared to some other ones, but it spurred this diatribe I'm writing.
This sort of thing might happen because of my own laziness and lack of desire to waste precious air. In the old days, I would've gone into how it's way too early to tell what good the Iraq elections will do (and that prognosis doesn't get better if they never decide on a government) and go into the ethnic powder keg that the Kurds-Sunnis-Shiites form, much less the more recent history of, what about those WMD's we were after that weren't just in smaller numbers than we thought but didn't fucking exist at all? As far as Lebanon goes, we had nothing to do with what has happened there (remember, someone assassinated their former PM) and, after we hightailed it out of there after the 1983 embassy bombing that killed 241 marines, Lebanon hasn't been talked about since in this country, most likely because that incident is a big smudge mark on the record of St. Ronald Reagan and no one ever dares mention a bad word regarding him (and, quick, how many conservatives--newfound humanitarians concerned with the plights of people everywhere--knew that Syria basically has controlled Lebanon?), not to mention that more people demonstrated in the streets courtesy of Hezbollah (former terrorist scourge now our new political "friend") in favor of Syria than were opposed to it and they've had a form of democracy for decades.
I guess we could've gone even deeper and discussed the "democracy" movement in Egypt, which is just a sham that Mubarak--a long-time friend of the U.S. whose country receives money from us in amounts only less than Israel--has done before and no one really takes seriously now. And Libya too, which isn't really moving toward democracy but is seeking to normalize relations with the rest of the world, is often discussed by conservatives as a country that has reformed in the wake of Bush's war on terror (Khaddafi is afraid of the wrath of Bush!), but, if you analyze the history, you see that this has been a decade or so long process that has hinged on settlement of the Lockerbie case. And there's the recent upswing in Israel-Palestine relations, which has come only after Yassir Arafat's death (remember, the Palestinians supported and elected Arafat), and, since the beginning of forever in this situation, there have always been lulls and periods of promise that have proceeded disastrous times. I can point out things that I have learned through paying attention during college studies, researching to sate my own curiosity, and my own desire to keep up with the news since I was in high school, but it's fruitless if the other side is clueless and has no desire to learn new information.
I'm getting away from my main point here, which was that discussion back in the day was much more tempered, much more based in history, logic, and actually knowing something about something and willing to side on the side of the average human person and what they have endured and continue to endure under the rule of world leaders regardless of political bent and not blind support of a particular leader or government or believing everything on FoxNews because it's on FoxNews or holding firmly to one political view and refusing to acknowledge contradictions and wrongdoings on your side.
Half of the time, I feel like I'm sort of an exile in this regular, grownup world. It seems like the so-called grownup world is devoid of objectively considering both sides of a debate, having your own thoughts separate from what the fearless leader and his minions have, being a student of history and politics and just knowing something at all about anything and being willing to admit you're wrong. The college days of youth were like this; the grownup adult days aren't. Ah, irony--but they wouldn't get that either.
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