Reflecting
Recently I emailed some high school classmates, they would be 65 now, asking this unusually reflective group of men (no girls in our school in those days) how they see our Iraq invasion now, two years later. I learned two things, both unexpected. And I learned them from the silence. Only one of the forty men responded.
He said he didn't want me to misunderstand his silence. He was eager to reflect on what to make now of our invasion of Iraq, having lost nearly 2000 young Americans, well over 10,000 wounded, and estimates of Iraqi dead running between 100,000 and 200,000.
But he frankly felt intellectually and morally paralyzed.
I think it will take a monumental exercise of American will to reengage in the debate about our place in the world, or, for that matter, in a debate about life in our own country. The reasons for this are a tribute to the effectiveness of this administration, in collusion with the instruments of mental and moral numbing, in diverting us from serious engagement with questions about events. The means are no secret.
Next week is turn off your TV week. If a significant number of us would actually turn off our TV for a week, learn what it is like to engage reality in the flesh rather than as it is presented by the manipulators of images, it would, I suspect, change not only the way we understand the world and our place in it, but the way we engage events.
And that is why our leaders, liberal and conservative, Republican and Democratic, will do all in their power to keep us entertained and distracted. Were we to begin to look around, to talk with each other, to take on significant pieces of our day unflitered by anything other than our own nervous system. God knows what the outcome might be.
A revolution, no doubt, even more profound than the one TV produced among us two generations ago.
He said he didn't want me to misunderstand his silence. He was eager to reflect on what to make now of our invasion of Iraq, having lost nearly 2000 young Americans, well over 10,000 wounded, and estimates of Iraqi dead running between 100,000 and 200,000.
But he frankly felt intellectually and morally paralyzed.
I think it will take a monumental exercise of American will to reengage in the debate about our place in the world, or, for that matter, in a debate about life in our own country. The reasons for this are a tribute to the effectiveness of this administration, in collusion with the instruments of mental and moral numbing, in diverting us from serious engagement with questions about events. The means are no secret.
Next week is turn off your TV week. If a significant number of us would actually turn off our TV for a week, learn what it is like to engage reality in the flesh rather than as it is presented by the manipulators of images, it would, I suspect, change not only the way we understand the world and our place in it, but the way we engage events.
And that is why our leaders, liberal and conservative, Republican and Democratic, will do all in their power to keep us entertained and distracted. Were we to begin to look around, to talk with each other, to take on significant pieces of our day unflitered by anything other than our own nervous system. God knows what the outcome might be.
A revolution, no doubt, even more profound than the one TV produced among us two generations ago.
posted by Blayney at 1:04 PM
1 Comments:
I am the guy who said I did not have the answers.
I am not sure whether or not I have paralysis -- that is an interesting possibility.
I think that I just do not know enough to be certain yet about the effects of this war (which was the nature of the questions which Blayney asked our class), although I have strong opinions and I have voted and will continue to vote against those politicians who sold this war.
Should I do more? Probably. I regret that I did not do more to protest the Viet Nam War. But even that is subject to good arguments pro and con by some very thoughtful, well read and intelligent people in our class.
And so it goes.
Dwight
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