meandering thoughts in a time of waiting……

Posted on Thursday 1 March 2007

Yesterday, I wandered into the room where the little man in the t.v. box, Dr. Phil, had on some lady with a web-site, lets pretend it was www.revenge.com, where women who had been screwed over by guys could plot revenge together. He didn’t think it was a such a healthy idea – "stuck in the problem not the solution," said Dr. Phil [but I’ll bet they got a jillion hits yesterday].

In a Democracy, we share the glory and the horror. We elected Nixon. It was our Watergate. We elected the current Administration, not once, but twice. We covered our cars with patriotic stickers and marched our kids off to Iraq. Those of us who applauded what was happening should feel ashamed. Those of us who knew decried what was happening, yet went on with our lives. We share the shame as well. If an old German guy sits in a bar and says, "but we didn’t know what Hitler was doing," he won’t get much sympathy. Even if he says, "I hated it, but you have to understand, it wasn’t safe to criticize the Nazis," while we might feel more sympathetic, we still might well think about our fathers or grandfathers who died on the Normandy beaches. If he says, "It’s hard to be a German and realize that we actually did something like that. I think about it every day. All we can do is move forward in spite of what happened and learn from our mistakes," we’ll buy him another round.

We were wrong. Even those of us who knew aren’t off the hook. Our President and his cohorts are stuck forever in that wrongness and need to go [yesterday], but Dr. Phil is correct. As much as I’d love to blame and get revenge, it’s not the solution. The blogs have been a powerful force in getting the truth on the table, but the blogosphere is moving towards a time of a new challenge. Now what?

And what of the religious people who listened to the demagogues, or the conservatives who followed the Neocons? There has to be some way to reach out to them and find a some commonality. As we’re learning in Iraq, trying to make things right in the midst of a civil war is impossible.

Many of our old-timers were part of the Civil Rights Movement, or the Antiwar Movement [Viet Nam], or the Peace Movement, or the Feminist Movement, or the Gay Pride Movement. In lots of ways, we old guys won, but our post-war planning wasn’t so hot. The "insurgency" [A.K.A. what we’ve got right now] didn’t go away, or give up, it just went underground and got sicker and stronger. Our postwar planning wasn’t much better than that of the Bush Administration.

I’m just thinking about post-war planning. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet. For today, on with fighting the good fight… 

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.