March 3, 2003
America is split. To fight or not to fight. We haven't been this divided since Gettysburg. Vietnam was never this bad. Yes, that war tore our country like few others. But The Silent Majority prevailed.
Today we see a 50-50 split with both sides, unfortunately, convinced of the righteousness of their respective positions. Few observers seem comfortable in the contemplative middle. Minds have been made up. It's too late for discussion.
If this doesn't bother you, keep smoking crack rock. Our system is being tested. This is no time for copping out. Nor is it time to take to the streets to impose your point of view on others. Doing so becomes an act of intellectual arrogance at a time when discourse should focus on exchanging ideas, not blasphemy.
With this as our backdrop, we embrace Next with a mixture of uncertainty and concern. By the time you read this example of elastic thinking, unforeseen events will dominate the vacuum of meaningful dialogue and the know-it-ails will be onto whatever subsequent dimension of illumination must follow in this sequence of non-sequitur.
I met a man from Iraq. He operates what we used to call a filling station near our home in Opium, Utah. He told me he left Iraq seven years ago, along with about half of his fellow countrymen. Saddam, he said, is indeed a monster who rules by fear and is hated internally and elsewhere. I found his opinions credible, unlike so much of what passes these days as informed insight.
I talked with another friend from Iraq. He served in the military there before he beat it over here and eventually bought a home and started a family. I asked him if he was ready to join the liberation of his native country. He said he wanted to stay here to take care of his present concerns. Again, I found his perspective compelling, for he, at least, had a clue what he was talking about. So few share that distinction.
Americans of all variety are busy telling me what I should think about Iraq and Bush and our intentions, etc. They expect me to believe they know what they are talking about which, of course, they mostly do not. All they know is what they hear. In a world where someone is telling the truth and someone is not, they have decided who is honest and who is full of it. They scare me worse than the evil-doers.
Give me someone with an open mind, someone who is still trying to figure this out. As usual, the cocksure have all the answers and make the most noise while deep thinkers are quiet and contemplative, ever in search of revealing clues yet hesitant to rush to conclusion based on flimsy evidence.
Gaining a college degree requires nailing your ass to a chair for at least four years and mastering hundreds of subjects, issues and intellectual challenges. Through this process, those exposed to the rigors of academics theoretically gain the ability to sift through the contradictions, half-truths, the garbage and the glory.
Trained to think, not scream, you find yourself at the end of the day seeing essential darkness, until the beginning of the next day. Whatever appears absolute may just as easily disintegrate within the fading embers of ever-expanding awareness and insight. Before the final dance, you again realize what you knew after the first prom, and that is, the more you know, the more you don't know, you know?
Sure, you know. We share that perception. We cling to it. We live for it.
Being cerebral entails a commitment to sifting for a lifetime, in search of shading and hue, shadow and light, ephemeral certainty laid out on a revolving plain of constant change, where quicksilver images flash through prisms called emotion and ideology threatens reason, losing only to courage and large heartedness, for reasons best left explored by those capable of holding their bladder long enough to experience true objectivity.
Should America invade Iraq? I'll never know.