Never Give Peace A Chance

With an expected grandiose flourish (not that grandiose in the grand scheme, mind you), Bush vetoed the "emergency" supplemental war funding bill because it places a date that we're going to get out of that hellhole. Didn't see that coming...

But you know, it got me to thinking. It has become a standard construct to categorize people into one of two categories. For example, you can either be a Beatles person or an Elvis person. A person who listens or a person who waits to talk. PC or Mac. And all of us fit into one or the other. Well, something that's been weighing on me lately is the idea that when confronted with a physical attack, there are two types of people - one who wants to try to talk his way out of it and the person who hopes he possesses a bigger weapon than the attacker.

Frankly, each of these approaches can have its advantage. If a mugger comes at you with a knife, pulling out a gun is probably going to keep your wallet on you better than asking him to reconsider his actions. But maybe not. What if he's got a gun too and has a quicker draw? Or in other situations. What if you catch someone hitting on your girlfriend in a bar? Does it make more sense to whip out your gat or to drop some well-chosen words? What about a loud asshole in a movie theater? The problem with becoming accustomed to going for the kill each time brings to mind that other cliché - when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.

People are people, so differences in opinion on how to approach problems would be fine. Except for the fact that much of our country (and the world) is populated by people with less access to education and as such become defensive around people who are smarter than they are. They liked to pick on the "nerd" in grade school, and that mindset follows them throughout their entire adult lives. This is how we ended up with a halfwit simpleton for president - the people would rather have a beer with Bush than with the insightful scholar who makes them feel like a dum-dum.

This method of securing the White House (Vote for me, I'm as much of an incurious ignoramus as you!) leads to further problems when Bush tries to maintain his political popularity by using tactics that involve stoking the anti-intellectual fire that burns inside his supporters. Thus he takes scientifically untenable positions (there is no global warming, creationism) and beats the drum against the scientists saying, in so many words, "Who you gonna believe, a buncha eggheads, or your pal down the street who likes to clear brush and shoot guns like y'all?"

Which leads us back to our initial hypothesis. There are two types of people - people who want to talk their way out of problems, and those who want to fight. Bush is clearly a fighter. And hell, after 9/11, the Taliban needed to be fought. Everybody concedes by now that Iraq didn't warrant fighting, but that ship has sailed. Now the question is how to deal with it, and still Bush is holding that hammer looking for more things to hit with it, but there is nothing left to nail. Meanwhile, the only way he can attempt to maintain that tiny sliver of credibility among his most ardent supporters is to degrade the "talkers" by calling us "appeasers," "Chamberlains," "surrender-monkeys," etc. Wimps, sissies, losers, nerds!

And therein lies the basis for his little speech yesterday. If you support diplomacy, you're a nerd and a loser. If you'd rather talk than bomb, you're a pussy. If you want to pull out of Iraq instead of fighting to the death, you're a coward. The fact is - we're going to pull out. The "war" is already lost. The question is simply a matter of when we're going to decide to stop letting our brave young men and women be slaughtered by the dozens each week and start letting our words and brains, instead of our fists, do the talking.