What I Don't Want

A doctor in Kansas who performed late-term abortions was murdered outside his church on Sunday. Doesn't matter which side of the abortion debate you defend; this is as bad as it gets.

No matter your politics, no reasonable person could say there is any justification to this murder.

This country seems placed to be polarized on fundamental issues. When I say fundamental, I mean fundamentally not worth killing over. Gay marriage, abortion. The responses on either side are so visceral, so firmly held. It's one American version of Israel-Palestine.

I don't want to fight in a culture war. "Culture war" seems like an oxymoron. I don't know if it even means anything, except in terms of the us versus them paradigm that is so easy to fall into in the aftermath of the State Supreme Court ruling in favor of Prop. 8.

If culture war does mean something, I don't know if there is one going on. But the vitriol is there, and the media sells it. It gets the attention, stirs the blood. I don't like myself sometimes when my blood is stirred in this regard.

Don't get me wrong. I feel that I know what is right. But I don't want to demonize the other side. Even that term, the other side, is really rather nebulous, and at the same time, very simplistic. I don't want to adopt those thought patterns, because that is what breeds actions like the tragedy in Kansas. Think of the killer: if he has a family, if he has parents, they must feel like their life is over. Is that sort of pain worth inflicting for anything?

I deleted a blog entry the other day about the Supreme Court ruling because I realized that it was not helpful, that it was the exact sort of vitriol I have deplored for years from fringe groups. I don't want to be fringe, at least not in a reactionary sort of way. I want to be mainstream, to be thoughtful, to be empathetic. That's the way to progress as a culture, and more importantly, it will be the way to be happier with my own life. A culture war is way too big for one person to fight. The notion makes no sense.

What is it about the narrative of living that makes it so easy for us to write everything in terms of conflict and us versus them? Why do we say that a good story has to have conflict? It may be true, but why? Or is the problem that people don't have a good understanding anymore that conflict doesn't have to be violent to be interesting?

Hurray! Bold New Horizons With George W.

Speaking of natural catastrophes, President Bush's recent statement proclaiming a 'time horizon' for withdrawal from Iraq is about as vague and abstract and meaningless a political notion as anything I've heard. The newspaper describes it as a concession, but really, it is disingenuous to describe it as anything more than a bubble of rhetoric, devoid of real substance.

The thing with a horizon is that no matter how long you walk towards it, you're never going to get there. Bush is either practicing to deceive again--and doing it badly--or he believes in a flat Earth.

Actually, the latter idea is frighteningly plausible.

Perhaps it is one more example of a clever manipulation of emotions on the part of the lamest-duck president I've ever encountered. He isn't necessarily lying outright; he just wants to sound like he's promising something without actually committing to anything specific. It's the problem of a political system designed to win elections, not engage in a true debate over the best course for the country.

The idea of horizons is romantic, and plays on the 'over-the-rainbow', Westward Ho! sort of mindset. The problem with that is it doesn't actually DO anything, and while I have spent years wishing Bush would do less, this irks me. It's just a bad metaphor, and that offends me as a writer. Plus, it smacks of that sort of grand, epic mentality that produced "Axis of Evil", and we know how well that worked out.