Yesterday, I got confused. I thought Veteran’s Day had already happened. I was wrong; it’s today. A little bit of research and some in-built assumptions led me down the wrong path.
But whatever day it is, thank you, veterans. Though I often feel a stranger in my own nation, I’m thankful to these souls. Every nation’s got to have armed forces – it’s a national security thing. Whether and how those forces are used and misused is not their thing. They don’t ask questions, they just put their life on the line for the rest of us moochers.
Individually, we’re a nation of pretty kind people. But collectively, we have all the good judgment of a bunch of angry high-schoolers hopped up on caffeine and Sudafed. We’re the delinquents that defaced our school, dumped paint on the auditorium seats, and drew mustaches on the kids in the yearbook. As a nation, we have some issues. And though it feels uneasy, I’m a patriot. It’s complicated.
As I noted yesterday, we are a nation both barbaric and brilliant. While our national discourse is filled with a bunch of either/or propositions, life isn’t so damned simple. Sometimes, two seemingly contrary notions can be true. Sometimes, they’re both false. Reductionism has served us well in certain areas, but it corrodes the soul everywhere else. The universe doesn’t give a shit about how we want things to be; it has no need to conform with our desires.
I am perpetually wrong
But that’s okay; I’m making it work for me. Everything I write about is predicated on that thought. Maybe it’s the weasel’s move – hedging my bets ahead of time, afraid to make the concrete declaration – but to hell with it. The world’s got a surplus of arrogant know-nothings pontificating on stuff they barely comprehend. I’m just the free-market response: one of the question-mark standard bearers.
TV has a lot of serious looking morons ‘asking questions’, but it’s a big sham. Raising an issue, unfairly framing it, and then using a flamethrower to torch a field full of straw men isn’t asking questions. It’s the refuge of cowardly assholes that have replaced truth seeking with bite-sized bullshit conclusions.
Maybe part of this is a Gen-X thing. In youth, I was cynical. In midlife, I’m recycling that cynicism into skepticism, even if I haven’t completely learned to mask the smell. Instead of adolescent nihilism, I have raging arguments with myself.
Deservedly so
Geopolitics fascinates me, but it’s an international car wreck in slow motion – a kind of fatalistic rubbernecking – and my insights don’t sit quietly. Geography plays a much larger role in determining the course of history than any of us are comfortable with, but something about it strikes me as the same as the media reporting on politics like it’s a damned horse-race.
The generational perspective provides me with an interesting framework for thinking about culture, but it’s annoyingly cut and dry. But what if that is my misunderstanding of the ideas? The closer I look, the less comfortable I become. It could be a too-pat model in need of revision and clarification.
Thinking about the long view of history gives me hope for the future, but involves a lot of speculation and blind alleys. The trip from the close range future to long term concerns is littered with a lot of pursuits that look suspiciously like campy science fiction.
As my political perspectives evolve, I find myself all over the map. Now that I’ve rediscovered an appreciation for the logic of market forces, the political group that used to champion it is busy dousing themselves in gasoline. Then they grabbed the nearest Bible, lit themselves on fire, and threw themselves them off a cliff. By the time they landed on a group of second graders, I realized things weren’t going very well.
We’re a nation of around 300 million people. Every damned one of us has our Rube Goldberg device that purports to explain and correct everything that’s wrong. Each contraption is both completely different and absolutely right. We’re talking earnestly about civil rights while beating up on fags. We’re manically proud of our freedoms while using the Constitution as a lobster bib.
I guess what I’m saying is Happy Veteran’s Day. In spite of all this crap, I’m hopeful for the future. Like I said, it’s complicated.
