Dialectic

On the train platform this morning, two young, hipster-ish men were discussing the BIG NEWS about WMD's in Iraq--specifically, that the official word from On-High is (suprise, suprise!) there weren't any. Guy number one's voice had the tonal quality many of the sensible, the intelligent, the sick of being forced to eat a steady diet of bullshit have developed over the past four years; indignation, disbelief and horror squelched by an alarming amount of apathy. "We knew they weren't there." He said. "But nobody cared. They won't care now. They lied about the war, the reason for the war..."

"You're looking at it the wrong way." Guy number two said. "It's true that it won't matter, because it's not a lie...we had to go to Iraq. When intelligence got word the WMD's might be there, we had to find out. So no, it doesn't matter that they weren't there. It's good that they weren't there." And then he went into a completely irrelevant analogy, brilliant in it's distance from the mark (I know as I am reigning Queen of shitty analogies) about a bomb threat. It went: if the bomb squad gets a call saying someone has placed a bomb in a shopping mall, they have to go and investigate; even if they have good reason to believe it's a hoax or a prank. They have to go check it out just in case it isn't.

When he finished, guy number one's face had grown something also familiar nowadays: The shock that any human being could be so fucking stupid look you see whenever a righty and a lefty attempt to talk politics. "So you're saying the best and most effective way for a bomb squad to make certain there isn't a bomb in a mall--is to BLOW UP THE MALL?"

Guy two was quiet for a second, then rolled his eyes so dramatically it involved swirling his entire head around, "Dude...No! Weren't you listening? You are so looking at this the wrong way."

Posted by Antigeist at January 13, 2005 11:58 AM