The Scariest Game of Peak-A-Boo
I love my Dad, but sometimes I do feel shame when I know how he votes. He votes to the right, consistently. I suppose I shouldn’t blame him. He went to military college and served in the Canadian Air Force, as did his father before him. The militaristic point of view has been impinged upon his frontal lobe and he seems incapable of questioning its righteousness. Sometimes he looks down at me lovingly, while I am ranting about lies fronting as justifications for the loss of human life in Iraq, and he says things like, “You just see things so simplistically, Jenn, is all.” Like I don’t understand that it’s a big old bad world, and that the decisions a world leader makes are complicated and require taking in a picture greater than one I have perhaps ever even contemplated. But, geez, Dad, wouldn’t my simple love-is-all-you-need philosophy make you proud that you had had a hand in raising a human being so pure in thought? Isn’t that what parents are supposed to do?
I’ve heard that something mysterious happens to people when they have children. I’ve heard that you become so desperate to protect your children that you begin to see dangers all around you – real or imagined, it is not clear. And that these dangers and the desire to protect the offspring warp your mind into voting to the right, for protection. I should note that my mother, my hero, has rarely been a victim of this phenomenon. She does believe in capital punishment, because, as she puts it “if someone ever hurt my children, I would never want mercy for them.” But mostly, she is more rational than that. She sometimes votes Liberal, she sometimes votes NDP, but she always knows that Stephen Harper does not hold the rights of the many as being more important than the rights of those with the deepest pockets.
It’s not that I believe my Dad is irrational, and I’m sure he doesn’t believe that I am either. And though we don’t see eye-to-eye on issues of the public welfare, foreign policy, or justifiable reasons for war, I do appeciate the fact that the discussion is always open between us.
I told him more than a year ago that the public campaign used to justify the American war in Iraq was blatant lies and target-shifting. First WMDs, then the freedom of the Iraqi people from an oppressive regime, then the terror link to Al-Qaeda, Zarqawi. The list goes on. It’s like the American administration is playing peek-a-boo with the public, feeding the story to the media, which they have to cover, and so they do. Some media coverage is done with a teeny-tiny grain of salt, some is done with trumpets and fanfare and the drums of war beating soundly. (FOX “News,” I’m looking at you.) I don’t think it’s the media’s fault that they are covering the story. The ever-changing tagline of the American government isn’t created by the media; it’s created by the government. When one tagline fails, the government finds another one to rally the troops behind. It’s dishonest. It’s wrong. It’s condescending beyond belief. But when I point this out, Dad gives me that look, like I am too much of an idealist for believing any other course of action should even be a topic for discussion.
Me: Doesn’t it even bother you that they can’t seem to keep their story straight?
Dad: No.
Me: Why not?
Dad: Because, no matter what, I believe the people of Iraq will be all the better for it in the long run.
Me: Who’s the idealist now?
Dad: (Glancing knowingly at me. Apparently, it’s still me.)
Me: But what about other people in oppressed regimes? Don’t they deserve saving, too? Perhaps even more so than the Iraqis did?
Dad: You have to pick the battles that you can win.
Me: But it’s not a game of Risk for crying out loud!
Dad: I never said it was.
Me: What about not picking any battles? Isn’t that an option?
Dad: No. Because they were threatened.
Me: By who?
Dad: (generic rebuttal)
Me: (more probing questions trying to point out how evil I think Republicans are)
Lather, rinse and repeat. My Dad is resolutely calm and steadfast. It would be admirable if it wasn’t so darn infuriating. He only falters when I bring up one little secret weapon: President Bush’s faith. My dad is an atheist. And while I know Dad believes in his heart of hearts that President Bush is really weighing out all the options, before painstakingly choosing the course of action, sometimes I don’t think he is. Sometimes I think that Bush’s advisors are certainly weighing out all the options. But the President himself? Yeah, from what I’ve seen, I think I could outwit the man. And I just don’t think that I should be able to outwit the leader of the free world. Sometimes I think that President Bush is just putting his hands together and letting a little voice whisper in his ear. Funny how the voice of God sounds an awful lot like Rumsfeld and Cheney.
Me: Doesn’t it bother you that President Bush seems to base all of his decisions on his belief that Jesus is telling him that America is the righteous?
Dad: Yes, it does.
He sighs. I sigh. We close the books on the discussion once again. There will be more time to discuss it later. I wonder if Dad has a threshold. I wonder if there is a point at which he will think “Now that’s going too far.” Would it be a certain number of civilians dead? (Somewhere between fifteen and eighteen thousand Iraqis at this time.) Would it be the mishandling of a public election at the end of this month? (The candidates have yet to be technically publicly announced, for fear of assassination.) Would it be egregious misuse of force? (Beyond, say, the most advanced army fighting, essentially, against sticks and stones?) Would it be a continued campaign of pre-emptive strikes against other perceived threats without legitimate intelligence? (The U.S. is now looking into Iran’s nuclear capabilities.) What would it have to be for my Dad and me to agree that this whole situation was tragic? Nuclear winter?
There were no WMDs. It was all a lie. A puppet show. Piece by piece, the U.S. government admits to a charade, but still tells its own citizens and those of Iraq, “have hope, we are a liberating force.”
There is a difference between a revolution and an occupation. Real change wells up from within the human spirit. Real change starts as a whisper throughout the basements of a society. And then the whisper grows louder and it multiplies and it reaches out until it is so powerful that it organizes, manifests and takes to the street. It is not parceled out in gracious democratic bite sizes from the hatch of an oppressive tank.
I’ve heard that something mysterious happens to people when they have children. I’ve heard that you become so desperate to protect your children that you begin to see dangers all around you – real or imagined, it is not clear. And that these dangers and the desire to protect the offspring warp your mind into voting to the right, for protection. I should note that my mother, my hero, has rarely been a victim of this phenomenon. She does believe in capital punishment, because, as she puts it “if someone ever hurt my children, I would never want mercy for them.” But mostly, she is more rational than that. She sometimes votes Liberal, she sometimes votes NDP, but she always knows that Stephen Harper does not hold the rights of the many as being more important than the rights of those with the deepest pockets.
It’s not that I believe my Dad is irrational, and I’m sure he doesn’t believe that I am either. And though we don’t see eye-to-eye on issues of the public welfare, foreign policy, or justifiable reasons for war, I do appeciate the fact that the discussion is always open between us.
I told him more than a year ago that the public campaign used to justify the American war in Iraq was blatant lies and target-shifting. First WMDs, then the freedom of the Iraqi people from an oppressive regime, then the terror link to Al-Qaeda, Zarqawi. The list goes on. It’s like the American administration is playing peek-a-boo with the public, feeding the story to the media, which they have to cover, and so they do. Some media coverage is done with a teeny-tiny grain of salt, some is done with trumpets and fanfare and the drums of war beating soundly. (FOX “News,” I’m looking at you.) I don’t think it’s the media’s fault that they are covering the story. The ever-changing tagline of the American government isn’t created by the media; it’s created by the government. When one tagline fails, the government finds another one to rally the troops behind. It’s dishonest. It’s wrong. It’s condescending beyond belief. But when I point this out, Dad gives me that look, like I am too much of an idealist for believing any other course of action should even be a topic for discussion.
Me: Doesn’t it even bother you that they can’t seem to keep their story straight?
Dad: No.
Me: Why not?
Dad: Because, no matter what, I believe the people of Iraq will be all the better for it in the long run.
Me: Who’s the idealist now?
Dad: (Glancing knowingly at me. Apparently, it’s still me.)
Me: But what about other people in oppressed regimes? Don’t they deserve saving, too? Perhaps even more so than the Iraqis did?
Dad: You have to pick the battles that you can win.
Me: But it’s not a game of Risk for crying out loud!
Dad: I never said it was.
Me: What about not picking any battles? Isn’t that an option?
Dad: No. Because they were threatened.
Me: By who?
Dad: (generic rebuttal)
Me: (more probing questions trying to point out how evil I think Republicans are)
Lather, rinse and repeat. My Dad is resolutely calm and steadfast. It would be admirable if it wasn’t so darn infuriating. He only falters when I bring up one little secret weapon: President Bush’s faith. My dad is an atheist. And while I know Dad believes in his heart of hearts that President Bush is really weighing out all the options, before painstakingly choosing the course of action, sometimes I don’t think he is. Sometimes I think that Bush’s advisors are certainly weighing out all the options. But the President himself? Yeah, from what I’ve seen, I think I could outwit the man. And I just don’t think that I should be able to outwit the leader of the free world. Sometimes I think that President Bush is just putting his hands together and letting a little voice whisper in his ear. Funny how the voice of God sounds an awful lot like Rumsfeld and Cheney.
Me: Doesn’t it bother you that President Bush seems to base all of his decisions on his belief that Jesus is telling him that America is the righteous?
Dad: Yes, it does.
He sighs. I sigh. We close the books on the discussion once again. There will be more time to discuss it later. I wonder if Dad has a threshold. I wonder if there is a point at which he will think “Now that’s going too far.” Would it be a certain number of civilians dead? (Somewhere between fifteen and eighteen thousand Iraqis at this time.) Would it be the mishandling of a public election at the end of this month? (The candidates have yet to be technically publicly announced, for fear of assassination.) Would it be egregious misuse of force? (Beyond, say, the most advanced army fighting, essentially, against sticks and stones?) Would it be a continued campaign of pre-emptive strikes against other perceived threats without legitimate intelligence? (The U.S. is now looking into Iran’s nuclear capabilities.) What would it have to be for my Dad and me to agree that this whole situation was tragic? Nuclear winter?
There were no WMDs. It was all a lie. A puppet show. Piece by piece, the U.S. government admits to a charade, but still tells its own citizens and those of Iraq, “have hope, we are a liberating force.”
There is a difference between a revolution and an occupation. Real change wells up from within the human spirit. Real change starts as a whisper throughout the basements of a society. And then the whisper grows louder and it multiplies and it reaches out until it is so powerful that it organizes, manifests and takes to the street. It is not parceled out in gracious democratic bite sizes from the hatch of an oppressive tank.
posted by nerdifer at 2:13 p.m.
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