I made a huge mistake this afternoon. I began watching the boob tube around 5:00 this evening. That's way too early. I've learned that catching early local news, then net news (which I usually avoid like a plague--except this evening), followed by Countdown at 6:00, I'm way past overload before dinner. I don't think that aids in digestion. But every so often I forget and I pay for it.
So, by 7:00, with dinner done, I felt about to explode. Not from the meal, no, I'd a sensible dinner, but from what I watched on TV. So stuffed, my brain felt like bursting.
I had watched Scotty McClellan literally giddy over John Kerry reiterating his call to filibuster against the Alito nomination--from Switzerland! The press secretary's uncontrollable elation just foamed over. It had been an extremely tough week with the press corps I guess. Poor Scott. I say that because it was pretty creepy.
I then witnessed a couple from New Orleans whose house is still in total shambles from Katrina. They were upset their insurance company wasn't paying and the money from the government wasn't flowing down to make up the difference between the would be insurance reimbursement and cost to replace their home. I saw a Bush clip insert: "I've given $83 billion in Katrina aid. That's not exactly small change," he said with his smirk. But this particular couple wasn't impressed. When asked who they voted for, they replied, "Bush." But I'm the one who's nuts because I found myself smiling. (Maybe it was just a schadenfreude moment.)
From a local news story, I learned one of the advantages of living here, on the US-Mexico border, is I can cross the Rio Grande and buy from a Mexican pharmacy--over the counter--a morning after pill for about $8-$11.
I imagined being a teenager today. Of the night before where my girlfriend and I had some indiscreet moments. Unable to sleep later that night, I call her first thing next morning. I ask if she'd like to go across the border. To buy a pill. To my shock, she responds curtly, "No!" Upset by her wrecklessness, I decide to go over to the farmacia myself, where I procure the
pill. I take it.
That doesn't make sense, I know. Sheer lunacy. Well, so is the gist of another story I heard just a bit later I thought. It went like this: a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll taken earlier this week shows, despite growing disillusionment with our Iraq misadventurism, 57% of Americans favor military intervention in Iran if it pursues "a program that could enable it to build nuclear arms"!
I'm still choking on that one. I know that it takes the first 25-30 years of one's life for the pre-frontal lobe of an individual's brain to reach maturity. It's that part of the brain that weighs risk, has a tremendous sense of loyalty to its peer group and an irrational sense of its own immortality. Older, "wiser" men leading nations exploit these traits of their country's youth, using them to make war.
Maybe that helps explain the poll results. I'd heard the number of young people under thirty out-number those over thirty. Maybe that poll question was put before a lot of four to twenty-nine year olds with undeveloped pre-frontal lobes. Or maybe that poll is simply testament, once more, to my growing insanity.
James Hillman in his book, A Terrible Love of War, quotes a number of people who lived through the heat of battle. Here's what some of them said:
From an American soldier during WWII: "It made us feel like kids letting loose. We sprayed gasoline around...and ran along, touching matches here and there and feeling crazy."
From an American lieutenant: "Now the fight was at its wildest. We dashed...from one building to another, shooting, bayonetting, clubbing...The wounded and the dead...lay in grotesque positions at every turn...Never in my wildest imagination had I conceived that battle could be so incredibly impressive--awful, horrible, deadly, yet somehow thrilling, exhilarating."
Or as Anthony Loyd, war correspondent, wrote before a battle in Bosnia, "There was no other place in the world that I would have preferred to be. There can be few instants in life that a man is lucky enough to feel so at one with his time and place. It would have been a good moment to die...I cannot apologize for enjoying it so...It was like falling in love again, a heady sensual rush that I wished only to clasp unquestioningly."
Maybe that's man's fatal flaw as a species. We just can't help ourselves. Killing while at extreme risk of our own death heightens our sense of life.
But maybe not. Maybe I'm just a freakin' idiot. Fortunate for me, I'm surrounded by a nation of logical people and their courageous, competent leader--my strongest remaining link to sanity.
So, despite being unable to recognize the country I've grown up and lived in all these years, I'll just trust in those who haven't lost their grip on reality. Hope for the best.
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