"I know the world's been sheared by a drunken barber and I don't need anybody to tell me," says Walter Brennan in Frank Capra's Meet John Doe. Surely the faulty pretenses of the Iraq war with its ever changing reasons for why we attacked or the amount of political posturing for pork barrel spending leave all of us except the most foolish feeling a bit queasy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in my opinion the greatest theologian of the twentieth century, put it this way:
We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?
I suppose when faced with lies and deceit, the subtle wearing away of our consciences and the endless deals even the best of us make with ourselves just to get through one day; a better world can seem so far removed from this ever present hell we inhabit. This leaves us either docile or angry.
I know the anger. The ever present urge to break free from the dogmas that envelop us so much that we feel we are suffocating just by being alive.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The words of Dylan Thomas seem so real and true to many of us about life as well as death. We live with a rage against death and a rage against life so much that we live with both of them deep inside of us. We don't even know that we are all poisoned.
I was talking with a person at a local bookstore today about politics and the other subjects that one is not supposed to discuss in general (you know, all the fun things). He began discussing how America was trying to influence Iran by keeping the media talking about Iran.1 He said it was a CIA2 and State Department plot. (He is not alone, apparently the clerics in charge of Iran also believe this.) It seems where ever we go these days we hear the same stuff. We hear about such and so spinning a story, and no doubt this happens; but what is intolerable is the outright conspiracy theories.
Quite possibly one of the best conspiracies is that we went to Iraq for oil. This is a simple answer to a complex question. Oil is inevitably linked to money, but money in and of itself is not something that is desirable. Rather money is a form of order and to obtain more order means that you are winning a game. The thing many people miss is that there are more forms of order that people will follow. There are things like pride or ego that lead to actions just as disagreeable as the reckless pursuit of money and power. Now I am sure that oil played a role, but the real reason was obviously hurt pride because Daddy Bush didn't finish the job of deposing the resident dictator of Iraq.3
However, what really made me write this blog post was something I saw while watching The Best Years of Our Lives, one of the finest pictures of the year 1946. The movie follows three servicemen who are trying to readjust to life after the war. At one point a man begins to commiserate with a sailor who has lost his hands. Then he tells him that the entire war had been a falsehood and certain powers had orchestrated the entire endeavor for their own selfish reasons. This is more than two of the service men can handle and they lay the guy out.
The point in this blog post, and yes it has a point, is that life is far more nuanced than we would like it to be; and sometimes that nuance is in a cruel and simple answer that has little root in webs of reasons and large scale organizations. JFK was killed by a lone gunman, September 11th was not orchestrated by the CIA, there is nothing at the bottom of Loch Ness, and allergies in America are not the plot of the evil Kleenex company. (I am willing to be proven wrong when the evidence surfaces.) I suppose the humoresque nature of such things would be benign except for the fact that they get in the way of any real work being done, just as a television show which we would never watch in a million years keeps us from mowing the lawn or writing a paper. The things that are less than inconsequential destroy our reality and begin to weigh us down.
In addition to this it poisons our notions of humanity. I admit to being repulsed by order for order's sake, but I do love the notion that human beings create order as a tool. When we do not trust our government as a tool or our businesses as tools; we are rejecting a part of our human nature. We are choosing to be animals rather than rational beings. In addition to this we denigrate our fellow humans by saying we are more incorruptible and more pure and made of better stuff than they are be they bankers or bureaucrats.
Lastly, people mess up or let something leak. I have never known of any secret that can last as long as our conspiracy theories. Human nature will let the truth leak out eventually. People are not machines, they are flesh and blood and usually stupid errors are the cause of great catastrophes just as planned and organized terror are as well. The lone gunmen wreak more havoc many times than the organization of great powers. To look for unavailable motives to back up our audacious theories is in the same vein of stupidity.
I am not a Pollyanna, I have heard the spin of fools and mortals who try and back up their ludicrous actions with spurious justification. I have heard a great deal and read a great deal. However, America and capitalism and the government are not the things to fear; as one person once said, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." As a recovering phobo-phobic, I would say that is pretty good advice for the paranoids to heed.
- As if the media needs an excuse for a good story. I can just hear John Meacham of Newsweek trying to decide the merits of covering a story about a country known for its anti-democratic tenor and totalitarian tendencies which is in a state of near meltdown as its monsters finally come up from years of sewn dragon's teeth. "No, I just cannot cover this story, it would not be fair to the good people of Iran to cover the news." Yeah, the Obama administration had to work really hard to keep this story alive.
- Unlike many people who talk about the CIA, I have actually studied the history of the organization. I have many facts about it. For instance: Did you know the CIA was not founded by demons or that its primary goal was not to destroy countries or that many times it was the people's will that forced it to so many of the things for which it is criticized. First off, it was created to beam in news from the Western World into Eastern Europe and Russia via organizations called Radio Free Europe and Radio Freedom respectively. Secondly, when given the task of toppling the elected government of Chile during the Nixon administration, the CIA was vociferously against such an action. It was in fact planned by people within ... wait for it ... the Nixon administration (most notably Henry Kissinger). Go figure.
- I suppose that replacing one conspiracy theory with another one is not the appropriate way to go about things, but my justification is this: First, Hussein is out of power and we have no oil revenues (nor did it ever look like we would get any in the first place, only liberal ideologues thought that might happen). Secondly, I do not believe it is a conspiracy theory because the answers are so manifest and most of the public knows the reasons anyway. Concurrently it should be mentioned that all of us (except for a few that marched against the war) were of the opinion that it was the right thing to do. Nancy Pelosi, George Bush, and yours truly all kept silent and backed the war de facto if not out right. I kept silent. I did not march. I didn't think it would happen. I should have made sure. But the hypocrisy of the Americans who say they were lied to is both inexcusable and intolerable. Admit you were wrong and then work to fix this mess.
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