Hiroshima Day

Posted on August 5, 2002 in Peace

How odd to be arguing about the necessity of “acts of war” with Lizza Mayhem on this day of all days! She seems to believe that Israel’s attacks on Jenin and other places are better than the suicide bombings because they are “acts of war” rather than of terrorism. How can anyone deem any nation that invests millions or billions in acquiring, perfecting, and using instruments explicitly designed to lacerate, implode, bruise, and incinerate human bodies to be the moral superior of a fellow who wraps himself in plastique for a visit to the local shopping mall? Folks are talking about the world becoming more Orwellian. I can believe it. To state on one hand that attacks on civilians is evil and then to belittle the stain of Jenin as “mere acts of war” strikes me as doublethink.

Well, with the way most of us have been conditioned to think about “the necessity” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

To tell the truth, I’m feeling a little sick of the arguing. Lizza seemed positively delighted that I took the time to answer her. “Oh boy! A dialogue!” I think what she means is that we’re having a fight and she gets to land a few blows on the next best thing to a Palestinian sympathizer.

For my part, I’m not so pure. When I enter an argument, I often feel as if the angels sing with me. I feel that the righteousness I feel is pure and peals forth clearly because it is true. I see myself as something of a intellectual superhero, clad in an adamantium exoskeleton and powered by Reason and Good. But as I continue to engage, I begin to sputter. The meat inside the suit turns into an osterized pulp. I begin to leak through the cracks. And when I leak, I stain the suit. I look clownish. Though I remain certain about the good of what I am saying, I lose confidence in my motives. The engines that powered my crusade whimper to a halt. The confident steel blue knight becomes a tormented homunculous.

There comes a point where you can only repeat your defenses of yourself. It comes very quickly for me when I am discussing my pacifism, the Middle East, or just about any other political cause. Then what started as “discussion” too often ends up becoming something like the the wars of the Dani — spears being thrown back and forth. A person killed now and then. Lizza is repeating the same old arguments and making the same old misinterpretations I’ve heard from so many justifiers of war, terrorism, and battle. For my part, I see no hero. Just a dumb trout who took up some stink bait and is now spinning for his life, trying to break the monofilament.

Claude Levi-Strauss wrote: “The function of repetition is to make the structure of the Myth apparent.” Why does it seem that no one but me is starting to see the myths? Why isn’t knowing this making me feel better and more at peace with the world?

I could continue this ad nauseum, ad infinitum. Putting a response atop a response atop a response. I could point out the many ways she misinterprets, the ways in which she follows the current fashion, the ways in which she is too quick to summarize, the ways in which she completely leaves out elements of news that are inconvenient to her, the ways in which she speaks for peace and then calls for wars, the ways in which she does something and then denies she does it, the ways she projects herself on me. The feeling I get is that I am arguing by a book, albeit one I have written, to tactics I’ve seen employed in far too many places before. I am not so sure that I am any better as long as I keep answering her. Such houses of cards never fall as long as there is a willing exchange. Just look at abUSEnet, at the flame wars that last for years. I don’t blog for this.

Good bye Lizza. I just can’t touch your pain and I can’t cure your sickness. You’ve got to do that for yourself. I’ve got my own to mind. If there is a God and you are right, I hope you have the justice you hunger for.

For those who savor such things:

Lizza Responds to Me and I Talk Back There

And Responds Again.