Wednesday, June 26, 2002 :::
 

The Vacant Lot…in the Center of a Twisted Hell of Pride and Complication

Admittedly I am an idiot when it comes to foreign policy. Understanding the dynamic of a world gone berserk with economic crisis, clashing religious ideology, and the comparative costs of Big Macs on the global stage has never been my strongest area of competence. If asked why the people of India and the folks in Pakistan are deadlocked in a battle with each side flexing the muscle of potential of nuclear attack I would register a blank stare, issue the idiot’s anthem of “Idunnoh”, and return to humming the theme song to I Dream of Jeanie. And questions about ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, Warlord dictators in the Sudan, and land disputes among French wine producers would all likely garner an identical response save for my choice of TV theme song (alternate favorites include The A-Team, Street Hawk, and the Fall Guy). This has made comprehending the current state of affairs in the Middle East difficult for me.

I love breaking things down into exaggeratedly simplified metaphors. I think I have a talent for it. So over lunch yesterday with two friends I posed a metaphorical hypothetical to my friends in an effort to simply my understanding of and the subsequent conversation about just what in the hell in going on in Israel and how it affects me. It was a cute story. It was about me and Nick and how we hated each other and raised our children to hate each other and each of us had different religions, different standards of living, and each of us were claiming ownership of a vacant lot down the street where nobody lived. I went on to say that in an effort to make Nick concede ownership of parts of said vacant lot, I trained my children to blow themselves up at his family picnics and other densely populated family gatherings. As further filler I even brought in that the mayor of the “Big City” – a city that Nick and I didn’t even live in- not only recognized Nick’s family as a legitimate member of the area community, but also gave him aide to withstand the pressures from me and my neighborhood cronies.

My friends Nick and Brennan are smart guys. They can and will discuss most topics with enlightened enthusiasm so they indulged me. It wasn’t too long before I realized that even when you take this Middle East ordeal- one that pre-dates the lot of us- and you try to break it down into simple terms the terms become just as much a cluster fuck of complicated ideals as when you started. So I resolved myself to not understand and to be OK with it.

So I don’t mind anymore. I don’t mind if I cannot reconcile my thoughts when someone straps a block of C4 to themselves and takes out a bus at rush hour. I will cease to wonder about how people deal with going to lunch and wondering if the guy sitting next to them is going to squeeze the trigger and turn himself into a flaming pretend-martyr. And from now on I am not going get tense when President Bush makes noises about validating and granting state status to a group of people whose main contributions to the world are politicians that wield questionable powers and fire-breathing terror troopers that use the corpses of innocents to draw out the borders of their new state. It won’t bother me anymore. It is best just to not care.

::: posted by Mike at 11:17 AM