Monday, November 24, 2003

A big problem in life is that life is not like TV. This wouldn't be a problem if people didn't expect it to be like that. We talk to people like there aren't thorny complicated problems that can't be solved in thirty minutes, the fact that not everyone is this autonomous master of their own destiny(I'm a whole lot freer than someone dying of AIDs in a poor country without education- and I get this freedom because of lucky birth), and that sometimes bad things happen, and it's not pathological. Jane can be teased by the bully without being an evil person. If there's a problem, we just give pat self serving answers that try to take the blame away from us or our society.

If we try to treat things like this like they are these imagined TV problems, what will happen? We thought we could go in with guns and everyone would love us. What should we do? Should we pull out? Wouldn't that destabilize the country? But how can we stay when many don't want us there? Will we bring back Iraq's army? These question don't have the sort of pat self serving answers that everyone thinks they should.

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