"My Left Behind"
Via Rose Nunez, I have discovered Donklephant and a great series of posts (here, here, and here) by Callimachus, in which he explores the evolution of his centrist worldview.
Here's a sample:
[My co-worker Paul] went to Canada during Vietnam and came back when the fighting was over. He never saw an American president or foreign policy he didn’t like (though he dislikes Democratic ones less than Republican ones). He never protested a war or a dictatorship unless there was a U.S. interest behind it. He works in my office. Paul is given to uttering “as Chomsky says” in the tones a preacher uses to invoke Scripture.
Another co-worker — I’ll call Tom — is a smart enough guy, worked in D.C., comes from a long line of newspaper people and writers whose names you’d know, but basically he’s a gool ol’ boy from West Virginia at heart: pick-up truck, gun rack, Confederate flag and all. And he’s somewhat naive about the ways of ex-hippies.
One day, Paul was waxing and ranting to Tom on the crimes of the U.S. military industrial complex. He sat back, comfortable, with his hands clasped behind his head, damning America’s political leadership and America’s history of military violence. And Tom chimed in with what he thought was an agreement: “Like Sherman’s march through Georgia. That was a crime, they should have all been tried for that.”
“Well …” Paul said, looking away from Tom and staring at his phone, as though wishing it would ring and give him an exit strategy from a suddenly knotty conversation. Tom, without knowing it, had said the exact right thing. After some huffing and hemming, Paul managed to dismiss the intrusive comment with:
“That was OK, because we did it to ourselves.”
And he had his own peculiar reaction to Sept. 11. A day or two afterward, when we still were busy filling page after page of the newpspaper with stories of heroism and tragedy, when the death toll was still believed to be near 10,000, before anyone in the White House had made a move to strike back at the terrorists or their hosts, Paul turned to me and said, “Don’t you think we’re over-reacting to this whole thing?”
Here's a sample:
[My co-worker Paul] went to Canada during Vietnam and came back when the fighting was over. He never saw an American president or foreign policy he didn’t like (though he dislikes Democratic ones less than Republican ones). He never protested a war or a dictatorship unless there was a U.S. interest behind it. He works in my office. Paul is given to uttering “as Chomsky says” in the tones a preacher uses to invoke Scripture.
Another co-worker — I’ll call Tom — is a smart enough guy, worked in D.C., comes from a long line of newspaper people and writers whose names you’d know, but basically he’s a gool ol’ boy from West Virginia at heart: pick-up truck, gun rack, Confederate flag and all. And he’s somewhat naive about the ways of ex-hippies.
One day, Paul was waxing and ranting to Tom on the crimes of the U.S. military industrial complex. He sat back, comfortable, with his hands clasped behind his head, damning America’s political leadership and America’s history of military violence. And Tom chimed in with what he thought was an agreement: “Like Sherman’s march through Georgia. That was a crime, they should have all been tried for that.”
“Well …” Paul said, looking away from Tom and staring at his phone, as though wishing it would ring and give him an exit strategy from a suddenly knotty conversation. Tom, without knowing it, had said the exact right thing. After some huffing and hemming, Paul managed to dismiss the intrusive comment with:
“That was OK, because we did it to ourselves.”
And he had his own peculiar reaction to Sept. 11. A day or two afterward, when we still were busy filling page after page of the newpspaper with stories of heroism and tragedy, when the death toll was still believed to be near 10,000, before anyone in the White House had made a move to strike back at the terrorists or their hosts, Paul turned to me and said, “Don’t you think we’re over-reacting to this whole thing?”
posted by Kate Marie | 2:51 AM | Permalink
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1 comments
1 Comments:
Callimachus' comments need some editing. I was thrown by a crucial typo at the very beginning- "He never saw an American president or foreign policy he didn't like" should read "He never saw an American president or foreign policy he didn't DISlike." I had to go back over that several times before I could make it make sense.
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