It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
To be sure, they're Iraqi lives. We are told that this means we should discount them. 143 people killed today in Iraq - that's just a few people shy of the number that was killed in Oklahoma City a few years ago by our own domestic conservative, government-hating terrorists.

When Americans think about Iraq, this number of people killed is just another bombing. What is it for the Iraqis? Our war is coming to a close now, in a year or so, but theirs is just beginning. Thanks to the lack of planning by George W. Bush and his White House aides, Iraq is playing a game of making it up as it goes along, with bombs tossed around like baseballs to knock people out of the game.

This is the result of what George W. Bush's supporters call "moral clarity", but is in reality the morality of a simpleton who cannot understand politics in any way more complex than a fight of good versus evil. The world is too subtle for the man who occupies the Oval Office. How could he have forseen this, when everyone knows that the story was supposed to end with the "Mission Accomplished" banner and the capture of Saddam Hussein, evil vanquished and the heroes going home?

It is time for America to find a new President - someone who knows better than to lead through the simple wisdom of fairy tale battles. There are no white knights and black knights left. We are all now without armor, in the mud, blindly swinging with rusty axes. Smeared with blood, everyone on the battlefield now looks like a monster.

Posted by J. Clifford Cook at 11:03 AM. # (permalink)  




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