Good Reading

Been a long time since I linked to a Kung Fu Monkey post. Not because I don’t still go there everyday, but because, well, the proprietor, John Rogers, has been busy with his real world writing, including a new Blue Beetle comic series. But this is a gem. It’s a New Year’s resolution, a resolution we all should share, a resolution to dissent more. I’m quoting awfully extensively here, but please, please go read all of it.


Listen, I may well be all for the goddam Iraq War if someone, anyone, could lay out the operational goals and specific strategies, with progress benchmarks, for the conflict. You may scream at me, you may think I'm a traitor for even asking, fine, but my point is even if you think I ought to be in a John Ashcroft Re-Education Camp, you ought to be able to answer the question. But no, that's "defeatist" thinking. Or, I'm "Monday Morning Quarterbacking" the "fine patriotic folks who are working so hard." Because it's not results that matter in this Bizarro World we've wound up in, it's intent. It doesn't matter that the President's broken the law, it's okay because he meant well. A rationalization we wouldn't let our eleven year old get away with, we let the President slide.…

I can smell that the people trying to pull off The Big One, the fat bastards in suits who've been nursing hella-grudges since it all went to shit during the Nixon Administration know that this is their last shot. Things are going to get ugly hard, kids, and the reason I despair is because all I have is reason. I can't -- nobody can -- have an intelligent, reasonable disagreement with people who believe that there were really WMD's in Iraq, or that the President shanking the Fourth Amendment is a good thing, or that everything's going swimmingly in Iraq. I can disagree and discuss things with someone who thinks things are going better in Iraq than I believe, sure, but to deal with someone who points out that it's going great is, again, literally beyond my ken.
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Because we are in a war here, make no mistake about it. There is indeed a Culture War, but it's not the sides you think, not faith and science, not Democrat and Republican. It's between those who believe in a bright open future and those who seek refuge in the shadowy past. Between those willing to shoulder the burden of fear and those who seek a comforting King. Between the people who know the world is a messy grey masterpiece and those who crave a black-and-white past that never really was. A fundamentalist is a fundamentalist be he from Al-Queda or Al-abama.

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For what little it's worth, my New Year's Resolution in 2006, is to disagree more. To dissent -- and welcome dissent and well-reasoned arguments from those who hold opposite views. Because they are not the enemy. The people who say "... just because", in all its myriad forms, are the enemy.