Please Let's Do it Right

I sit here and give my opinion via articles I quote and headlines I write, day after day.  Mostly I just vent.  At times I just send prayers up to the heavens and hope they are heard. Today, a written prayer: Please, please, let's do it right. 

I can see beyond war and killing and pain to opportunities and freedom ahead for all.  I see friendship and goodness and peace in the future.  I see history, where things looked black to those going through the experience, and great sacrifices were made, yet it all turned out ok in the end and their sacrifices were NOT in vain.  They did things right.

And I think of the cliches - being cruel to be kind, breaking eggs to make omlettes - and I wonder why others are so unable to see what I see.  And I feel at such a loss to explain, how I want peace, how I hate war, yet how necessary the fight is, in my perception. 

And it is so frustrating to have those who disagree feel that I am having the wool pulled over my eyes, that we are being lied to, that there is no threat from Islamofascism, when I can clearly see for myself that this is not the case.  And so I wonder, why are THEY having the wool pulled over THEIR eyes?  Why can't they see what I see?

We seem to be at a terrible impasse - with all of us entrenched within our own positions.  And we can point at one another and accuse the other of being blind, evil, stupid, and having turned into extremists - but someone, in all of this is right, and someone is wrong.  

Comments

[draftervoi]

I told you this before: we can debate whether we're at war or not and get nowhere. What REALLY matters is if our enemies think we're at war. People are willing to spend MONTHS of their life arguing arcana, but they will not parse a simple sentence, chanted by a crowd of tens of thousands of people in a soccer stadium in Iran, at a rally organized by their government: "Death to America." They chanted it when Jimmy Carter was president. They did it when Reagan was president. Bush I, same phrase. Mister Clinton, they still chanted it. Bush II, they're still saying it. I am baffled by people who do not seem to undertand the sentence. While it is clear that whatever threat that phrase represents isn't something that's coming tomorrow (that is, we don't have to live in paranoid fear), we ought to understand that this isn't some post-modern text wherein "death" means something different than, well, DEATH. They're not speaking ironically.

There are a lot of people who have vague (or specific) arguments or disatisfactions with life in the West, there's plenty to bellyache about. But my aunt can't return to Iran, because the government will kill her. Some people who think that their laundry list of complaints puts them on the same side as these mooks are fools, plain and simple. They see two sides: George Bush is on one side, and everyone who opposes him is on the other. They do not understand that the (use whatever politically correct term for our enemies you want to here) see things differently: there is NO DIFFERENCE between a "progessive" and a Republican...not ONE BIT OF DIFFERENCE to the guys chanting "death to America."

[Gail]

They have bought into the idea that the fault is ours in the West, lock, stock and barrel. Misplaced Liberal guilt underlies it all.

[DRaftervoi]

Some do get it. One of the things that's interesting is that Mrs. Clinton clearly understands the threat, but she has to negotiate the shallow shoals of the far left, anti-war, conspiracy-theorist wing of the Democratic party. Which is why they don't like her, and why she seems to have two positions on some issues. Again, I'm repeating myself, but you will fight these guys now...or you can fight them later...but you WILL fight them, because it is their explicit goal to fight YOU.

[Gail]

I wonder if Mrs. Clinton was privvy to information during her husband's presidency that convinced her the threat was/is real. She is very difficult to read. Interesting that in some ways, she has similar difficulties to George Bush - she's a terrible communicator. No charm at all. Very stilted.

Leadership demands a wide range of characteristics - the communication part is not negligible.

[draftervoi]

No, which is one of Bush's problems, he doesn't articulate the issues very well. He had the problem of following one of the best orators of his time (Clinton), which would make anyone short of Cato the freakin' Elder look bad, but Bush is TERRIBLE at holding an audience. Mrs. Clinton is also not a particularly inspiring orator - she's not as bad as Bush at public speaking, but she's not GOOD. At best, she's an average public speaker. That's no reflection on either their intelligence OR on their executive ability, but it's an issue with both of them.

I'm not sure how oratory will play out in the YouTube era; you may need to craft short, easily remembered phrases more than a well-crafted speeches. Where now William Jennings Bryan and his "Cross of Gold" speech? It would have to be condensed to a 30-second spot, perhaps with a hip-hop soundtrack.