by Justin Peters
U-Wire
I used to get violent migraines as a kid. Without warning, my eyes would go blurry, and every word, every sound that I heard became a shovel beating against my skull. Medicine didn't help, so all I could do was shut myself in a totally dark room, grit my teeth, and wait for the world to return to normal.
Last week, as the government began its latest push to lay the foundations for the forthcoming war against Iraq, I felt like I was that kid again. With every article I read and every special report I watched, the drums of wider war reverberated in my head.
The war hasn't even started, and I'm already sick of it all.
This isn't a partisan thing. I'm just as tired of the carping peaceniks as I am of President Batman's stupid moralizing, and have no idea whether we should invade Iraq. I'm just a stupid college student, in an altered state more often than not, more concerned with matters of laundry and phone bills than matters of international policy. I don't think I'm qualified to hold an opinion.
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Whoa there. I should watch what I say. This is, after all, the information age where any slob with a mouse and a modem can access stores of information on any topic, assimilate it (or not), and pass himself off as an expert. The Internet is the great leveler, right? Point and click, that's all it takes. We can all be pundits now.
We are all drowning in a sea of informed opinion.
It all seems petty and cheap to me - that the same people who were, last month, crying wolf about the West Nile virus and expounding on airport security are now passing themselves off as experts on war and blithely offering their partisan opinions, as if this impending war were just another bill to be passed or defeated.
None of these self-proclaimed experts respect what war means. None of them respect war's gruesome calculus: the wanton destruction, the death of innocents and the collateral damage.
All we get are words, a cascade of endless patter, serving mainly to irritate and obscure. Shovels of reason, beating down. We can't trust what anybody has to say because all they want to do is convince us of their own opinions. We can't trust anything we read because everyone has his or her own hidden agendas behind the veneer of impartiality. Irony of ironies: in the information age, truth becomes increasingly difficult to find.
There are dark days ahead, and it seems our souls would be better served if we spent less time pontificating and more time reflecting.
When we deal with abstract concepts - war, death, good, evil - we can't saddle them with concrete definitions. This fundamental problem doesn't seem to bother anyone in the media, or the government. But it bothers the hell out of me.
Should it? I don't know. I don't know anything about anything. Am I right? Is my opinion worth anything at all? I love this country. I hate this country. I am an American. I am a human. I am a citizen of the world.
Last week U.S. officials said that Saddam was a liar, that his letter about the weapons inspectors was a fraud and a trick; they offered reams of evidence to prove the point. Point and click. Read and learn. Words upon words. Last week more Iraqi children died because they were denied the food and medicine they so sorely needed. Last week thousands of bodies still lay buried in the ashes of the World Trade Center.
The lights were all out when I got home. My roommate was gone, possibly forever; I wasn't sure. There was nothing to drink, nothing to smoke, nothing to kill the pain in my head. Shovels of opinion. Shovels of fact.
Outside, the air was heavy with impending rain and the smell of garbage. I ate graham crackers from a box and dreamed about space - a limitless expanse of silence, punctuated by unimpeachable bursts of extreme clarity every billion miles or so. The moon had never seemed so distant.
