...or, well, not so much a "discussion", per se, more of a lecture. A Tirade, if you will. A Browbeating, followed by an ideological food fight.
Six speakers: two English prof's, a Philosophy prof, a dean of something-or-other, a local pastor, and another professor who teaches, I think, extraterrestrial biology or metaphysical basket weaving or something. The topics, respectively: Use of Language as it relates to War (subtitled: YOU'VE BEEEN DUPED!); Poetry of War; Philosophy of Pacifism; Five Questions about the Iraq War (and the answers, in case you're too stupid to figure them for yourself -- hint: BUSH LIED!); Religion on a Geopolitical stage (or, alternatively, "Muslims who fly planes into buildings and cut off people's heads and murder girls for impure thoughts and want every last one of you dead really aren't any different from the prodestant family down the street, and besides, who are we to force our democracy on them, don't you know that's not their culture?"); and, finally...well, I'm not sure. The last guy mumbled, but it seemed to be pretty much par for the course DailyKos stuff so I went to smoke a cigarette.
The presentations ranged from inarticulate (over fifteen minutes about a German soldier during WWII named Kaufmann, but that's all I can tell you about him, because the rest of it didn't make any damned sense at all), to trite ("They were going to call it Operation Iraqi Liberation! Say it again (she says it again. and again. and slower, for the ESL crowd)" This was presented, not as a joke, but as a serious point), to offensive ("Every day, American Soldiers are commiting atrocities around the globe!"), to simply tired (Sixteen words, No Blood for Oil, Blah de blah blah blah).
I had hope for the "Five Questions" speech, he kept cautioning that these questions were important no matter what your stance on the war, until it became clear that he was going to answer all the questions for us. (Because it's important to question your beliefs, as long as you agree with me in the end). The poetry was not an examination of, you know, actual poetry through history, but rather two selections written by the speaker. I use "written" in the loosest sense of the term..."dribbled" may be more accurate. The speech on the language of war was actually somewhat interesting; subtract out irrelevant lefty talking points flung at random into the speech like a tourette patient's obsceneties, and it would have made an interesting semantic debate.
But wait, the worst is yet to come: You may have noticed that there was a...lack of diversity in the panel. The audience, however, was easily 10% military (ergo, pro-war), with another twenty or thirty percent on the same side. After an hour and a half of being lectured, insulted, condescended to, and generally harrassed a Marine in full dress and another Marine wearing an OIF sweatshirt were, literally, fit to be tied. They started shouting as soon as the last speaker was done. Another english teacher, a republican (!), asked for a few minutes to present the other side, then proceeded to go on for easily twenty minutes and, when not contradicting herself or insulting somebody, didn't make any sense at all. I can't imagine she was any worse than the guy I had skipped out on earlier, but it had to have been a close thing.
"Islam is a Death Cult". Woah, woah, flag on the play. Indignant: "I never said Islam is a Death Cult. (blah blah blah) Islam, see, is a Death Cult." I had previously thought that having to sit quietly through speech after speech that I disagreed with would be the worst: not even close. There is nothing worse (in this forum) than having to sit through a speech by someone who, generally speaking, you probably agree with, but who absolutely butchers the argument. I mean, really, makes a mockery of the idea that there could ever be any sensible argument for the war, simply through overwhelming ineptitude, innacuracy, incoherence, unfamiliarity with the issues, and general incompetence.
This was followed by the two Marines I mentioned earlier, who went with the "I was there, I saw it, none of you have any idea what you're talking about and, really, you should all just sit down and shut the fuck up because I'm the only one allowed to have an opinion on the matter" tact, which never really carried much weight with me. I kept my mouth shut, and promptly bounced out of there when a hippie kid in the back started shouting down the well-dressed Marine, insisting that "The US is the real terrorist", followed by the Marine telling the kid he has "No idea what terrorism is". Nothing good was going to come from that, so I went for another cig and the calmer atmosphere of the smoke area.
Where, oddly enough, I got caught up in conversation with the professor who gave the language speech and a moderate anti-war girl about, get this, the war, the presentation, and ways that both could have been better or worse, all without any name-calling or raised voices or grandstanding. We agreed and disagreed, and everybody came away happy.
See how easy?
Posted by Francis at March 23, 2006 03:09 AM | TrackBack