Monday, February 03, 2003

Real Politics.... It's interesting the way that political views can completely and totally skew one's ability to see reality correctly. I was reading an op-ed by Bill Bradley in Sunday's Washington Post concerning Iraq and Bush's failed attempts to sell the war during the State of the Union address. It outlined several of the more catastrophic possibilities, including increased terrorism, increased fundamentalism and instability across the Middle East, and deaths of thousands of people, Americans and Iraqis alike. All of this is scary and sad. However, it suddenly occurred to me that what I was feeling was not fear, sadness, or even anger, but rather hope--hope that a debacle in the Middle East would result in Bush's loss in 2004. "Yeah, thousands of people died, and we're going to see a huge uptick in terrorism, but at least Bush is screwed now" is not a particularly humanitarian perspective. I used to experience this as a college debater and eventually as a coach--losing perspective when thinking about catastrophe. In brief, and at risk of huge oversimplification, policy debate involves researching and finding articles/books/testimony etc. to demonstrate the points that you'd like to make about a particular policy. This usually involves massive--ahem--hyperbole about the risks and rewards of a certain policy change. If advocating a new policy, one wants to find evidence of the most disastrous things that could possibly happen if said policy is not enacted. If we don't find a new way to repair widgets on bicycles, there will be a nuclear war. This sort of thing. But often the things you're talking about aren't fanciful at all, but quite real. So I vividly remember having this conversation with my debate partner. Greg: "I found this article that says that up to a million Cambodians could starve to death next winter." Me: "Awesome!" Greg: "Yeah, we can really use this for our affirmative." Me: "See if you can find anything that says there will be a war in southeast Asia--that would be great." Whew! With age, I've seen the light on some of these things, but clearly I've got a ways to go. It's probably worth it to avoid global catastrophe, even if it means four more awful, awful years of Bush.   5:13:02 PM    Let's hear it. []