alreadygone

I'm borrowing my inaugural post from my blog on Myspace. I'ma try to make all of my journal entries have some depth to them, but we'll see. Here it is:


I stumbled across my old xanga site, and there was a post I'd like to elaborate on, because it involved something I drive by most every day on my way around Annapolis and it's kinda current events.



When I moved to Annapolis, by my gym there was a house that put a sign out in front of it. On this sign was a simple analysis of the costs of the Iraq war. Every month a new death toll, monetary expenditure, and time amount were added to the sign. There were no opinions stated on the sign, just a simple constantly rising cost total of our costly, immoral, and ridiculous venture into that cradle of humanity we call Iraq. It was, on face value, a completely neutral counter, like a newspaper would put out.



At least once a week, for months, the sign would be vandalized. Someone pushed it over, spilled paint on it, spilled something of dubious color on it (think human waste), broke the sign and left it were it stood, etc etc. Like clockwork every week, someone would try and destroy the sign. Even as the months got colder, someone was still angry at this impartial display of facts that confronted you on your way down West Street into downtown Annapolis. It must have taken a lot of time and money to keep that puppy standing over the year I've been living in this neck of the woods. I certainly commend the posters of this sign for their faith in the posting of the truth, up to that point, anyway.



I feel the need to repeat the fact that there was no opinion stated on this sign. For all I know the people living on the property where the sign was displayed would support the war in whatever sense that means. Someone found the truth so offensive that they devoted time out of each week of their lives to vandalizing this sign that displayed nothing more offensive than the simple truths behind the material costs of the war.

Now as time went on I noticed something. Underneath the facts that were displayed on a constantly rising basis was an opinion. It read "USA Less Safe, USA Less Free". I'm inclined to believe said statement, and that may have to do with the fact that I noticed this in the first place.



nullThe sign was never vandalized again.


Now it very well may be that the vandals attacking this sign on a regular basis (I can't imagine simple facts being so offensive that a new vandal broke the sign every time) simply got tired of the gusto with which their target repaired the damage they created, but somehow I doubt it. Maybe the stating of the opinion validated something in the vandal's mind that caused them to relent.

I, of course, tend to read above and beyond the sort of thing, and immediately attributed it to the human, or more specifically, the American psyche. We have been told repeatedly since birth that any opinion is alright to have, and maybe the revealing of the political stance of the inhabitance of the property with the sign caused the violent reactions to stop because the opinion written below the facts that had still not left the sign immediately absorbed the aforementioned facts, and they somehow became an accessory to opinion at the bottom of the sign. (Goddamnit that was a long sentence) Now I'm willing to bet that the sign was immediately interpreted by all passersby as an opinion, even though it contained concrete and indisputable facts.



What is it about the nature of facts that makes them so vulnerable to being covered up?

Perhaps we're all conditioned to put more faith in opinions than in facts, or worse yet to cover up or ignore facts that contradict the basis for any current popular course of action. I don't have the evidence to blame this on public schooling, as this sort of thing was prevalent in the private institutions that I have attended. Maybe we as a country really have been lulled into a sense of security that is met with violence when threatened by the sheerest and simplest truth. After 9/11 there was talk about a sense of innocence about the American people that was shattered by the attacks. I'm inclined to believe that we still have that exact same sense of innocence, we are just afraid to give it up, and respond to the truth about it with violence. We're so afraid and so used to stability and security that we as a country have resorted to destabilizing another region of the world just to try and save ourselves. The end result, as the economic law of unintended consequences has and will always foretell, is increased instability here at home. High gas, food, and rent, A widening gap between the rich and the poor, Increased deceptiveness by our leaders, all of this is the seed of us clinging to our innocence as voters and as American citizens. We're all to blame, even those of us who speak out against the wars we are starting. By participating in the system we lend it our support, even as we dissent. By expecting new heads of governments to not lie to us and to not coddle us so is the ultimate in naivete and innocence.



We as a country certainly have not pushed enough to view documents, activities, and other evidence that the government has covered up since 9/11 and leading up to the decision to go to war with Iraq. Eyewitness testimony has been popping up all over place that contradicts the government's official line on the subjects that lead to the war on terror and our misadventures in Iraq, but very few of us are willing to really listen to these accounts. I've heard WTC and Pentagon survivors being dismissed as crazy for what they had seen and heard with their own eyes and ears. After all, why would any of these people expect to be believed, when the overwhelming response to the posting of the simple costs of the Iraq War were vandalized and literally covered up with paint or worse?