Matt and I just got back from "An Evening with Sean Hannity." We sat at the back of a ballroom full of well-dressed, beautiful conservatives and listened to humorous Hillary Clinton bashing and frank talk about the Iraq war. I agreed with him mostly, shook my head sometimes and then there was the other category of thought--those times when I didn't know whether to agree or disagree. The disquieting feeling of not having enough information to feel passionately one way or the other and not knowing exactly how to get that information in a practical, real-life sort-of-way..
Take the Iraq war for instance. Hannity mentioned more than once tonight that he was behind the troops because he had been to Iraq, had talked to them face-to-face and seen a little of what they were doing. Well, yeah, that would be a way to get an opinion about the whole thing but who wants to jump on the plane to Iraq with a nearly two year old and a big belly? There has to be an easier way to understand what is going on there. I've read the papers in part, listened to the debates in part, talked to a few people who have been there (and the wives they left behind) but these random run-ins with rhetoric have failed to leave me seeing the big picture and without the big picture, how can I make an informed judgement on the whole thing? Is it right to be in Iraq? Should the troops come home? Is our defense spending crazy when our education system is in shambles (isn't it so much easier to have an opinion on the education than foreign policy? It all goes back to the immediacy of experience)? And while I have a whole paragraph of question marks--why is Hillary Clinton so darn popular when frankly she is just sort of creepy?
And the frustrating part of the whole thing is that I am so full of questions right now but equally full of grease. After our stint with Sean Hannity we went and got sweet potato fries, onion rings and burgers and now it is late and my head is fuzzy and my stomach, which is currently located somewhere near my ribs, is sloshing about trying to make sense of all that it has encountered in the last two hours.
I hear you stomach. I hear ya.
2 comments:
An even better question regarding Hillary Clinton is why is she creepy? I myself am not a fan, even a little bit, of the former first lady, but I have found people's inability to vocalize or rather "get specific" when it comes to thier problems with Hillary quite amusing.
People are full of opinions and not quite as full of reason.
AMEN. re: Iraq. I am absolutely bewildered by those who seem to know with such a surety, but have no personal experience or information to go on. There are strong arguments on both sides, and both sides seem to think they have the only answer. I am afraid this one is grey to me and until I sit in cabinet meetings, fight on the front lines, and experience life as an Iraqi under Saddam and now...I will likely not be making a concrete critical argument one way or the other.
Post a Comment