swing it like you mean it

there is a comment by bob of irobert fame--on his own post, even--that really got me thinking about the very complex and delicate idea of simplicity. on the one hand, there is the very simple concept: terrorism and terrorists should be stopped, and we as a free people (i say "we" in the grand, sweeping sense, not the American Freedom Fries sense) really are all on the same side, that is, against terror. and really, i mean terror as in intense, overpowering fear, rather than anything else.

but then of course, on the other hand we have the concept that we (grand, sweeping) can spend a lot of time arguing and agreeing and disagreeing--vehemently, even--about the manner and means of going about making our side successful.

you know, this started out about simplicity, but i just thought of something else i'd like to say: i feel like it has only been very recently it's become so difficult to say things that run along the lines of "i think the war in iraq has been a horrible blunder" without feeling like it needs to be followed up with "but i don't think the united states deserves what it gets." or perhaps "i strongly disagree (i'm using poetic license here) with the ideology of the republican party as a whole" without protesting, "but i don't hate conservatives" immediately afterward. it makes me nervous, actually, this polarization, where making a simple (ah! back on track!) statement has become so complicated, so filled with meaning that really is beyond the frame and scope of the little words in that original statement. "i am a liberal" now means "i hate america" or "i disagree with the war" now has tints and hues of "i think we had it coming." things become unreasonable and skyrocket and really, suddenly unpatriotic, quite quickly. i suppose it makes me uncomfortable--inspires terror, even--to think that simple statements of opinion can be and are labelled as the fabric of treason without any thought as to the actual words used.

though i am encouraged by the passion and feverish belief in "issues," as it were, i sometimes suspect that this intensity is really unthinking us vs. them mentality, which may just be worse and more dangerous than complete apathy.

what i mean to say is, i wish there was more allowing for the possibility that us and them are simultaneously right and wrong, to varying degrees.

or maybe i just wish sandra day o'connor would call and tell me it was just a practical joke.