The war, autism and bullshit
Feb. 7th, 2003 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonSO ANNOYING! I just typed in this long entry and the browser lost it for me because I forgot to enter my username. I'm going to have to start pasting from a real editor every time.
I was talking to my coworker yesterday about the upcoming war in Iraq. It does look like it's going to happen... for the longest time I thought it was just talk. I didn't think we would really attack another nation without recent and severe provocation. But it looks like we are going to. I was feeling VERY bitter/powerless and had regressed all the way back to the position I held in high school (namely, why should I even know about national/world news if it's just going to make me feel bad, and I probably couldn't have changed anything in the first place, and it would not affect my daily life if I didn't know about it? Just don't even tell me.) Of course D thought that was far too cynical, and made a case for the intrinsic value of just caring what goes on. One's sadness over world events might prompt some local action, or influence a vote in the future (me responding to that point: ohhhhh yeah). He also is trying to focus on the positive in the war, saying that toppling the current regime would probaby benefit the Iraqi people themselves, and that's what he cares about even if our government's stated reasons for going are BS. And he has a point: I'd be less opposed to this if we were claiming human rights issues. He takes it completely for granted that there will be BS and rhetoric, and our real reasons won't be spoken, though, which makes me furious all over again. WHY must everything a ruling force says be laced with BS? How can issues ever be talked out between nations if they aren't openly spoken of? And why do we accept this... why why why. I hate BS (and fuckwittedness) and I do NOT see how it helps anything. All we know is that the stated reasons in this case don't hold up too well, and so we assume there are other reasons. I don't know why this is better than us knowing the real reasons.
This morning I took a test for AQ at WIRED, which tests your Autism Spectrum Quotient. I scored 28, not really enough to suspect me of anything. I'm just geeky. I had to answer "strongly agree" to the statements about having trouble reading between the lines when people are talking to me though. Oh, I pick up what friends say well enough, but work politics and real politics often leave me completely baffled.... and damn it, I'm don't get this war. And I'm sad about our pretty shuttle. :(
I was talking to my coworker yesterday about the upcoming war in Iraq. It does look like it's going to happen... for the longest time I thought it was just talk. I didn't think we would really attack another nation without recent and severe provocation. But it looks like we are going to. I was feeling VERY bitter/powerless and had regressed all the way back to the position I held in high school (namely, why should I even know about national/world news if it's just going to make me feel bad, and I probably couldn't have changed anything in the first place, and it would not affect my daily life if I didn't know about it? Just don't even tell me.) Of course D thought that was far too cynical, and made a case for the intrinsic value of just caring what goes on. One's sadness over world events might prompt some local action, or influence a vote in the future (me responding to that point: ohhhhh yeah). He also is trying to focus on the positive in the war, saying that toppling the current regime would probaby benefit the Iraqi people themselves, and that's what he cares about even if our government's stated reasons for going are BS. And he has a point: I'd be less opposed to this if we were claiming human rights issues. He takes it completely for granted that there will be BS and rhetoric, and our real reasons won't be spoken, though, which makes me furious all over again. WHY must everything a ruling force says be laced with BS? How can issues ever be talked out between nations if they aren't openly spoken of? And why do we accept this... why why why. I hate BS (and fuckwittedness) and I do NOT see how it helps anything. All we know is that the stated reasons in this case don't hold up too well, and so we assume there are other reasons. I don't know why this is better than us knowing the real reasons.
This morning I took a test for AQ at WIRED, which tests your Autism Spectrum Quotient. I scored 28, not really enough to suspect me of anything. I'm just geeky. I had to answer "strongly agree" to the statements about having trouble reading between the lines when people are talking to me though. Oh, I pick up what friends say well enough, but work politics and real politics often leave me completely baffled.... and damn it, I'm don't get this war. And I'm sad about our pretty shuttle. :(
