One might have thought (ok, I thought) that opinions would be neatly segmented along political lines. Left-wing doves would think it's a good thing and right-wing hawks would think it's a bad idea and that would be it. Onto the next discussion.
Boy did I get that one wrong.
As it turns out there's a range of nuanced opinions around here and they don't segment along any traditional lines. They don't segment along any lines as far as I can tell. I've had left wingers explaining patiently why going to the UN is just a stunt that ultimately hurts the Palestinians chances for a state. On the other hand I've heard right wingers explain that Abbas' little stunt would work out in our favor, giving Israelis a focus around which to rally and to show unity in the face of adversity and so on.
Nuance in political analysis in not something we encounter readily over here. Not only that, the punditocracy in the papers and on TV were quick to give grades to Abbas, Bibi, and Obama (like any of them would care). They (the pundits) were the ones with the clear-cut pronouncements, the ones with the unsubtle analysis. By comparison with the pundits, the cabbie that drove me home from the airport a few days ago was subtlety itself, all nuance and shades of gray, looking at the situation from twelve different angles and reserving judgement until more information came in.
Really.
Someone said once (it might have been Bibi) that the root problem of Americans on the world stage is that they have no sense of history, that for them anything that happened more than ten years in the past happened "a long time ago" whether it'd be the Inquisition or the Battle of the Bulge. By the same token, the problem of Jews and Arabs is that they have no distance from history. Everything that ever happened is kept painfully close as though it just occurred, whether it is the Hebron riots eighty years ago or the burning of a synagogue in York (and I'll let you guess when that one took place).
Both of these images are crude stereotypes of course, but they are instructive in a way. Having no sense of history and having no distance from historical events both lend themselves to having absolutist, naive views of policy and how to react to unfolding events. And the best antidote to such views is nuance.
Food for thought.
I can't argue with anything you've said here. I will add that as an American, I've been increasingly disappointed in how "short-term" our collective national memory seems to be. We've now passed the 10th anniversary date of that cowardly attack on innocent civilians--and by reasonable extension our nation as a whole--in 2001. And already I see more and more examples of people who were outraged shortly after 9/11 but now openly complain about the inconveniences caused by increased security measures. It's as if our nation as a whole has A.D.H.D.
ReplyDeleteYes, time heals wounds, but the lessons from such tragedy should neither be forgotten nor ignored. And in the political realm, to justify changes in policies affecting national security using the assumption that such heinous acts could not occur again is, to use your word above, naive.
I do follow your comment about the pitfalls of "having no distance from historical events," but I think Americans, today, could benefit from the example of Israeli vigilance.
Steve. I had the singular experience of not only being in the US this past 9/11 but of FLYING during 9/11 (not my forst choice of flying arrangements as you might imagine). Here's what shocked me. It wasn't the security arrangements at the airport (it was all very quick and efficient, really). It was the fact that some time after noon it appeared that everyone just moved onto more important things, like the NFL. I was in Nashville that day, and the talk around the hotel was about how badly the Titans did on the field that afternoon.
ReplyDeleteMy point exactly, Ben. It's really sad.
ReplyDeleteI'm posting this as anonymous because when I tried to post while signed in as Steve W it kept giving me some sort of "cookie reformulation" error. I've no idea what that means.