Sherry Chandler

Several liberal bloggers are linking to this exchange at Iraq the Model. It is a conversation between the blogger and his father after a mortar attack hit a neighbor’s house. The post is called “Mortars were louder than reason in Baghdad today.” The situation sounds familiar:

Me: How is this mess going to resolve dad?

Dad: it is not.

Me: Are you positive? Why?

Dad: People find solutions only if they wanted to and I think many of the political players do not want a solution.

Me: Is there a chance the situation will further escalate?

Dad: Most likely yes, we are a state still run by sentiments rather than reason which means it’s a brittle state and any sentimental overreaction can turn the tide it in either direction.

Me: what kinds of challenges can make things worse?

Dad: Virtually anything…assassinating a leader, a fatwa, attack on a shrine like last time; we do not possess the institutions that can abolish the effects of severe sentimental reactions.

Me: Is there going to be no role for politics?

Dad: What politics are you talking about?! We are dealing with deeply-rooted beliefs…Yes, in politics everything is possible but with religion you find yourself before very few options to choose from and our people have mostly voted for the religious.

Once upon a time, the United States of America did possess the institutions that could abolish the effects of severe sentimental reactions. From my perspective, the last five years have seen those institutions undermined.

It was religious sentiment that elected George W. Bush, and it is religious sentiment that drives the battle against women’s and gay’s rights. It was patriotic sentiment that sent us rushing into war with Iraq. I think perhaps we are still in the throes of our millennium fever, and the results have not been pretty. Certainly not for Iraq. And not for us either.

Links to this post came from War and Piece and Washington Monthly.

One last thought. The most cogent argument I’ve seen against our game of democracy dominos came from Fareed Zakaria. It went like this, if I remember correctly: you cannot have democracy without first having the institutions that provide checks and balances. Without checks and balances, the people will elect a strong man at the first ballot and that will be the end of democracy.

[Update: one last small exchange from the blog post:

Me: Why do our politicians seek confrontation?

Dad: The religious seek death because after death comes heaven they believe…Do you want to deny them this dream?

Me: No but …will they really go to heaven?

Dad: hell, no!]

175. A poem written in pen could never have been written in pencil.

176. When I was younger, I was so habituated to the typewriter as a tool and to the typewritten page as a space, that, even when I worked from notebooks, the poems transposed back into a typewritten text tended to perfectly fill the page.

177. Deliberately determining the way one writes, determines much of what will be written.

178. If I were to publish only parts of this, sections, it would alter the total proposition.

— from Ron Silliman’s The Chinese Notebook