perfidy

Ross at Spiral Dive (hi, Ross!) gives voice to something that I've been thinking about for a long time.

I've been thinking about the [Palestine-Israel] conflict extensively for the last day or two, and I've decided that I just don't have enough evidence to decide one way or the other. I've been critical of Israel in the past, but let's face it -- it's armchair, arms-length criticism. I really don't have any idea about the reality on the ground. Read the web and you'll find two polar opposites. Does the truth lie in the middle? On one extreme or the other? I have no idea.

Read the entire thing. There's a long, long history behind the situation that makes matters even more complicated than Ross's analysis, but I share Ross' sense of resignation, sadness, and beleagured faith in the goodness of people. I'm strongly inclined to back Israel, but frequently something happens-- a missile goes astray, a raid kills civilians-- that makes it hard to separate the just from the unjust.

Maybe it's due to today's date, or perhaps to my general fatigue, but I find myself growing weary of the hothouse of petty punditry that the internet fosters, especially when it comes to thorny, impossible situations like Israel or the roots of Islamic terrorism. The level of informedness, even from the most erudite sources, hovers somewhere between "Cat In The Hat" and "Weekend At Bernie's II".

Not that I will take a break from blogging-- oh, no, no!-- but the sheer blinkered partisanship just makes me tired. Between the Coulters and the Moores, the content-free blandishments of NPR and the counterfactual drum-beating of Fox News, not to mention the awful entertainment-pap that masquerades as network news, I have an unstoppable urge to draw the curtains, order a pizza and watch Adam Sandler and Chris Farley movies until my brain dribbles out my ears. Today, all America should do just that, for the good of all mankind. F'r god's sake, what a bunch of immature A-personality attention whores our public figures are.

Oh, and I see that the President used September 11, 2003 to start stumping for pieces of the Patriot II.

Asshole.