My uncle, who is a staunch Republican, recently sent me what appears to be a chain letter email from a "soldier in Iraq" extolling the virtues of the war and occupation and discrediting virtually every report by the media as a blatant lie.
Needless to say, I don't subscribe to such contrafactually tautological nonsense. The "soldier," is most likely a concoction of some overzealous, unscrupulous e-propagandist (if he is real, however, I hope he'll accept my apologies but please get in touch with the reality of Iraq). Unfortunately, many people do, and (there's more)...
we're placed in a defensive position when arguing from a perspective gained from our living rooms while their relatives purportedly phone in such commentary. Furthermore, the chain emails, false or not, exploit and perpetuate the tendency of Americans to believe in the sanctity and essential altruism of not only their foreign policy, but their soldiers themselves, and to accept the words of such soldiers without any skepticism.
The fundamental problem is that the left and right, trusting in the credibility of facts from only a modicum of selected sources, are able to hold in their heads two distinct realities. No wonder there is such an acute social and political schism in the United States when both sides are able to do little more than talk past one another. This rift is so great that not only have both groups gravitated toward their own media outlets, but have begun to distrust this media altogether in favour of explicitly biased facts circulated by questionable sources.
Partially, this is the media's own fault. Errors of fundamental responsibility, which include a healthy dose of cynicism and skepticism, allowed the administration to proceed to war unchecked, and even lauded from the sidelines. With Rathergate and other assorted perceived biases, conservatives are also abandoning a media infrastructure they had cultivated into a powerful machine, especially as it now bandwagons to praise Kerry's and Edwards' debate performances. During the debates themselves, the candidates accuse each other of blatant distortions continually, exposing the deep fault between two versions of facts which demonstrably contradict one another.
How are we to account for this loss of common ground? How does one begin to hold dialectical conversations with those who support George W. Bush simply because "he follows God's will" or "he knows the righteous path of Christ"? To use a biological analogy, it's like when a mutation occurs within a small group of a species which transforms its mating ritual. The group can no longer mate with the rest of the species and is reclassified as its own. In human terms, communication requires an acceptance of common means and facts. Logical consistencies, are, actually, still graspable when two individuals are speaking different languages. To speak the same language while using logical inconsistencies, however, is grounds not only for misunderstanding, but noncommunication.
As much as we ridicule Bush and Cheney for living inside their Iraq "fantasy world," there are millions of others who do so with them, and whose opinions are not going to be changed because their perception and trust are skewed in entirely opposite directions.
This is a difference more elemental than any, perhaps, that has been faced in this country. Congressional sages could argue rationally against each other in the 1850s with respect to slavery and states' rights, and even then the situation deteriorated into Civil War.
Perhaps you find my assessment pessimistically Hobbesian, but what's to prevent an irredeemable loss of national unity? We hear of people who would take up arms if Bush steals the election a second time, and I'm sure many on the other side are ready to hoist their now-legalised assault rifles when the President Kerry they've been hearing about- forcing them into gay marriages, subordinating the US to Paris, appeasing Islamist militants, taxing them into poverty, allowing the Dutch to try troops for war crimes, unable to make crucial decisions, opposing the noble efforts to liberate the Iraqis etc etc- is inaugurated. It's enough to bring about thoughts of Fort Sumter.
But more likely, this new civil war will be metaphorical. It will be one during which I will not be able to have a conversation with my own relatives during Thanksgiving- many here relate the experience of being estranged. There is a civil war being waged at every American dinner right now, and what I ask you is-
where, when, how does and will it ever end?