Atheist Meditations

Today hundreds of thousands of Hezbollocks' flags are waving in celebration in the Southern Lebanon as the President of Syria declares a 'historic victory,' over 'Israeli terrorism.' On the far side of an immense ocean, President Bush comments on Israel's 'victory', and stammers on about Syria and Iran's growing weakness.

There all full of shit, the kind that fundamentalists treat as holy and eat as part of some sort of magikal ritual.

Over a thousand civilians died in Lebanon; dozens in Israel. Perhaps 300,000 lebanese have been displaced, and old segregation lines between Shia, Sunni, and Christian have been all muddied up as families in the north take in strangers as refugees. An oil slick the size of the Exxon Valdez has been created off Lebanon's shores. Billions of dollars in infrastructure - that means the parts of society that people need to live - has been destroyed: bridges, factories, schools, hospitals, refineries, broadcast towers . . .

The romantic age is long over people. War just means irreconcilable suffering for innocent civilians who are unfortuante enough to be born on top of valuable resources.

But the fundamentalists are all a bunch of hopeless romantics. War is so fucking glorious, and 'victory' - as however they choose to define it - is always such a worthwhile reward for their sacrifice and loyalty.

I'd say an impartial observer would call this conflict a total loss for Lebanon, the country that just happened to be too weak to enforce her will on Hezbollah's fighters; and a stalemate for the Big H and Israel. Each side has their own propaganda machines and legions of brainless followers, however, so a new generation of Israeli soldiers will learn about this as another 'necessary action' and their rocket launching counterparts will be revering this moment as the 'beginning of the end for Israel.'

Reality has nothing to do with this conflict, and thus it will continue until one side gets medival.

Yet this maddening conflict between cultures that simply cannot define the same reality in unison ain't nothing new. It ain't nothing rare either.

I believe that the founding fathers of our country were deists and pretty radical skeptics and liberals. Evags are completely convinced that the fathers' totally intended to create a 'christian nation.' Evags hold disdain for the 'theories' of evolution and those of antropology, I can't find a flaw in them (not a 'deal-breaker' by any means.) Some folks in this country see Ronald Reagan as one of the greatest Presidents of the modern age; I can't get past Iran-Contra, the betrayal of the air-traffic controllers, or that slutty S+L bailout - let alone get to anything good he might have accomplished.

This country currently has at least two distinct cultures and ways of understanding reality. This will not do.

I hate to sound like I'm not a good moral relativist here, but - 'two men think they're Jesus, one of the must be wrong.'