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We've Both Got Our Views, but I'm Right
12/31/2003

Lileks notes a perennial frustration of mine, even if it has given me ideas about the basic construction of reality:

... we live in an era of non-contiguous information streams. I believe one thing; someone else believes another – and the bedrock assumptions are utterly contradictory. This is what drives me nuts about discussing current events with some people. It’s like discussing the Apollo program with people who think it was all faked, or discussing archeology with those who believe the world is six thousand years old. I think the Iraq Campaign was part of a broad war against Islamicist fascism and the states that enable it; others think it’s all about oil and Halliburton jerking the strings of a Jeebus puppet. No. Middle. Ground.

Of course, Lileks suggests what we all know to be true (don't we?):

Viewed a century out, the murky present will seem stark and obvious, white bones on a black slab. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, the terrorist organizations in the Levant and Indonesia, the Islamist elements of Pakistan, the behind-the-scenes support of North Korea – history, in its blunt custom, will color these factions alike. The people who insist that secular Saddam would never hook up with a radical Islamist group will seem like doddering backbenchers in Britain who muttered that Hitler hated Bolsheviks too much to strike a pact. I suspect that a century hence, those who sniffed at the threat of Saddam and his sons will be regarded as equally irrelevant.

"Suspect" nothing; I'm positively certain.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:33 AM EST