Themeattics

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

Plato, The Republic

Kind of a lot going on in the world these days, huh? Seems everywhere we turn, there’s another crisis brewing or already in full effect, each thing demanding your attention and – ultimately – your definitive position. Pandemic? Best stick to one avenue of belief or you’re not fit for polite society. Inflation? We all know who’s to blame for that, and if you don’t, well, you’re not part of the team. War? Better be supporting the right side in all cases or you’re probably a monster.

I’m being a little hyperbolic there, but not by much. We’ve reached this lovely point in society where you must plant your flag on day one of any issue and keep it there lest you wind up branded a heretic. Which, let’s be honest, you will anyway. We’ll all fall afoul of something somewhere down the line and the people we thought were our allies will turn on us – that’s what ideological groups do.

But I don’t really want to focus on anything specific to the here and now. The best I can do is use it as a backlight to a grander issue I’ve been noticing for a time – the inability for anyone to admit uncertainty without being castigated. I don’t know when it started, but I remember being particularly struck by this back when Herman Cain ran for office. I was never what you’d call a fan of his, and this is off memory so don’t quote me here, but I recall him being asked a question involving some smaller international issue which he didn’t know the answer to. He remarked that he would be in the position to hire people who did know, and I remember the media lighting him up over this. That, apparently, as president you should just know everything all the time. I thought it was a breath of fresh air for someone to admit they’re human, but clearly that wasn’t in the cards.

Fast forward to now and it’s only become worse. It seems we’re asked daily to take stands on things we knew nothing about five minutes ago. Back before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the only thing I could tell you about Ukraine was where it was on a map. But then I had to put my full voice of support behind them because something bad was happening to them. And to be fair, there’s a bit of reason to that. No one should have their sovereignty violated. I’m all for a nation’s right to remain independent, obviously. Good on them for resisting. I wish them the best.

Then came the blitz of war propaganda on both sides. The Snake Island last stand that wasn’t, the Ghost of Kiev which may or may not be real, the Russian liberation posters that seem right out of a bad dystopian film. It’s hard to sift through anything on either side to find out what’s actually going on, and that’s not surprising in the least. It’s war, after all, and all sides are going to shell out as much as they can to win favor. But there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of due diligence in the media over here. And again, I get it. Ukraine is something of a western ally while Russia has always been at odds with us, so we lean in favor from that and from the simple fact that Russia is the unprovoked aggressor and deserves to be turned out.

That’s why I thought the Russian propaganda about Ukrainian Nazis was ludicrous. Until it turned out that there are, in fact, a hell of a lot of them. And not just the fabled ones we never really see in the west, but actual Nazis flying swastikas and wearing black suns. While being in the military. Kind of a red flag, yeah? Not exactly the type of thing I’m super invested in supporting.

And then there’s idea of America’s place on the global stage. I’m pretty damn tired of war. We’ve been killing people all over the world for generations now, and I’d be hard pressed to tell you why. Meanwhile, the domestic front is going through some pretty terrible shit over the past year plus. Maybe, just maybe, it’s a good idea to focus inward for a bit? But then again, I’m a pretty big believer in the idea of the power vacuum, so if we stop playing the role of a global superpower, someone else will. And it’s pretty damn likely that someone won’t have our particular set of values at heart.

Does that all sound like a bunch of back-and-forth, indecisive bullshit? Good, because it is. That’s the point. I don’t know what the right answer is. These issues are complex. Nightmarishly complex. To boil it down to blue-and-yellow social media profile pictures is frustrating and, ultimately, insulting. We don’t talk about the underlying aspects of anything anymore, it’s all just surface-level posturing with no substance. Because substance is hard. It requires facing issues instead of leaning on the ideas of others. It requires understanding ourselves, as well. I’ve been highly political for damn near twenty years and I still don’t know where I fall on foreign policy. We need to stop expecting everyone to have an ideological lockstep on issues that they didn’t even know existed until five minutes ago. It’s not healthy.