Driven

I had some great things to write about driving home from cell meeting tonight, and by the time I hit the door they were gone. Shower thoughts I can usually get written down in time. Driving thoughts, however, are mental vaporware.

In an attempt to snare driving thoughts, I once took a mini tape recorder on a cross-country drive. I filled three tapes over five days. I never listened to them. Why not?

First, I recall a startling lack of clever outside my head as compared to inside it. Driving thoughts usually undergo a polishing process while I drive. I think of a thing: an essay, a dialogue, a pithy quote. Then I think of a better way to say it. Then even better. By the fourth or fifth pass it looks pretty good. But if I try to say it out loud I arrest the process -- I only get the clunky first version. No wa in that process.

Second, I can't type worth a damn, so transposition would take as long as the recording.

Third, I do not have the personal fortitude to listen to my voice for several hours. I don't know how other people do it.

Fourth, I suspect that some of it is cripplingly embarrassing.



I wish for telepathic transmission to a blog. Once I hone my bon mots from the road, I beam them straight to the tablet where they will appear in written form. Some time later, the fat checks arrive for all the amazing cleverness.

(No one has to buy anything, but as long as I'm telepathically transmitting thoughts, I'll also learn to absorb money from the ether in exchange for cleverness. Once I can do that, then I'll absorb money from the ether in exchange for reading Fark.)

Edit: I've been back to hone this entry three times now. Maybe revision is just in the blood.

Why Americans Are Okay With Spying

The Miami Herald runs an editorial about President Bush's basic okayness with spying: Fear destroys what bin Laden could not.

The gist: "There is so much outcry about the president’s recent actions and attitudes, and how could we as Americans simply accept this?"

This train of thought seems a failure to understand Americans, particularly the ones who voted for and continue, in decreasing numbers, to support the president.

These are a mass of voters who believe strongly in Jesus. They might not always believe clearly about Jesus, but their vaguely directed faith is strong. President Bush shows up and makes unashamed Christian noises. These voters like Christian noises. They themselves make these noises and they trust other people who utter them.

Further, many of these people are older. They have lived in periods when they had to sacrifice personal liberty for the common good, and it was a good thing. For some of them that meant entering the armed services, a place that restricts liberty considerably for national well-being. For others, this meant rationing and victory gardens, if not personally, then certainly by their parents and older siblings. These people were indoctrinated when they were young to sacrifice personal liberty of all sorts for the national good. They might feel uncomfortable with the idea that the government would spy on them, but they’ll accept it because they've accepted invasive government action before and it turned out just fine.

These people are not necessarily meek or thoughtless. But they accept what's happening, and what has happened throughout Bush's administration, because an authority figure who makes the right noises says he’s doing it for their good.

Also, consider: These people not only grew up in an era where trusting authority was good and right, but they sort of miss it. I don't know if you've noticed, but postmodern wariness is taxing, and I grew up in the thick of it. If this had come upon me as an adult, after my expectations were set, I too would be unsettled and bewildered by the low-slung pants and the constant metatext.

These people grew up with more basic trust than we have now, and they're ready and willing to trust someone in charge who has their best interests in mind.

You know what? I want that too. Sometimes I wish I were entrusted with fewer mortal decisions and responsibilities. Wishing like this long-term is, of course, poison. But sometimes I wish it anyway.

George Bush, despite an awesome display of consistently egregious buffoonery, makes sense to these people. His call for reduction in liberty for safety does not resonate with Jeffersonian distrust for them, but with the gentle, well-intentioned authority of their childhoods. To them, this is not merely unshocking, but sensible.

What these Americans are not doing is thinking very clearly about what and why their leader talks the way he does. What’s more, they don’t want to think clearly about it. They just want to trust.