I’m conflicted.As I often am. I guess you can’t BE broad-minded and open, which I flatter myself I am, without often finding yourself stretched between this value and that, one conclusion and the other. Because things are complex, yes, but also because you can’t ever be sure you have full information on which to base a rock-solid conclusion.
And so you have to deal in multi-valued awareness, and conclusions that retain — sometimes forever — some measure of tentativeness. That means you can never see heroes as just heroes, you can never see villains as just villains.
I have a friend in Texas who seems NEVER to be conflicted. It would be cool to be that way, wouldn’t it? But he’s also wrong a lot of the time. And the whole world is like a light switch to him — either on or off, black or white.
If you said, “Hey, I tried that sushi stuff, and some of it’s pretty darned good. I brought some over, wanna try it?” the answer would be a flat NO. He wouldn’t, ever. If you held a gun on him, I’m still not sure you could get him to taste sushi. Because he KNOWS, to the deepest part of himself and without ever trying it, “I don’t like sushi.”
On the other hand, if you said “I made some venison chili, but I’m not sure it’s any good. I spilled a gallon of hot sauce in it,” he’d say “Hell, I’ll eat it. The hotter the better!” Because he knows, “I like hot chili.”
He would never reach any sort of in-between conclusion such as “I don’t know as I’d like raw fish, but I’ll try a taste. Maybe I’ll like it, maybe I won’t.” or “Give me just a little bit of that chili, and if it’s too hot, I might just take a rain check on it.”
For this friend, George W. Bush is an American hero, a patriot who defines the term. He could never see anything bad in Bush. You could play a video of Bush barbecuing puppies, and IF you could get him to watch, he’d simply refuse to believe it had happened. Those are not puppies, that’s not Bush, that’s not real barbecue sauce. And the all-purpose rejection, which I must have heard from him a thousand times, “You’re crazy!”
Whereas I, even at my most adamant, usually have a gate left open in my head for contrary views. Even in the midst of writing about my friend in Texas in this critical way, though most of me knows I’m telling the truth, there’s a bit of me that’s saying “But what if he’s changed since you last saw him? Should you really be writing about him like this?”
That’s why I’m not TOTALLY sure the man in the following story is a complete asshat and world-class idiot.
Steve Kreuscher, of Zion, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, changed his name.
Steve is now “In God.” Kreuscher is now “We Trust.” That’s right, he’s changed his name, legally, to “In God We Trust.”
It sounds like something a 6 year old would do to attract mommy’s attention. For a 50-something “artist and bus driver” to do it just seems pathetic. Reading the story about him was like stepping in something nasty. You want to get a stick and scrape as much of it off your brain as you can, before you track it around after you and get it on other people’s brains.
But then again, maybe he’s someone like me, an anti-theist, but with a totally tweaked sense of irreverent humor. Maybe he’s doing it as a clever way to take a whack at godders by devaluing one of their precious touchstone phrases.
Nah.
I think I’ll go with asshat and world-class idiot.
Until I know more, I mean.