I rove around Flickr on occasion, and it’s usually pretty fun. People take pictures of interesting things. I leave comments. They make comments. This amuses me.

Recently I tried to have a discussion with someone who had posted an anti-war picture. It was kind of disappointing. The whole started as a rather intellectual discussion of pros and cons and things, all very reasonable. I left my two bits and all and tried to answer for my point of view.

Then, as one of my attendings puts it, the crazy spilled all over the floor. I know that’s mean and condescending, but I am not sure how else to put it. Suddenly in the middle of a discussion the other person just answered everything with conspiracy theories, like her whole point of view was based not on objective facts or general principles but a paranoid world view.

I’m not saying I’m right and everyone who disagrees is crazy, far from it. But when the only defense of a position is that you think the other side is involved in conspiracies and in league with the devil, what’s the point of debate? Maybe I’d just prefer the discussion start with the crazy and go from there, or rather, not go from there and save some wasted time.

And another thing, and this has been bugging me, I just have to laugh and the absurdity of the pompous moral superiority and self righteous attitude of those that advocate that the only justifiable reason for entry into war was solid evidence of a threat against us directly and that what we should have done was turn a blind eye to genocide and oppresion. I’m not saying that’s the wrong way to handle global politics but at least have the humility and honesty to admit that that point of view has at least as a secondary motivator self preservation taking precidence over defending those that cannot defend themselves.

I’m not saying there were WMD’s, because I don’t care. I think it’s sad that it took the idea of WMD’s to convince people to back getting rid of a ruthless dictator who was tried by his own people and found guilty of mass murder. Most wars wind up having political/economic motivations; that’s what gets ‘the powers that be’ behind them. Then most wars also wind up wiht a populist motivation—the thing that gets the rank and file behind the effort. For example, there’s whole idea that the Civil War had economic underpinnings of the North needing to keep the agrarian and labor base of the South attached. But at least in that case the popular cause for the war was the freeing of oppressed people from slavery. Somehow we’ve come so far as a society that a noble idea like that won’t mean anything, and politicians have to cater to fear and crass self interest instead. It’s sad that’s what it takes; it’s sad that it happened. It’s all very depressing. I’m done.