This gulf of not-knowing wants to be filled--but not with knowledge. No, it wants to be filled by the stuff of cognitive dissonance--unfounded convenient truths that just so happen to harmonize with my ideology and my politics. I want to believe that withdrawing troops will be better for the Iraqis. I want to believe that there is nothing more that we can do there, and that our presence there is not required. In short, I want the consequences of withdrawal to be consistent with the principles I value, despite the lack of evidence for or against this being the case. I don't want it to be true that American withdrawal will precipitate ethnic cleansing. I don't want it to be true that American withdrawal will encourage more and not less violence toward the West. And, perversely, I don't want it to be true that "staying the course" in Iraq will lead to success. It would be a validation of the opposing ideology. Every time a bit of bad news emerges out of Iraq, I am secretly content, because it is a validation of my own position.
This fact about myself makes me feel ashamed and unliked, and I make a conscious effort to fight it. When I see the death toll reach 3,000, I try to submerge my ugly glee in Socratic ignorance: "I don't know what I'm talking about, I don't know what I'm talking about, I don't know what I'm talking about...." I try to empathize with the soldier's families, and how it's a dad that's gone forever. I try my best to do this, but I have self-doubts about whether I am doing it authentically enough. In the end I have to settle for a cold fiat from my intellect: the deaths of these soldiers is a tragedy; you are saddened. It is unclear to me whether I ever take this order truly to heart. Maybe I do, sometimes--not when I'm thinking about politics, but about life and death in general. It is then that my mind sometimes wanders sideways to the deaths of those people, and only then that the magnitude of the thing hits me.
So, what am I to make of myself? While other people--my peers and younger--volunteer to fight in the war, away from their families, risking their whole human happiness, I skulk around on the internet coming up with clever arguments and snide, post-modern comments. Politics is a sport that I keep up with and occasionally participate in. But it's just that: a game. Something that I become absorbed in and want to win at. Not something that opens the world up to me in any visceral way; not something that enlightens me or makes me wiser or better. I am tempted to dismiss myself as a hack, with neither the moral clarity nor courage to say anything worth paying attention to.
One more shrill voice in a whole internet full of shrill voices.
***
But this verdict rings false. It doesn't stick. The reason is because it doesn't make sense to judge myself according to what my first impulses are, or to what feelings I do or do not feel. I can't help it if these are my immediate reactions; it is out of my power to prevent them.
However, it is within my power to correct them. I may not have any say in how I immediately feel about the latest news out of Iraq, but I do have a say in how I choose to reflect on it afterwards. I have the option of earnestly assessing my emotions and beliefs. And it is my choice as to whether or not I accept these emotions and beliefs as decent and reasonable.
In the end, my particular flavor of cognitive dissonance is a part of me and, for better or worse, affects my judgment. But so long as I struggle against it, it will be true that I am not my cognitive dissonance--and, hopefully, not such a shrill voice after all.
