This actually happened last night. The dream went as follows:
I was watch (in the dream) what appeared to be The Tonight Show but the host wasn't Jay Leno. The host was Cal Thomas. Cal Thomas if you don;t know is a syndicated columnist who is strongly religious right. On the show being interviewed by Cal Thomas was the venerable Mr. Michael Moore. The catch was that as he spoke his mouth opened really wide. It was a gag put on by the shows producers. It was very funny because the point was they were saying that Michael Moore was Charlie Brown. You know how Charlie Brown goes "AARGH' when he gets tripped up by Lucy. That was the picture. Mr. Moore's mouth would open up like a cartoon "AARGH" whenever he spoke. Then, to my great surprise, the producers also added in a not so subliminal video of a turnip truck driving off as Mr. Moore spoke. At this juxtaposition of images, I woke up laughing.
"So, Yoda, what does this all mean", you ask. Well, let me tell you my padawan learner.
Ok, well last night I was having a conversation with a boyfriend of a distant cousin at a party at my sister's house. He is a young "fresh outta college" kinda guy. Well, he was telling me how Israel was the bad guys and how America is so corrupt and how Bush inadvertently caused 9/11 and so on. After this conversation, I went to my brother in law and I asked him, "How on God's green earth do these guys learn to tie their shoes?" That is the burning question. So as I went to sleep the question in my heart was how do people come up with these opinions and lo and behold, I had a dream.
You see the answer is that the Mr. Moore, moral equivalence crowd are like Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown is the proverbial naive child. He falls for Lucy's old tricks. They actual did "just fall off the turnip truck". Meaning their education in the world is very minimal. They are not too street wise. They be "fresh outta college" as opposed to "fresh outta Compton". Here is how I think it works. When you are pre-pubescent, you think, if you are born in an average home, that life is pretty nice and people are generally OK. Then you grow up and learn that the nice world is full of very not nice people. In fact your whole saccharine view of America is pretty much blown by the fact that America is run by selfish people who want to make a lot of money. You think to yourself, "Self, you are very smart. You have discovered something altogether new. America is not so nice. Politicians are corrupt." So now your view of the world has gone from white to black, and ya know what my parents never told me this great revelation. The pendulum has swung, and you have a college degree.
Here is the key. These young inspired intellects think they have discovered something new. What they do not realize is that everybody has already been down this path and seen these stains on the American tapestry. The Charlie Brown "AARGH" happened like so twenty years ago. The emotion has been tempered by many other expereinces in life. You see our pendulum swung twenty years ago. We don't just see that a lot of water has gone under the bridge, we have seen people try to blow up the whole damn bridge. We have stood our ground and defended the bridge even though the bridge ain't too pretty and the river is filled with sewage. When you have expereinced people try to blow up the bridge, the fact that the water is polluted just doesn't seem relevant. The severity of the potential for evil is just categorically different.
I work with Saddam Hussein every bloody day. Some people are completely untrustworthy.
Charlie Brown, you got to see a hell of a lot more pain and suffering before you realize that we may not be as pure as the driven snow, but that doesn't mean we are going to say that there still isn't a great difference between Ho chi Min and LBJ or Joseph Stalin and FDR or OBL and "W". Those who believe in moral equivalence and can't seem to tell their right from their left are truly the Charlie Brown's of the American political scene.
