A quick survey of my Facebook page after the latest speech by Barack Obama shouldn't have shocked me. The conservatives found a way to criticize Obama, and the liberals are, by and large, scrambling to make sense out of Obama's plan to increase troops in Afghanistan. I am clearly in the camp trying to make sense out of all of this.
First some background: I was raised pretty much to be an evangelical Christian and to pretty much love anything that republicans do. Somewhere in my life, that socialization went terribly haywire. I wound up (deep breath mom) as a liberal leaning theist, who finds belief in Hell (and any sort of religious fundamentalism) as repulsive as war or being farted on by twenty men who just had a hot dog eating contest (sorry mom, I should have deep breathed you there too!).
Ok, with that out of the way, let's get to my mindset after the debate and during it. Well, while talking myself down from a sea of Facebook political debates, I realized something. Here I am, pretty close to a pacifist, nodding in agreement with Obama's decision to increase war efforts. What I find so completely disturbing and puts my mind and heart in a total corkscrew of empathy and pain, I now approved of. At times like this I wish I wasn't so analytical of myself. I would love to wave the flag high and proud and wear my Obama pins and back the war wholeheartedly.
But the more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I get either way. On one hand, I feel like I should agree with someone I find incredibly reasonable and who knows way more than me about this (I should have deep breathed my conservative friends there). But then i think back to the Bush years, and those were the same excuses/reasons that Bush supporters gave (well, except I leave God out of it and so did Obama). On the other hand, I despise war and can barely stand to think about it, let alone try and feel it myself or empathize. So what do I do?
Many psychologists have argued that the ultimate threat to humans psychologically is uncertainty. When all else fails, we need to take stand and believe in something. But when we truly analyze ourselves, this causes a sea of uncertainty. And, experiencing it firsthand, this uncertainty total sucks.
So I am not sure where this leaves me beyond uncertain and wanting to either love everything Obama does, or to oppose this troop surge with all my might. But I can't. Maybe it is the right move and maybe not. I know this, but yet, I have such an emotional gut level, knee-jerk disdain for war and love for Obama that it gets the better of that reasoning.
And I think this uncertainty, this discomfort, is why so many people do not seek to think beyond party lines. Life is so much easier and simpler (and coherant and stable and controlled) when one group is right and one is wrong.
Part of me wishes things in my mind were so black and white, but part of me dreads people seeing anything as black and white. Nothing is black and white.
I hate war, but I think Obama is the right man for the job. And when the dust settles on this worldview conflict within, that is ok with me. Things are gray after all.
