An ironic juxtaposition (Shallow Thoughts)

An ironic juxtaposition

I can't stop thinking about the woman in the Chinese restaurant the other night.

It was one of those conversations you try not to overhear, but they're so loud and distracting that you just can't avoid it.

In the middle of a long declamation on conspiracy theories and politics, the man made a comment about how we're in the middle east shooting Iraqis who never hurt anyone. (I didn't say his politics were all wrong, just loud).

The woman, who had been relatively quiet up to now, interrupted, "But they hurt us in 9/11!"

In the next booth, facing away from them, my mouth dropped open. The man quickly countered that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but then was off onto other topics, sharing with the room his theories on war in the middle east in general, Israel, and people trying to wipe out the Jews. This caught the woman's interest -- "They already tried that, Hitler." After a pause, she added thoughtfully, "You know, the strangest thing about that is how people there just went along with it."

That came barely a minute after the 9/11 comment. She clearly had no idea of the irony of juxtaposing the two. I wanted to turn around and say, "Perhaps they went along for the same reason that you're going along with killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, when even the president who started the war admits that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?"

Tags: politics
[ 22:24 Nov 16, 2007    More politics | permalink to this entry | ]