I am hanging out in San Diego this week while my boyfriend is attending a conference here. That's right: I'm unemployed AND on vacation. As if sitting at home for four weeks hasn't been vacation enough. Actually, it's been painfully boring. I'm a recovering workaholic.
San Diego is beautiful, although California is a strange place. It's sunny all the time but never hot. Being a Texan, I consider 68 degrees chilly. Today I went to the San Diego Museum of Art and saw their Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit, along with some Fragonard, Tintoretto, Modigliani, and El Greco. I'm sorry, but I still think that Georgia O'Keefe is boring. I know that must be anti-feminist or anti-American or something. Art is in the eye of the beholder anyhow.
We ended the day relaxing in the hotel hot tub. Almost everyone at the hotel is apart of this conference the boyfriend is at. So it wasn't surprising that the other hotel guest was in on it too. Actually, his Dad was. He was an 18 year old with some sort of tribal something or other that covered his shoulder down to his elbow. Not quite original. He told us he'd been coming to the conference with his father for the past ten years, loved San Diego, asked what my boyfriend did for a living, etc.
Somehow we got on the subject of Iraq. I honestly did not bring it up. In fact, I refrained from commenting. Not a new subject by any means, but the boy's perspective was a bit of a surprise to me. He said we wouldn't even have had to go to Iraq if they hadn't blown up our beloved buildings. Usually, I am very vocal about such a subject but this left me speechless. I had nothing to say. State of total shock. Sure, he's 18 and probably doesn't listen to NPR but seriously? I mean there's a lot of speculation (CIA planned it, neo-conservative agenda, etc.) but that is all conspiracy theory. Not one of the hijackers was from Iraq and Fox News can't even refute that.
As we got up to leave (because of the deafening silence that had blanketed the conversation) he asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a student finishing my degree in Political Science with plans for a Masters in Social Work. He replied "How boring". Ignorance is bliss honey, ignorance is bliss.
I would have gone nutz. First comment would have been that we are in Iraq because it has Oil. Second would have been that there was no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 (in fact Saddam was smart enough to tell AlQuida No when they approached him about setting up shop there) and third that when we decided to colonize Iraq the UN was finishing up an inspection that was going to show no WMD's existed (Saddam had got rid of them) and we couldn't take a chance on that being made public as it would have gotten rid of our "Moral" authority to invade.
ReplyDeleteRay, you know I completely agree with you. However, I have found some discussions make me feel like I'm trying to explain physics to my dog. Maybe this sounds arrogant, but I'm not going to spend an hour arguing that the sky is blue. What scares me about the encounter though, is what our history books are going to describe the event for our future Americans.
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