Ignore the War
I've felt pretty disconnected for much of the Roadshow, but today -- having spent most of the day sleeping and having Cheryl's apartment all to myself -- I feel especially adrift. Part of it stems from straddling the immediate world -- the people I'm meeting and the places I'm visiting -- and not being aware of the wider world because I don't have time to read a newspaper every day, keep up with the news online, or watch the TV news.

I've been trying to plug in a little bit this evening -- my morning, having just showered -- by checking out some blogs recommended by Evan. And I'm glad I did. RU Sirius recently contributed an interesting article to Disinformation expressing his deepseated neutrality in terms of the current conflict with the Taliban. He's not for the war -- or what he terms a "situation" -- but he's not going to protest it, either.

This connects with a conversation I was having yesterday or so about how being against the war seems to be taken as a lack of support for our country -- or a lack of patriotism. You can be patriotic and still be against the war. In fact, I wish more people were less jingoistic these days. The American flags in the Castro almost outnumber the rainbow flags.

A good companion read to RU Sirius' piece is Peter Beinart's current piece from the New Republic. He addreses several cases in which people who've criticized the war -- or supported it too strongly -- and come under fire for it. While I don't agree with everything Beinart says -- he blames most of the free-speech concerns on the Left -- but his point that freedom of speech is a balancing act is well taken.

Hopefully I'll be better able to balance my place in the immediate world -- and the wider world -- in the coming weeks. The Roadshow is almost half over.