A Mind That Suits What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.



Friday, November 07, 2003 :::
 
This morning in the nation's most beautiful city has been more beautiful perhaps than any day in the last 22 years, when a certain young intellectual arrived full of plans and designs, not one of which has worked out. But the Road Less Traveled has had its own rewards, and being free to enjoy this glorious day is one of them. It inspired some thoughts which will be posted on Sunday, most probably. But not right now.

Because as one arrives at the old university office after a long delay, the sad news rips across the beauty of the day that 6 more of our boys have been blown to bits, most likely by a rocket-launched grenade. Conservatives have become, in recent years, the party of the marching orders and the party line, when previously they had been the party of the particular and the ambiguous. And so it is considered evil and treasonous to point out that a "war plan" that did not include plans to secure weapons depots is not a war plan at all.

But the guerillas--however small a percentage of the population of Iraq they may represent--are very well armed, and whoever did not plan to protect the weapons depots is morally responsible for the deaths of these six boys.

Just plain period.

"Boys" is a word that swims around the old head this morning, because boys are what we have defending this wonderful land of ours.

And when he hears news of six of them going down, this writer knows that they are not so far removed from the four lads who, last night, were lighting up the old neighborhood poolhall, recently voted the second coolest such establishment by the readers of the regrettable but indispensible Washington Post, which readers displayed very good judgment.

Unlike the Night In Question (see the post from October 22), this was an early night for A Mind That Suits, as it was for the boys who decided that he made a wonderful companion for the night's revelries. That was largely because they thought this old guy was very funny, which he is. They must have been in college, because one of their number had just arrived at the all important age of 21, and they live near George Mason University, one of the nation's premier public institutions. One of the other lads, perhaps 21 and 3 months and that much more worldly, vouchsafed with knowing confidence that this made their slightly younger friend's silliness less of a concern. Other than that details were hard to come by; conversation was somewhat erratic, as the younger interlocutors had trouble keeping up their end. They had discovered that the old guy was funny only towards the end of the festivities.

They must also have been rather privileged lads, because, queried by this concerned writer about how they would return home, they replied that it would be by taxi.

They lived 20 miles away. This guy plans his vacations by 10 dollar increments, so it must be nice...

But they were very funny, especially their youngest friend, whose right foot displayed an alarming and amusing tendency to plant itself to the left of his left foot. When he draped his slight self across the pudgy middle-aged shoulders of The Funny Old Guy and bargained quietly and politely for another drink--his young but slightly older and mildly wiser and sufficiently more sober friends having cut him off--he found that Funny Old Guys are fully capable of telling him that bed is probably what he most needs. After he has hit the can for a good long while.

And while it seemed rather funny and mindless last night, this morning it is rather poignant. Because those 15 boys who died earlier this week, and the six who just died, were no doubt planning weekends as funny and as mindless and as stupid as that spent by the four rich lads last night. And because some high and mighty souls in the US government decided that "plans" were for wimps, they will not be able to do so.

And 21 mothers are crying and disconsolate.

THAT is why this conservative refuses to revere a man who apparently thinks plans are for wimps.

As George Orwell said in a quote that no one can pinpoint, the quiet sleep of rich, privileged people is guaranteed by rough lads in distant lands who stand ready to die on their behalf.

RIP, boys.

::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 2:20 PM


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