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i have been hesitant to post to this thread for a number of reasons, not least of which is the complexity of the situation that it at its core and my sense of being unable to say anything meaningful about it.
another reason is that i do not really understand the main verbs that litter the conservative set responses: pride in particular, what it means in this context.
i do not see any necessarily linkage between "being proud" and being coherently supportive, unless the underlying assumption is that what is really required in such a situation is a kind of paternal blessing, which works under the assumption that there is something infantilizing about the situation in which host's stepson finds himself, and what is required to deal with it is the beneficient gesture of the paterfamilias. and maybe there is something infantilizing about it.
but playing into it seems useless, given the political divisions within this family, which is not concealed, is a part of conversation, is known to all players.
that on its own would seem to me to rule out any facile recourse to the discourse of "i am proud of you"--simply because it seems that it would be delivered as a message as already hollowed out.
i am proud...i approve of what you are doing...i approve of what you are doing in the context of a situation that i approve of...
how about saying what i assume from the op can be said and meant... something like: "i love you and i worry about you and how you are faring and i hope that you keep yourself safe and to stay safe you have to stay focussed on what you have to do."
something like that?
in the end, seaver's post 12 contains the same core, though still decorated with the discourse of pride, which i really dont think functional in this context. psychodad says a parallel thing above.
which brings me around to the main reason i hesitated to post here:
i think something about it is fundamentally unfair.
now i say this as someone who opposed the iraq debacle from the outset and who has been very vocal about that opposition, both here and elsewhere.
what seems to me unfair about it is the central question the op poses: which amounts to:
ok you assholes tell me something that i can believe in about this stupid, unnecessary, incoherent, politically motivated debacle of a "war on terror" that i can tell my stepson who, unlike you conservatives who post here from the safety of your homes or offices, is actually putting himself on the line for all this in real time.
what i do not understand is why any conservative would answer such a question and go much beyond what seaver said in post 12 (and psychodad's post directly above this one). to do so seems an act of almost mind-boggling presumption...
host posed questions that should have been unanswerable for you folks--you would have done better to have posted nothing, said nothing--or to object to the question itself--rather than walk directly into a self-evident trap--which you tried to bluster your way through using--well what?--half-baked reactionary memes mixed with an appalling refusal to remember that there is a human being behind the name host who is talking about a real problem that none of you are have to face.
how is this possible?
do you really think that the people who oppose you politically are thereby not deserving of simple respect as human beings?
it's funny--at the core of the new right's mythological "history" of vietnam there is the myth of the returning solder being spat upon by people who opposed the war in vietnam politically. it never happened, but no matter, it is a functional myth--which apparently has generated a kind of boneheaded sanctimoniousness amongst some conservatives that makes them feel justified in spitting on a human being they disagree with politically who posts something about an obviously complex personal situation....so the myth that the far right has taken for an allegory about the war in vietnam they now repeat in reverse. except they actually do it.
so it follows that there are dimensions of conservative ideology that function to dehumanize all who oppose it, if that ideology is taken as a total worldview.
nice demonstration, lads. i am sure that you did not set out to provide one, but you did. well played.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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