Dichroic Reflections

...live and die by shades of gray

People who are trying to make things look black and white need to just stop it now, because most things aren't.

Heck, take life itself - pro-lifers often claim to be just that, and they're just not. If it were what the name says, pro-lifers would not only all be vegetarian, they would take great pains to avoid stepping on an ant. If you say that to one of them, he or she would likely claim to be in favor of preserving cells with human DNA in them - but that's not it either, or cutting toenails would be outlawed. (OK, toenails are already dead - how about, removing an appendix would be illegal.) The next level would be to claim that anything that could become a human person is what's sacred, so perhaps we ought to outlaw male masturbation. So basically, what they are is pro-embryo (which is a perfectly valid viewpoint, though it isn't mine, and many of those people who happen to hold it but who are more prone to thinking than to shrieking will agree with the above) but that's not a catchy enough name for the shrieking types. On the other hand, pro-choice is often just that and not a euphemism for pro-abortion - many pro-choice people believe that the choice ought to be made by the party most concerned but that abortions in general ought to be decreased by non-legislative methods. Or even that they are, in fact bad, but that other things might be worse. But not even all pro-choice types agree that the choice ought to be available on demand at all times. It's a spectrum, and probably not a simple two-dimensional one.

Similarly with almost any touchy issue - I may believe in the right to gay marriage but that doesn't mean every individual gay marriage is a good thing, which is why it doesn't prove anything when one of those pioneer marriages ends in divorce. I can simultaneously believe that polyamory is good, if the term is used to mean a relationship among howevermany consenting adults and that polygamy is bad if it's used to mean a relationship in which underaged girls are forced into concubinage (it's not the numbers that bother me, just the lack of adult consent). I can think it's possible (though increasingly unlikely) that the adminstration actually believed Iraq had WMD, while still abhorring the way they've prosecuted the war since. I can despise Shrub without canonizing Clinton, because less-bad or even much-less-bad or even pretty-good-at-some-aspects still doesn't equal good. And contiguous Presidents may be fodder for odious comparisons, but that doesn't make them linked oppposites - vilifying one implies nothing about the other.

The current administration is particularly prone to reducing complex issues to simple dichotomies. Someone needs to slap some of them upside the head and explain that, for instance, opposing their particular methods of fighting terrorism does not equate to being pro-terrorism. I'm not convinced that anyone incapable of seeing shades of gray ought to be running the country, but it bothers me nearly as much to see people in provate life doing the same.

It's just not that simple. And it's good that it isn't - life's complexity is one of its glories.