Disambiguation of Space

How is it that people are boycotting North Carolina, and condoning the Middle East?  Cirque du Soleil cancels NC, but goes to Dubai or somewhere like that, where women can be beaten with impunity, nine years old is the marrying age, at least legally, and where gays are terrified.

Is rape wrong, or isn’t it?  If so, then ISIS must be condemned in CLEAR terms by the people who claim to value the lives and rights, and feelings of women.

And I was pondering this, and it occurred to me that the world is complex.  This complexity is scary to childish minds, who find the need to provide themselves and others simplifying narratives.  To provide simple Good Guys and Bad Guys.  To put white hats or black hats on everyone.  To enjoy, in other words, the emotional privileges of routine and unreflective prejudice that they cannot stomach in others.

Wringing debate from the hands of dictators–to dictate is to say what is and isn’t so, with no threat or fear of contra-diction–was the principal step in the direction of liberalizing human societies.  Wringing silence from those who would debate is a move in the opposite direction.  It is counter-Liberal.  Anti-Liberal.  The antithesis of everything they SAY they stand for.

But children will be children.  Life is complex.  It is hard taking into account varying stories, varying perspectives, differing agendas, competing selfishnesses, lies, cheating, and the confusion of ambiguity.  But this is what mature, genuinely good minds and spirits MUST do.  Everything else is a fucking lie.