I wonder if there is such a thing as shared memories. Or ancestral memories. Probably not. I guess it's more of an experience thing... even if the experience is as a 'people' or group, rather than as an individual.

I think of all this while reading opinion pieces and views about the war. And it puzzles me... is it a matter of people just not learning from the past? Or not caring? Or maybe it's just that they think that *this* time, it will be different.

I've been reading "conservative" publications again, trying to get a sense of what some people are thinking, and why. Seems many are upset that the French and the Germans are going to want a piece of 'our' Iraq. After all, it is the US and the UK who are there fighting and dying in order to take over this country, so why should anyone else have a part of it? To the victor goes the spoils... so runs their thinking. They don't seem to see anything odd or shameful in the least in the thought of invading another country (regardless of the stated goals) and deciding how to carve it up and apportion it out. Or, if they do see it, apparently they just think it is their right. Our right. Whichever... Maybe there actually is such a thing as shared memories... theirs of the arrogant, imperialistic impulses of their forebears... and mine of the results.

I'm beginning to think that along with sausage and laws, one should not watch wars being made. Not because of the gore and carnage (on U.S TV, we see little), but because of the sometimes Keystone Cops quality of it. If it weren't for the very real terror those who are participating must feel, and the lives being lost and ruined, some of the events would make great M*A*S*H* episodes.

Well I have what seems like pages and pages of "test, test", which I can't get rid of. I will figure out how to eventually, of course. All new things need time to find their feet, I don't see why I expect myself to be any different. And this surely is a new thing for me... a completely self-absorbed journal of thoughts and views, which is also open to the world to see. This should be interesting... to me, at least. I don't expect anyone else to really care. I guess that is the entire point of random anonymity... exploring who you are, what causes you to be... in full view of people who could care less. Sort of like standing in Times Square, NYC, and yelling that the world is ending while eddys of people pass around you, oblivious, pursuing their own lives and not giving a hoot about yours. I wonder if that is actually the true liberation of thought and spirit.

It's possible that this experiment is already not turning out as planned if I am at the beginning comparing myself to street ranters, and they are coming out on the topside.