Studiously Stupid News. I just answered a poll on aol in which I was asked how likely it was that civil war would break out in Iraq. This is in apelike mimickry of an earlier poll taken by the "driveby media" in which it was established that "a majority of Americans" believe that civil war will break out in Iraq. Both the ostensibly scientific poll and the aol poll, of course, have an obvious flaw: They didn't ask anyone in Iraq. It is not up to American opinion, except indirectly to the extent that American politicians will make statements to help themselves during the upcoming mid-term election. Those statements will make their way into Iraqi, Turkish, Jordanian, Syrian and Iranian ears, but I doubt they will convince anyone not already actively trying to foment civil war in Iraq to do so, nor anyone determined to do their part to hold the troubled country together to quit and let all hell break loose. The very hopeful tone of some news anchor hairdos as they cite this piece of non-news is nauseating. But today, they topped themselves. I heard a female hairdo exclaim breathlessly that "a great many people believe that Iraq is on the brink of a civil war!" She neglected to mention that none of those "great many people" polled actually reside in Iraq. She thereby crossed the line that separates mere stupidity from outright dishonesty, and several hours later, I couldn't get the comment out of my head.
A great many citizens of the People's Republic of China believe that the United States are on the brink of a civil war. I happen to be inclined to agree with them, which is why I wrote a novel based on that premise. But whether or not we have another civil war here is not up to the Chicoms. We've been on the brink a few times, most notably during the administrations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, not to mention George W. Bush. But we only crossed over into actual combat once, during Abraham Lincoln's ill-starred presidency. A combination of habit, sensible men in the right places at the right times, and fate saved us from fratricide all the other times. Both England and China are older nations than we, and they both have had more numerous, longer and bloodier civil wars than our paltry one in 230 years. People of good will with a modicum of intelligence ought to hope that Iraq should be similarly blessed. So are these talking TV hairdos actually people of ill will who wish for mass slaughter and death in far away countries so long as it discredits President Dubya? Or are they merely stupid? How about we poll some Iraqis and find out.