Casting a backward glance at the Bush administration...

Most scientists are familiar with the theory of Occam’s Razor. It stipulates that when it comes to considering how things work, the most simple, elegant, and straightforward explanation, is most likely true.
My Jewish grandmother agrees. She taught me that this rule applies to philosophy as well. Having been around for quite a few years, this inordinately wise woman has successfully distilled the ageless wisdom of the entire Jewish people down to just two simple words: ‘go figure.’
Words to live by… and according to Occam’s Razor, probably true.
For my grandmother—and for me as well—those two words explain nearly everything. Like the Holy Grail of science, they successfully tie all disparate philosophical loose ends into a unified field.
Lets see your philosophy do that!
The most intelligent people on the planet, smart as they may be, write book after book squawking about each other’s errors of reasoning. Even great minds, it seems, are prone to bicker and are unable to agree on much.
Go figure.
See what I mean? ‘Go Figure’, like a wastebasket, is an all purpose receptacle where the sum total of all that is inexplicable can be tossed. How can that be?
Go figure.
See? Works every time.
But before all you would-be Jewish sages out there toss your heads proudly in the air (and go scrambling over the floor looking for dropped yarmulkes), consider this: another group of people have devised yet another philosophy that trumps even ‘go figure’ in depth and simplicity.
What group is that? Why, children of course.
By and large, children, a loose coalition of beings grouped together primarily by age, without even the benefit of higher education (and in quite a few cases, no education at all), have devised a slimmer one word philosophy that also explains nearly everything, and is as irrefutable as ‘go figure.’ This great wisdom is found in a child’s one word answer to nearly everything: ‘because’.
“Mary, why did you put play dough up your fathers’ nose while he was sleeping?”
After a moment of deep thought, “because.”
Of course! Brilliant! Why? Because!
If you break the word down into its’ constituent parts, the true secret of its power is revealed.
‘Be’, means to exist, and ‘cause,’ to make something happen.
Because—as a reason—simply states the obvious, ‘I did it. I may not know why I did it, but I pushed the play dough up fathers nose.’
How elegant.
This is good news for Occam’s Razor, and for us all. Our soon-to-be post-Bush society needs a simple generic reason for the mess we’re in, because like little Mary, most of us have no idea how or why we got into it. In fact, when it comes to ‘why,’ very few of us actually know why we do much of anything that we do anyway. Oh, we manufacture plenty of reasons—many of them after the fact. Take for example the nimble way George Bush manufactured reasons for a war when no W. M. D.’s were found. But when push comes to shove (as in shoving play dough up a nose, or shoving thousands of troops into Iraq), when an idea that tickles us suddenly arrives, without much thought—like our commander in chief—most of us just do it. Why? Because!
Of course, since our culture sustains a long tradition of personal responsibility, when a wide-eyed child offers us up a ‘because’ to explain their misbehavior—in their own uncomplicated way— they are simply reminding all of us—including the Bush Administration—that even if we don’t know the why of our behavior, we should at least stand undefended, ready to pay the piper for what we’ve done. All kids know that if you get caught, you’re going to ‘get it.’ An angry parent may ask ‘why,’ but they don’t really care. You’re still going to get it.
Gazing into the ‘why’ of our behavior then, is merely a question designed to keep psychologists busy. And according to them, the human mind—a murky place at best—is not really a singular rational entity anyway. It’s more a hybrid grown from an amalgam of many seeds. Our vast subconscious, stuffed with memory, unresolved feelings, and beliefs, make it nearly impossible for us to truly assess our motives. Our unconscious psyches are so fertile, so rich with turmoil, that despite our protestations, weird tendrils of thought—like some strange plant oddity—may sprout in the dark of our dreams giving rise to a new quirky part of our personality that persists even in the light of day. Consider for example, that lady astronaut, who, after years of technical training and regimented behavior, suddenly tore across the country in a diaper looking to exact revenge upon her lover’s lover (that kind of surprise behavior, by the way, is explained by another aspect of Jewish Philosophy: a concept known as, ‘Who knew?’).
Like the emperor in his new clothes, we strut like peacocks, proud to think we know exactly who we are, but we may be only fooling ourselves. Thinking we’re Jekyll, we may in fact behave like Hyde.
Waist deep in this kind of muddy is where we find the neoconservatives of the Bush Administration. Thinking themselves to be as loving as Gandhi with motives as pure as the driven snow, by most accounts, they behaved more like followers of Attila the Hun.
Surrounded with the trappings of high esteem, many of them appointed by another appointed person to an important appointed position, they succumbed to the puffery that comes with serving in government. A fanned ego exerts a powerful influence on a mutable mind, and not wanting to appear stupid, bureaucratic egos often talk like they know what they’re talking about.
But any logic not mitigated by a strong sense of the heart’s ability to empathize is off center. And with so little support for heartfelt thinking available in Washington, whether anyone’s logic is actually logical is a turkey shoot.
For my money, it takes either a complete idiot or a deeply mature and reflective soul to sometimes admit that they have no idea why they do what they do.
Asylums are full of people who admit to the bedlam in their minds. Washington on the other hand, is full of people who don’t. But very few asylum inmates start wars, while Washington’s neoconservative’s do.
And why? Unfortunately, since reason dictates that most of them don’t know, we’ll probably never know either.
But there is one reason for the war that does make sense. No doubt, experts will sift through all the subconscious complexities of personality that wallpaper George Bush’s mind, and write a plethora of books about it. But I suggest, that if he cares about his legacy at all, Mr. Bush himself should cut through all the rigmarole and apply the theory of Occam’s Razor. That will surely leave us with the only plausible explanation of why we went to war—‘because.’
Any child could understand that.
But taking responsibility for it all—to try and ameliorate the pain we leave in our wake—something any person of heart would immediately undertake—is also a foreign concept to many in Washington and not something I believe those who helped instigate the war will try and do before they leave office.
Go figure.