Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

I don’t talk about politics or personal things on this blog very much, but today I came across an article from the New York Times I thought was especially good.

2,000 Dead, in Context

Americans, as a whole, are woefully ignorant of their history and the price that has been paid so that they may enjoy the comfort of that same ignorance. The result is a lack of perspective which hinders our ability to make effective decisions and skews our expectations, ultimately to our collective detriment.

As an aside, I’m especially pleased that the author of the linked article calls our current military action the “war against terrorism”. I have long detested the usual phrase “war on terror”. It sounds grammatically questionable, but that’s a minor pick: “War on terror” is a war “on” (perhaps placed on top of it?) a concept, whereas “war against terrorism” is a war against (which means to actively oppose) a particular action and/or ideology and, necessarily, those who practice it. Perhaps our news media, the creators and perpetuators of “war on terror”, prefer the nebulousness of the phrase in order to call into question the importance of our effort.