The things that matter

A dear friend of mine lost someone very important to her the other day. I just found out about it and it coalesced something that's been forming in my mind for several days now. It's a fairly simple question, that seems to cause a lot of problems for all of us humans. What parts of life actually matter?

If you ask a thousand people, you'll get a thousand answers, but this is one of the times that actions speak far louder than words. In the end, people almost always come back to the same things, family, friends, and the others we love who don't fall into those neat little categories. When tragedy strikes, the first people most of us worry about are our loved ones, our relatives, and our friends. If the zombie apocalypse were to strike tonight, tomorrow morning half of us would be traveling to check on those people who matter most to us. The cars, the houses, the toys and the technology cease to matter when the people we care about are in trouble.

Maybe that's what makes us human; maybe that's what proves that we do have a spark of the divine.
As long as the things that truly matter are the people I care about, I have hope. And large quantities of hope can carry a body through everything.

Son of a...

I've been visiting a blog that quickly and briefly summarizes the events in Iraq of the last twenty-four hours. They update every twenty-four hours with a brief summary of every article and news story about new happenings in that country. I mostly use if for keeping track of how many brothers I have lost each day.
Today I made the mistake of reading the commentary being posted in the comments areas.
I say mistake because it was all from fanatically anti-Bush, anti-Occupation, anti-War people. Even though there was some excellent citing of facts, issues, historical parallels, theories, outside thought, and other good things, the general attitude was as close-minded, reactionary, and half-informed as any collection of Republican support posts one could care to name. Neither was willing to entertain the idea that they might be wrong and that the other side might be right.
Even worse, emotionally, was the discovery that most of the arguments being blithely bandied about were financial. The pro-conspiracy, the anti-occupation, and some of the parallels. I was drawn into an interesting, if short-lived, debate over the role of the American military of the future (summary: should it be more police / security or more kill the enemy?) but this entertaining and enlightening discussion was mentally trumped by the horrified realization that the people posting cared far more for their precious dollars than they did for the lives and blood of fellow human beings.
I suppose that in their small-minded way they are unable to see the combatants, living and dead from both sides, as humans JUST LIKE THEM. Probably because they have never fired a shot in anger, heard a shot fired in anger, or been ready to fire such a shot and cannot quite comprehend that one can do all of these things and still be a fully functional and acceptably rational human being.
I'm a partial sociopath. I've killed people and I still feel no regret or distress over their deaths. That part bothers me, the lack of response, but I deal with it. The reason I mention this is that despite my capacity for monstrousness I fully realize, with every bit of my mind body and soul, that those people I killed were people just like me. They had families, girlfriends, hopes, dreams, and plans. They were fighting for their nations, just like me, and religions, not like me, and were willing to die for those causes, though they mostly didn't want to. These "humanitarian" and "open-minded" individuals seemed to pride themselves on their high value for human life and their moral superiority to all the warhawks and chickenhawks in the media and the federal government, yet they were unable to do something that this partial sociopath could easily do. It makes me wonder who is more messed up, me or them. My money is going onto them. At least I'm sane enough to know and admit that I am dangerous. It seems that they are so certain in their superior morality that they can't seem to see that those who fight and die are people too. Ironically enough, a charge they throw eagerly and repeatedly at the administration they despise.
I still intend to go there for my war news, and I'll probably stick my nose into the boards one or two more times. But now I understand why I've been staying with my webcomics instead of looking for information or updates about the conflict and the current theories about it.

Something Different

As those of you I've told about this blog, and those of you who are likely to have stumbled upon this blog, know I play pen and paper role playing games (yes, Dungeons and Dragons).
One of the biggest arguments in the community of role-players is, what class is the most powerful at twentieth level? I freely admit that the comparison is mostly between the Cleric class and the Wizard class, with clerics edging out the wizards by their physical combat ability. The problem I have with most of these rankings is that they start by listing the Fighter class at the bottom of the pile. The base assumption of most people who engage in this exercise is that the humble and relatively straightforward fighter is the weakest character available at twentieth level.
I disagree. The fighter is the most versatile and potentially useful physical combatant in the game. They have access to more (and a few better) combat abilities than any other character class. If you ask most of the theorists whether a Fighter or a Bard, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, or Rogue would win a fight, then they will quickly give victory to the Fighter; and if they don't they usually have some special qualification or circumstance that allows the other classes to use their abilities to the maximum while denying the Fighter a chance to respond. I call these circumstances "Tactics" and expect all characters to use them as best they can, especially a fighter who has spent his entire life training how to kill things.
Now we come to the more contested areas, namely the fighter versus the Barbarian. For those not aware, the barbarian is a class that gets really angry several times a day, making them stronger and tougher than normal. This increased power means a better chance of hitting opponents, seriously wounding opponents, surviving an opponent's blows, all at the price of a more reckless (and less protective) defense. Many argue that the inherent toughness of barbarians, combined with their ability to shrug off small amounts of damage from every hit, more than makes up for any advantages a fighter may have from his many combat tricks. I say that a barbarian's seeming invulnerability actually make him more susceptible to bad tactics. Because he seems like a mountain of damage absorption, he rushes into a fight without thinking and without planning. Too late he learns that the fighter he thought to smash was ready and waiting for him. The fighter easily dodges/parries/absorbs with his armor the mighty opening strike of the barbarian and instantly responds by severing the haft of the raging warrior's greataxe. The canny fighter proceeds to cut huge chunks off of the anger driven warrior. Unarmed, the fierce warrior now has two options, flight or death. If he was smart enough to have a back up weapon that isn't too small and flimsy too fit his strengths, then the barbarian may still be able to hit and hurt his clever opponent. However, it's likely that he will be murdered brutally, barring unusual luck.
And if you don't believe me, I'll build a twentieth level fighter that is guaranteed to kill any barbarian build that uses the same source books (your choice) at minimum 50% of the time.
So, we've eliminated all the other martial characters as being unable to stand against an intelligently built and played fighter, and all that's left are primary spell casters. Such a conflict would be decided by spells prepared and still available to cast versus how quickly the fighter could bring his most dangerous attacks to bear. The odds are in the spell-caster's favor (unless it's the end of a very difficult and busy day) so I easily admit that these classes are more powerful than a fighter at twentieth level.
If you disagree with me, tell me and we can begin this debate for real.

The Future

Well, the state of our Union is apparently perilous. The sunshine and puppies that were supposed to appear as soon as all those filthy homos couldn't marry, and all those evil people couldn't abort those poor little babies, and the good-hearted but oppressed peoples of Iraq held elections, are now being held hostage by the Social Security system.
Bad Social Security! Shame on you.
But stop for a moment and consider, do you really want the people that brought us one of the most f***ing badly planned invasions in the last four decades to plan out the retirement futures of us, our children, grandchildren, and generations unto perpetuity?
I don't. This seems to me as another senseless tactic designed to divert the public's attention from the continual abuse, favoritism, and nepotism that the current administration has used. Not only do they get their followers and their opponents to stand up and argue, very loudly, about the wisdom of an issue, they get to use the successful legislation of it to legally siphon more millions of dollars to their cronies and allies.
I get the feeling that a more corrupt administration has not existed since the days of Andrew Jackson. And that shames me.

The price we pay

I went to Iraq. I don't usually talk about the fighting itself. Most of the people who ask me about it don't actually want to hear about people killed, friends hurt, or the little spike of pain that flares in my heart every single time I hear that another Marine has been killed or wounded.

And truthfully, I don't really want to talk about it.

The above link is an article that I can agree with as a veteran of Iraqi conflict. I know (and knew at the time) that we went to war not for freedom, or the removal of nuclear weapons, or even for the safety of America. We went because the duly elected Commander-and-Chief of the U.S. military said to go. As we prepared to cross the border I was filled with the idealistic hope of freeing 26 million people from the fear and tyranny that they had lived with for decades. By the time I left I knew in my heart of hearts that we'd failed to do that, that we'd failed the Iraqi people and ourselves and that the best we could do was hope that somehow God (or Jesus, or Allah, or whatever you call him) would make it come out for the best.
That hope is still the only thing that helps me control my responses to the current situation. When another ignorant, propaganda fed jackass comes by flaunting his Dub-ya stickers and talking about fighting terror, my first two impulses are to slit his throat so he can't annoy me and / or breed or to tell him to go enlist before he talks any more. Until you've been there, done that, and had to live with it I don't want to hear your opinion on this. If I want to know what cake tastes like then I ask someone who has tasted it, and it is the same with Iraq. Until you've been there, seen it, walked it, and lived it don't talk to me. I really don't want to go to jail for murdering your stupid ass.