Syria War Fever

People, Get a grip!  Those blobs of protoplasm behind our eyes are our brains.  Our own brains.  We still own them. Now is the time to re-claim and use them!

We don't really know who did what in Syria, do we?  Yet listening to the pronouncements and threats of presidents and officials, it's so easy to get swept up in feelings of certainty and righteousness, unity and power!  Even the most anti-war Democrats, as usual, are conceding that Assad is guilty of this terrible crime, and are trying to guide or slow the flood while being swept away in it!

It's like we've been injected with a drug, like we're high on war fever, a herd mentality. It feels good, exciting, something maybe we've been missing.  All our worries about our lives get pushed aside, like we're at at a great Red Sox game, roaring together, and shame on anyone rooting for the Yankees!

But how is that different from a giant organized lynch mob?

Somebody did something terrible, someone has to pay for it, and our fearless leaders (who may or may not have had something to do with it) have declared the verdict and the sentence and are prepared to carry out the execution, all without a shred of real evidence.

All we have to do is give them cover by joining in the baying mob.

All we have to do is surrender our brains.  And then spend the next ten years making excuses for our part in what happened - which will be at best 100 times worse than that gas attack!

Or we can shake ourselves out of it now, start challenging all those implanted thoughts, messages, cues and impulses that are driving us toward the cliff together, and re-occupy our brains!

Whose brains?  Our brains!