The astonishing continues to....well...astonish.

Senator Kerry! Please stop talking. At some point it doesn't make any difference what the senator intended it comes through as a muddle either way. Meeting with students and using that setting as the platform to deliver a barbed political joke seems as lame as bungling the joke and giving Republicans an opportunity to accuse him of insulting our troops. The fact is that the senator should stop trying to deliver jokes period! It's not something he does well. All of which grieves me because I find myself thinking frequently that we (me in particular), almost all of us, ought to be abashed at our own lack of engagement and participation in this armed conflict. The truth is that we have let a small segment of our citizens carry the whole weight of Iraq. Doesn't make a difference whether you're for or against the conflict, you probably haven't had to give up anything because of it, unless you are a soldier or a soldier's family member or close friend. No one is making us use ration coupons. No one is going to the field of battle unless they sign up to do so. No one is saving scrap so that we can build tanks and ships in the wartime industries. Those were all accepted as commonplace in World War II when we mobilized 90% of the adult population. This current conflict isn't threatening to us on that scale, and so it is that most of us go about our lives, our careers, our educations, and put a 'support our troops' sticker on our car. That, I believe, is terribly unfair. And I don't know exactly what I should do about it; my life is crazed as it is. But I find myself thinking about it. Nothing about it tempts me to joke.