Saturday, May 17, 2008
Day one of the latest round of dialogue between Lebanese politicians…in Doha Qatar.
As soon as they had left for Doha yesterday afternoon the simplistic clichés began
‘’Let them stay there’’, ‘’don’t come back until you agree’’ etc, etc, etc ad nauseam.
The latest in a similar vein – ‘’they all ought to be shot, thrown away, put in the fire’’ and any other form of disposal you can think of.
Apart from it being a simplistic cliché, it’s also denial because the problem in Lebanon is not the politicians but the people and the system.
The politicians are the tip of the iceberg, just the manifestation of this and the representatives of the people (warts and all) so it’s a good way of shifting blame.
Who was actually doing the physical fighting last week (and in previous wars)?
Was it the politicians?
No, it was the people.
Disclaimer: I’m just as guilty as anybody else of using this sort of simplification but, in my defence, I do it knowingly in a phatic way when I’m talking to taxi drivers and other simple folk when I want to get down to their level and to draw them out as a gambit to get them talking.
Actually most of what I say to them is purely phatic, I don’t mean a single word of it!
11:00 pm
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