See shades of gray, act anyway

[Charles Brown <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A while ago Joel Wendland sent a reference to an interview with Robert
Meeropol  (
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/42/1/20/ )

It has the following profound observation:


PA: The RFC focuses on children and what they are going through?

RM: I also look at the motivation of the parents. I think this comes down to
questions of purity. If the people that we want to support politically have
to be pure, that becomes an argument for disengaging from the political
process because no one's pure. That, I think, is ultimately very destructive
because when contradictions, when difficulties, when subtleties are exposed,
what ends up happening is that people either throw their hands up in disgust
and become uninvolved or . refuse to see there's anything wrong.


The key question in my mind has been did they do the thing they were killed
for?



I have this little mantra I sort of repeat to myself, "see shades of gray
but act anyway." In other words, grayness becomes an excuse for
disengagement and that can't be. I think those dissenters who are going to
make it through the long haul, who are going to be able to change things are
those that understand the subtleties and nuances and be able to navigate
those waters without making dogmatic proclamations of truth.

One of the greatest advances in the 20th century, both politically and
scientifically, has been an understanding of the limitations of our
knowledge, of what we don't know and the fact that we don't know it all and
we don't understand it all. That is no reason not to be involved. We still
have to muddle through the best we can and try to figure stuff out because
we can't leave the stage bare to the Bushes and the Ashcrofts.