Dr. Frank's What's-it

"In a world torn apart

"In a world torn apart by the monotones of bullies and buffoons..."

Howard Jacobson, on why the peace movement never quite persuaded him:

I was ripe, if anyone was, for the plucking. Any decent peace movement could have picked me up and made me theirs in seconds.

As it was, they put a wall up, forbidding if you weren't already camped on the other side of it, if you didn't take it as a given that Americans were hyenas, or that the world's stockpiles of poisons would go away by wishing them away, or if you believe that only those capable of listening are capable of answering. And thus they left me out there, where I didn't want to be.

Who cares, you might say. Why bother about me when you can bring nice ladies from Somerset and half the fourth-formers in the country out on to the streets? Well, I don't care about me in this equation, either. But if they couldn't address the concerns of a man in my condition Ð a nobody loitering by the banks of the River Indecision with his finger fluttering to his lips Ð how were they ever going to get through to the hard men, to Blair or Bush or Saddam Hussein, or to those who could get through to Blair or Bush or Saddam Hussein, or to those who could get through to those who could get through? The slow drip drip drip of mind-changing. And don't tell me that those who organised for peace never entertained such grandiose ambitions, because in that case who were they trying to reach?

I know the answer to that Ð one another.

What movement of good faith, knowing life and death hangs on the broadening of its appeal, would put Harold Pinter on its platforms? In a world torn apart by the monotones of bullies and buffoons, what is served by adding to our stock of both?

...

Was it beyond the wit of the peace movement to build into its rhetoric a proper acknowledgement of the heinousness of the Iraqi leader? I know, I know Ð that was taken as a given. But givens are what we sweep under the carpet. And what's left to look at then is only the heinousness of ourselves. To stop a war, must it always be our own who are the criminally insane? Must we always be more wicked than the other guy? Can we not, at the very least, be equally bad?

How many people, including those who speak to those who speak to Bush or Blair, were unpersuaded by the arguments for peace because those arguments showed not a glimmer of comprehension of the arguments for war?