BOOBY TRAP James M. Truxell
September 4, 2013
(Click on Pictures to Enlarge)
To be clear, although for some it will come as
a disapointment, this piece isn't at all about
brassieres.
But it is about boobies. Booby. It's from the
Spanish word "bobo", meaning "stupid", so
"booby trap" was the slang word coined to
describe "a dishonest carnival game" that
would sucker in the unwary, the stupid, the
boobies. P. T. Barnum loved them.
Sula nebouxii, while graceful in the air, is
notoriously clumsy on land. Seafarers in
the 18th century found them easy to catch
and eat, but mistook the birds' clumsiness
for stupidity. Hence, the moniker they gave
it: "Blue-Footed Booby." But this isn't about
them either.
Wikipedia says that a booby trap is "a
device or setup that is intended to kill,
harm or surprise a person, unknowingly
triggered by the presence or actions of
the victim . . . . (and) they often have
some form of bait designed to lure the
victim towards it" (Italics mine).
The 5,000 members of the U. S. military injured by roadside booby traps called Improvised Explosive Devices know about them all too well, as do the families of the more than 600 killed by them. They had
no bait . . . and you absolutely didn't have to be "stupid" to become a victim of such a heinous trap.
The Wikipedia definition of "booby trap" moves us closer to the topic of this Flog posting.
At the moment of this posting, the U. S. Senate is consideriing whether to authorize President Obama to take military action against Syrian President Assad's use of a weapon of mass destruction . . . poison gas . . . which has killed at least 1400 civilians, almost a third of them children. Next week, the House of Representatives will consider what to do. Meanwhile, the rest of us will wrestle with the matter . . . and some will wish to make their voices heard by their elected representatives. Click here for some assistance in sending your opinions to them.
This piece will not suggest what you should think about this issue . . . nor even what decision I will make. Partly that's because Syria is such a Booby Trap.
By analogy only, let me explain. In the 1960's Parker Brothers issued a game called Booby Trap. Disks of three different sizes and values
are randomly arranged at one end of a wooden board surrounded by low fenders, which have hash marks about 1/8" apart printed along the
side. The pieces are held under tension by a spring-loaded bar.
Players take turns removing pieces, one at a time. If, upon removing a piece, the bar moves from one hash mark to the next with a resounding "Snap!", the removed piece is replaced and play goes to the next player.
Now here's why it's such a good analogy of the complex situation Syria: with every intervention . . . with every attempt at removing a piece . . . all the pieces are rearranged and so are the lines of stress between them. With each attempt, a new "puzzle" is created. There are consequences . . . seen and unseen . . . for each intervention into the
pattern.
Surely one of the stupidest . . . and frequent . . . behaviors many of us exhibit is to propose simple solutions to complex problems. This has, of course, been raised to an art form in the Yell and Shout formats of talk radio and TV. So, instead of my propounding a particular favored intervention, this is a call for all of us . . . you and me . . . to avoid being boobies as we talk about what this country should or should not do in response to Assad's evil actions.
The surest way to act like a booby is to immediately bloviate about how my response . . . and no other . . . is what we have to do.
You will hear such knee-jerk expressions from those who are theologically and politically on the left and on the right. Part of the Christian left is distinctly pacifist and claim that war is wrong . . . period. (Oh, how I wish I could go all the way there with them!) Part of the Christian right adheres to the point of view expressed in Frank Loesser's 1942 song "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition." (How easily I find myself quickly getting into high dudgeon, wanting to bloody Assad's nose.) So . . . should we become 50-percenters, someone who is midway between the extremes? Yes . . . sometimes. But more often than not, maybe we should be somewhere toward both ends of the spectrum simultaneously.
That might sound illogical . . . irrational even. Sometimes, when I attempt it, I can feel downright crazy, experiencing attitudes and passions that are oil and water to each other. Yet, in the case of Syria (as well as others), for every argument I hear (or advance) for one course of action, I hear (or can come up with) a contrary one that refutes it. In Charles Schultz's Peanuts, Snoopy, the beagle, runs to the right in one frame. In the next he runs to the left. This continues for several more frames. In the last frame the bemused Charlie Brown, who has been observing Snoopy, shakes his head and observes: "Indecision is an awful thing." Yes . . . that's how it feels.
Holding contrary points of view . . . or more exactly, having competing passions for something . . . is the very definition of AMBIVALENCE. And it can, indeed, be uncomfortable.
But is being ambivalent the same as being a boobie? Aye, that's the question! Or could it be that in order to avoid being a boobie we should cultivate the capacity for ambivalence?
Slate.com's Ian Leslie, in a June 13, 2013 article with the lengthy title "Ambivalence is Awesome. Or is It Awful? Sometimes It's Best to Have Conflicted Feelings", develops the thesis I'm pursuing here.
His brief article is so well-presented that I invite you to read it now in a separate window and then come back. Really. Go to it here.
See? That was worth the effort, no?
Perhaps the real boobies are those who haven't yet developed the capacity for ambivalence. The Gordian Knot of a Booby Trap that Syria surely is cannot be untied simply. Slashing at it willy nilly a la Alexander the Great is fraught with peril . . . and so is doing nothing. Those are boobie responses.
While it is easy for me, who voted for him twice, to say so: I'm glad Barack Obama is our President as we confront this issue. Even if he is your political enemy, I think it's clear that he can hold within him many contradictory ideas at the same time. While the downside of that virtue is that it may make him slow to make a decision, it also makes him exactly the right sort of person to be in the Oval Office at this dangerous time. Now that he has had to make some decisions, he has already "grieved" (as Ian Leslie puts it) some of the competing options he has discarded. He will necessarily give up some more options and grieve some more. I hope we will follow his lead . . . that we, too, will grow a creative capacity for ambivalence . . . and grieve well when we must finally make a decision.
Here's a penultimate thought before we give Snoopy the final word.
Please remember that a booby trap often contains some bait to attract its would-be victims. As always, our most enticing bait is hubris. In this case it takes the form of being absolutely certain that OUR way is THE only way. Such certainty is relieving . . . comfortable . . . reassuring.
It is a most excellent bait for boobies. Snoopy . . . the floor is yours.
