Coming back from Stansted Airport on Wednesday evening on the coach with Ed and Monica, I was thinking about the war, which was probably on everybody’s mind. The darkness of the evening was broken occasionally by the lights of country houses, pubs, clubs, small towns. Life was going on as normal, even as the war drew closer. But everything was recontextualised by the knowledge of what was about to happen thousands of miles away. Today, people ring in to radio shows giving their inherited opinions:
1) War is bad and this war is unjustified
2) War is necessary in this case, but is a last resort
3) War is by no means a bad thing and Saddam is a very bad guy
4) Tony Blair is a great statesman
5) Tony Blair is a disgrace, etc.
Who can say that their own opinion is not as inherited (Flaubert called them ‘received ideas’) as any of these? The media corps, who are as unaware as us of what is going on, continue to broadcast interminably in the hope that scraps of disinformation will be fed to them. Our opinions are swayable: many who opposed war have now decided that since it’s inevitable one may as well fall in behind the status quo. My opinion? I know I know less than I thought I did.