Layperson’s Terms

The number of identified civilian casualties from the Iraq War has officially reached 90,616 (rounding up, because half a person is silly as well as grisly).

I was ghoulishly anticipating this, the day when I can provide other people with a nice, round number—90,000 dead—for a body count. “Why yes,” I can say, “over 90,000 civilians have been killed in the Iraq War.” Simulaneously, I feel incredibly guilty for looking forward to this numerological milestone, and wonder if there is something wrong with me.

In a recent post, PZ Myers of Pharyngula relayed a letter from Nathan Acks about the mass arrests outside the Democratic National Convention arena. After which Myers (predictably) expressed:

Where is this country going? We seem to be on the road to mindlessness and tyranny. We are descending into madness.

Mindlessness (again)! Tyranny (again)! Descents into madness (again)! Why, this is just like… like the 1968 Democratic Convention!

Actually, I dare say, things have improved since then. I mean, for a horrifying civil rights abuse, I didn’t hear one word about the National Guard being mobilized, with orders to shoot to kill—like in 1968. What’s that you say—someone got sprayed with pepper spray? And they didn’t even get clubbed viciously? What’s this country coming to!—at a convention, I expect to see people clubbed viciously. Dear God, we’re not even at the level of the 2004 Republican Convention.

You see, Myers, we are not descending into madness. We’re ascending into a slightly less-mad madness!

Note: When I added the Iraq Body Count web counter June 26, 2008, the median of the ranges on the counter was 89,112. As of this post, the median is 89,196.

When I first came across the Iraq Body Count web counter, it was just something to dress up the spare sidebar to my blog (it being the opposite of my brother’s, who crams his blog’s sidebar with an unbelievable amount of crud).

But now, looking at the innocuous counter to my side, I wonder:  How many is 89,112?

My first reaction is numerological.  89,112 is…

twice the population of my town…

the annual death toll from car accidents in the U.S…

the number of children killed by guns between 1979 and 2001[1].

1.11 times the approximate annual number of visitors to Carhenge.

This isn’t helping any.

My second reaction?

Numbers are meaningless.

A single death is unfathomable.

How would I feel if I lost my father?  My brother?  My mother?

A single death can drive a person insane with grief.

Now there are 89,112 dead mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters.  Sons and daughters.  Each death alone is something unfathomable. Together they are something horrifying and monstrous.

That is 89,112.

I need to write this down now, before my anger absents me in my sleep, and I wake up tomorrow morning, forgetting and forgiving. This one time I will consider this ability a weakness. (I wish I could hate.)

I got into a argument with someone today. It was not with a Believer, of the sort atheists so often argue with. I can handle them. Not with a Denialist, of the sort PalMD fights. I will learn to handle them. The one I argued with was someone far worse; a wrong yet frustratingly untouchable person—an Unbeliever.

I don’t remember how or what we started arguing about. I wish I had a recording, so I could figure out how we got where we did, so I could express how untouchable this person was in his own words. Instead I must use my own, inadequate words.

Ah, I remember now, how we started. We were talking about school.

He: Why did they teach us how to write research papers? No one reads them, they just skim them. No one checks the sources .

I: But that doesn’t change the truth! Once science discovers the reality behind something, it is still the reality, regardless of politics!

I grow weary of transcribing everything that passed between us. Suffice to say, we touched upon many things. More on ADD/ADHD, scientific studies, the politics of science, relativity and quantum mechanics, the nature of facts… (This sounds like many a many-houred discussion, but it was only ten minutes.) I shall skip to the crux of it all:

I: But the raw numbers!…

I: But…! [another lecture on the truth of reality]

Eventually, we ended. We had touched upon so many things. At one point I even asked him if this was a post-modernist effort to break down the constructs we operate by in our lives, to acknowledge their nature as mere constructs and then continue on accepting those constructs; or if he was being unbelievably cynical. I don’t remember his answer. All I know is that I lost in the end.

He left after that. I grew so frustrated with him that I shut down and just glared at him, jaw set. He teased me for this and then announced he needed to go home.

I refused to hug him as he made the rounds, saying goodbye and hugging everyone.

“You know he just likes to pick on you,” reassured Mom. I couldn’t articulate myself beyond, “I know. But that still makes him an asshole.” (The effort necessary for this to be “just teasing” verges on the sociopathic. I think I would prefer he be merely cynical.)

How could I have lost? Rather, how could anyone have triumphed against such a person? Him, sitting in Dad’s recliner, toad-fatuous and smug, always knowing how the argument will end. Always knowing exactly what to say to set me off on another futile lecture. There can be no triumph in this.

I fought an unbeliever. And the unbeliever won.