Revisions

Sometimes I wish I were paid for things nobody knew, and I would sit there, rich as Buffet, content as a fruit basket atop the head of a voluptuous woman (don't stop me when I am feeling literary), tsk-tsking like Solomon, and letting man's freewill and lack of judgement reign.

For example, nobody knew that when mortgage lenders or home buyers chose to lie or accidentally mistate qualifications for loans, thus increasing home ownership nationwide, that scores of companies would end up taking massive losses. Who knew that increased home ownership at astronomical pricing would become an inverse indicator of the success of certain financial firms?

We know that now.

Or take embryonic stem cells. Or maybe don't take them. The the recent, yet tentative, discovery (as reported in the N.Y. Times) that adding certain genes into skin cells reprograms them into embryonic stem cells--much to the delight of those concerned about using actual embryos--should point out the rewards of patience and due diligence. Who would have realized that we need not rush into creating massive medical farms filled with potential baby material redirected to curing the skin cancer of suburban moms? Did Bush know? Did those rushing to say that the death and diseases of those alive now are paramount above all other issues, did they know?

Well we seem to know a bit more now.

And in the same way that preventing death to the living was paramount to those in favor of any sort of stem cell solution, so too that mode of reasoning extended to views on Iraq. The mantra has been, "Bring them home, because they are dying".

I've oft imagined what some mothers in the southern states might have said come the Civil War's end. "Damn, we lost a lot of owa young'ins, 'n fer what? A bunch of "blacks" and Nowthen business interests. Lawd what a waste of beautiful lives."

Yet the news out of Iraq is changing, modifying, so that the facts are starting to sound louder and clearer than the ability of others to distort them. It becomes a surprise, and a problem, for some, when there is no fighting in Basra, in the western sands, in Kurdish regions, and now in Baghdad. Who could have imagined?

We are discovering now.

Such reversals ought to be enligtening. Often encouraging. At the point when we think we have it all figured out, and when everything has been done, with every bit of knowledge learned, every God rendered irrelevant, things unseen reveal themselves.