Right vs. Left Brain Thinking

Above is an embedded YouTube video performance by Chitose Hajime on vocals and Ryuichi Sakamoto on the piano. Every time I watch this I get the chills - it is a very affecting performance of a work entitled Dead Girl. Depsite being entirely in Japanese, the emotional content is obvious; please give a listen and refer to the lyrics below:

I come and stand at every door
But no one hears my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead, for I am dead.

I'm only seven although I died
In Hiroshima long ago
I'm seven now as I was then
When children die they do not grow.

My hair was scorched by swirling flame
My eyes grew dim, my eyes grew blind
Death came and turned my bones to dust
And that was scattered by the wind.

I need no fruit, I need no rice
I need no sweet, nor even bread
I ask for nothing for myself
For I am dead, for I am dead.

All that I ask is that for peace
You fight today, you fight today
So that the children of this world
May live and grow and laugh and play.

-- Nazim Hikmet

If you've read my other posts in this blog it is obvious what my political inclinations are. I supported our invasion of Iraq and overall I am a staunch conservative (except don't get me started on gun control; that's the one area in which I totally disagree with the conservative stance). And when I read about the never-ending battle between the Israelis and Palestinians and how there can never be a true peace achieved in the Middle East, my solution is that it would be best to just drop a big bomb on all of them and be done with it. Like Randy Newman's song "Political Science," ..Let's drop the big one and pulverize them.

I am, however, of Japanese descent and my people have the distinction of being the only ones ever to suffer the effects of the atomic bomb. If you've never seen the animated movie, Grave of the Fireflies, I highly recommend that you do; it should be required for every person, child or adult. Though animated, it's a chilling recount of the horrors of the atomic blasts that shook Japan in 1945; the YouTube video combined with the lyrics above present the horrifics in summary form.

You know my posts in this blog are often caustic, full of insults and taunts to the liberals in our society. I easily think of them as stereotypes, a poor, misled group. I still don't agree with the vast majority of their thinking but I am wrong to ignore their humanity. Otherwise it puts me only a few steps away from becoming a person who could give the command to drop another bomb.

Right vs. Left Brain Thinking is the title of this post and by this I mean political right versus political left. How do I reconcile this? I may sound like a tired cliche but war causes suffering mainly for the innocent, because of man's unquenchable thirst for power. I really don't know what to say about all of this because I know at times the use of force is the only realistic alternative, but why do we have to put ourselves through this? Each time I view this video it stirs up my emotions and brings on a terrible sadness that today I just felt as though I had to write about it.