Semper Fi

A fiddle contest was fixed in West Virginia a few years ago. It didn't matter what the judges said; the organizers wanted the local guy to win and win he did. This tale of corruption has gnawed at me since I learned of it, just days ago.
Once again, the tiny little universe that I safely ensconce myself into has been shattered, and I, naked and vulnerable, must reassess. Could it possibly be that everything I think is not always right?
My friend's cousin's ex-husband (follow that?) is just back from Iraq. He was a Marine for a few years, then worked for the U.N. in some capacity, and is now one of those bodyguards over there that we read about. He's also a ganja smoking Dead Head who surfs. Go figure.
So there I am trying to make sense of what he is saying, placing everything he says in my own narrow context, formed, mostly, by the liberal media. He's talking about encounters with Iraqi children; everyday life in Baghdad; "acceptable loses", Saddam's heavy-handed sons; and his opinions, good and bad, of the American bureaucrats running things over there. He's well informed, experienced, and doesn't for a moment pretend to have all the right answers.
The own thoughts had their usual eloquence: It's wrong. We should leave them alone. The President's an idiot.
It took me longer than I care to admit to figure out that I have no idea what's going on over there, that maybe no one does, and that it's all more complicated than I ever thought.
That's not a situation I deal with very well. I function a lot better when I have all the answers. I'm shocked, truly shocked(!), to learn that I can't always pigeonhole the people and events around me.
But I rest, now, with the certainty that these are isolated events. Surely the world is as predictable as I usually assume. Examples of fixed fiddle contests and the war in Iraq are aberrant, anomalies that pop up from time to time but certainly don't represent the greater reality. How could I possibly be wrong about such things ....