What I want to do versus what I need to do

What I want to do is blog. What I need to do is take care of my husband who is home sick today; work on three legal projects that are due tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday, respectively; get the house ready for the twice monthly cleaning lady visit; cook dinner; take my daughter to her audition for the school play; do a load of laundry; and spend time on the phone with beloved family members who are going through a hard time right now. I’ve gotten so that I dread the phone ringing, because it’s always more work. (Not you, DQ, of course. I always like it when you call, even if there’s work attached to the phone call!)

So, I’ll leave you with one thought until I can carve out another small window of time in which to opine about something. The top story right now is about Musharraf’s declaration of martial law in Pakistan, a tactic he’s used before to keep himself in power. He’s a nasty bit of work, who is willing to work with Islamist extremists in order to maintain his position. Nevertheless, absent Musharraf, the same Islamists probably get, not only room at the table, but the table itself, turning Pakistan into a pre-nuclearized Iran.

Because the choices in Pakistan seem to be evil and more evil, I keep thinking of many Brits during the 1930s who supported Hitler. Dig a little deeper into their reasoning, and you discover that they didn’t really support Hitler. They just thought that he’d be a bulwark against Communism, and they feared Communism even more than National Socialism (which was, initially, trying to present a clean and pretty face for world consumption). History has revealed that choosing the Nazis to support was an appallingly bad choice, but history has also shown that the Communists weren’t better — although I doubt they would have come up with the ultimate evil of the Holocaust.

Sometimes, in world politics, there are no good choices. There aren’t even least awful choices. All one can do is try to figure out which of two evil systems is least likely to blow up the world in the near future.

UPDATE:  Thank goodness that, curled up in a chair in the living room, I have the cure for a day like this.