Sometimes, Consensus Can Be Ruinous
The U.S. invasion of Iraq was the most consequential political event of the past two decades. But it doesn’t feel that way. It has the faint whiff of youthful indiscretion, an episode that many Americans would rather forget. I was 19. The tenor of that time in American life—after the September 11 attacks—seems ever more foreign to me. Instead of the chaotic information overload of the current moment, in which consensus appears impossible, the early 2000s were a time of conformity, authority, and security. When I think about why even the mere idea of consensus makes me anxious to this day, I keep coming back to what happened 20 long years ago. Consensus can be nice, but it can also be dangerous.
Once American ground troops were engaged in Afghanistan, risking. I also helped organize a “tent-in” with a group of friends and fellow travelers, a motley crew of socialists, anarchists, and ordinary students who found themselves stupefied by a war that seemed self-evidently absurd. In the weeks before the war began—and then for the entire duration of the invasion—we protested by setting up camp in Georgetown University’s , the ironically named Red Square. In practice, at least one person was expected to sleep in the tents on any given night, which translated into a continuous presence of more than 2,000 hours.
