I have never been the brightest bulb in Madison, nor the sharpest tack, but I have never considered myself the most dense person around either. Despite my asserted claim to comprehension competency, the pre-emptive peace promotion strategy on this campus has me utterly confused.

Last week a young man handed me an orange flier promoting the “Books, Not Bombs” student strike. As far as I can tell, this campaign is meant to unite the usual suspects who chant rhymes about tuition freezes and our “inalienable right to higher education” with the usual suspects who chant rhymes about blood, oil, bubble and toil.

The confusion set in. I could not see how the books and the bombs were related, except for the fact that the money spent on bombs had an opportunity cost that could have been used for books. The taxes spent on bombs can also buy pencils, pens, aid to Israel, cigarettes, vodka or widgets, but so what?

I attempted to look below the surface for a deeper connection. Was I missing something because of my entrenched Western “white is right” mindset? Would a post-modernistic exercise questioning my assumptions alleviate my confusion? It was worth a shot.

I tried to “think outside the box,” and it wasn’t long before the issue that unites the pro-readers with the anti-warriors became crystal clear. Education activists and peace activists (at least the “Books, not Bombs” organizers) both hate President George W. Bush. Bush is waging war on Iraq, and Bush does not care about education and has acted to increase the university’s tuition. Combine these constituencies disenfranchised by G Dub and you double the size, effectiveness and media coverage of the event.

But, just when I thought I had it figured out, that entrenched Western mindset of mine crept back into the picture. Bush hasn’t yet waged a war in Iraq, and he hasn’t raised anyone’s tuition. Perhaps he is insensitive to the plight of state governments like Wisconsin’s that have passed bloated budgets for nearly a decade and now face tough choices on social programs. Considering it is a Democrat, Jim Doyle, who has now abandoned the university, the “Bush hatred” thesis didn’t make much sense.

But forget about sense. I was willing to chalk up this apparent hypocrisy to the fact that I just don’t understand the usual suspects’ worldview. Perhaps if I walked a mile in their Birkenstock’s I could see the connection between books and bombs, and that was good enough for me.

So I left their motives alone, but this did not squelch my confusion over the matter. This may not surprise those of you who know me, considering I have spent many hours each week for the last five years killing brain cells in local taverns and basements. But I recently read a forwarded e-mail alerting me to some interesting research indicating that bathing your brain cells in whiskey only kills the weakest links in my brain through some sort of neurological Darwinism.

The surviving “super cells” have less riff-raff and garbage to sift through in order to pass their messages and perform their calculations. I haven’t seen definitive results from this research, but if anyone in this field needs volunteers for some clinical studies, I am available.

Back to my confusion, because regardless of whether I am dimmer today than I was five years ago, the concept of students striking threw me for a loop. It wasn’t that many drink specials ago that I was sitting in an economics class, and I don’t remember reading about any successful strike that announced it would last only one day and cost the organizers’ adversaries absolutely nothing.

Yet the usual suspects plan to show their commitment to education by skipping school. My head was spinning like never before as I tried to imagine a scenario in which Katherine Lyall and Dick Cheney agreed to freeze tuition and drop the Iraqi sanctions respectively, but only if those young men and women of UW-Madison would promise to return to afternoon classes.

There is hope for the confused soul. A couple of Advil stopped my headache, and a couple hundred feet beyond the gentlemen with the orange literature I saw something that finally made sense. Right there in the middle of Library Mall stood a collection of pup tents. At $39.95-a-piece, all this inclusionary zoning and affordable housing that mayoral candidates Soglin and Cieslewicz are always talking about made some sense.

I am not sure I approve of the university providing affordable housing through “refugee camps,” but at least my head has stopped hurting.

A.J. Hughes ([email protected]) is a software developer and UW graduate.