Peonies and Patriotism

There's a blowsiness to peonies that no one remarks upon -- something disheveled about their beauty, their response to the sun. The tightness of the closed flower belies fecundity and generosity.

Another Memorial Day weekend is here -- and the nation's sport, one in which heads are bashed into oblivion even as people insist on their entertainment, is now dictating that its players either salute the flag or stay in the tunnel. Obeisance to the massuh. O say can you see. Patriotism. The lie. Belies.

Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori

Of Thee I Sing

Someone is always grumpy on the fourth of Juuuuuuuuuly. 

It might be hereditary.

Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? 
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Weekend Wrap-up

Despite being vaguely sick with a sore throat, a tingly head and weary heart, the show must go on. I traveled with Henry and Sophie out to Thousand Oaks in the Simi -- or was it Conejo -- Valley so that Henry could try out for a summer lacrosse league. I think it was Ronald Reagan country. After dropping him off at an enormous high school, I drove up and down long stretches of road, looking for a place to eat, and finally had to succumb to a McDonald's that was camouflaged like every other building in Thousand Oaks to look beige and at-one-with-the-environment even though the environment was vast tracts of stucco mansions and neighborhoods with names like Windsor Circle and Heather on the Moor with nary a flower out of place or even an iota of the urban grime that we're generally subject to in the city.  However, there was a truck in the parking lot of Mickey D's with a Confederate flag flying on the back, and while I don't want a repeat of the last time I noted a Confederate Flag flying from the back of a truck, I wondered if the same people who'd been to the beach at Santa Monica last month flying their rebellion were actually sitting inside on this Sunday, eating their Big Macs and being all American as you please. Because, you know, I want to pretend that it was a grand coincidence that I've seen this truck and this flag twice now in less than a month -- that People Who Love the Confederate Flag Yet Live in California are a rare breed and hopefully dying out. Yes, I'm perfectly aware that California is home to far worse types than those who fly Confederate flags on the back of their pick-ups, but humor me. How does the song go? From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam... God bless America, land that I love? 

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure which is more American -- the flying of the flag in the anesthetized burbs or the growing legion of homeless people camping out around the corner from my home in the middle of the city.

Anyhoo.

I am, as I told you, sick with a sore throat, a tingly head and a weary heart.

What have ya'll been up to?

Memorial Day on the tightrope

So, yeah. Memorial Day. Every year it rolls around, I get all squirmy because I know I'm going to post something and I know it's not going to be all patriotic. I know there's going to be someone or many someones who object and there are all those flags on Facebook and beautiful tributes to loved ones who've fought and died in wars for my liberty and freedom.  Then I'll think about Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est  and pro patria mori (how sweet and honorable it is to die for one's country) and how he called it The Old Lie, and  incurable sores on innocent tongues. I'll read that poem and look at his pale, wan face and think about the trenches of World War I and the men who lived in them for months on end, men who knew nothing of the drones that would replace them nearly a century later, strange silver shapes looking for x's below, bombs dropping and evil men skittering to caves, little children flattened in the name of liberty, again, and freedom. I'll wonder why peace and nonviolent principles aren't celebrated in nearly the same way and why those who wish it so are visited with scorn and condescension -- I'm glad you take for granted the liberties and freedoms awarded you, Elizabeth. I'll continue to protect you, a relative once said, witheringly --  and I'll realize that I, too, have been scornful of beautiful flags blowing in American breezes, have condescended to those who believe that it's only through killing that liberty is won.

I think that today I will make my own memorial day. I will sit in this paradox of honoring those who kill and those who are killed. I will stand and hold both, like every day I live, the tightrope under my feet, my arms outstretched, tip here, tip there, creep and then skitter along, the abyss -- or freedom -- below.

Boys, Girls, The Military, Illusions and a Must-Read by Chris Hedges

Trench warfare, World War I

The disillusionment comes swiftly. It is not the war of the movies. It is not the glory promised by the recruiters. The mythology fed to you by the church, the press, the school, the state, and the entertainment industry is exposed as a lie. We are not a virtuous nation. God has not blessed America. Victory is not assured. And we can be as evil, even more evil, than those we oppose. War is venal, noisy, frightening, and dirty. The military is a vast bureaucratic machine fueled by hyper-masculine fantasies and arcane and mind-numbing rules. War is always about betrayal—betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics, and of soldiers and Marines by politicians.

                                             -- Chris Hedges 

You know when the big war holidays come around -- Memorial Day, Veterans' Day, etc. etc.? Those of us who oppose war and shrink from glorifying it in any way, also shrink from expressing our true opinions of it -- how difficult it is to "honor soldiers," pay respect to those who have given us "the ultimate sacrifice" -- because we will (and often are) called unpatriotic, miserable, and ungrateful. I have been called all of these, even by members of my own family, so I generally post a poem or two written by Wilfred Owen, one of the young artists of World War I who not only spoke eloquently of the war he experienced but actually died in the trenches fighting. I've gotten into "trouble" on this blog expressing my opinion of war, my reluctance to pay homage to those who fight it, my struggles and conflicts regarding young men and women who offer themselves up to either kill or be killed and sometimes both. I have a long list of comments, all from Anonymous, who denounce my pacifist leanings, and some have said terrible things about my Swiss husband and even our children. I have a relative who works in a branch of the services who told me recently, quite sarcastically and casually, that he would continue to "be on the watch," guarding me as I ungratefully lived my otherwise carefree life, taking advantage of those, like himself, living a higher purpose. And while I might roll my eyes at the censure (who in the hell does he think is paying his salary?), I balk at the vast distance between those like me and those like him. I wish it weren't so.

War comes wrapped in patriotic slogans; calls for sacrifice, honor, and heroism; and promises of glory. It comes wrapped in the claims of divine providence. It is what a grateful nation asks of its children. It is what is right and just. It is waged to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil. War is touted as the ultimate test of manhood, where the young can find out what they are made of. From a distance it seems noble. It gives us comrades and power and a chance to play a bit part in the great drama of history. It promises to give us identities as warriors, patriots, as long as we go along with the myth, the one the war-makers need to wage wars and the defense contractors need to increase their profits.

But up close war is a soulless void. War is about barbarity, perversion, and pain. Human decency and tenderness are crushed, and people become objects to use or kill. The noise, the stench, the fear, the scenes of eviscerated bodies and bloated corpses, the cries of the wounded all combine to spin those in combat into another universe. In this moral void, naïvely blessed by secular and religious institutions at home, the hypocrisy of our social conventions, our strict adherence to moral precepts, becomes stark. War, for all its horror, has the power to strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions that fill our days. It might let us see, although the cost is tremendous.

When I went to Washington, D.C. last spring with my two sons, I realized that much of the city is built around memorials to war, to violence, to honoring those who have either killed in defense or perished for freedom or been burned or tortured or otherwise obliterated for ideals. I know, such is life, and I'm not going to pretend that I have any answers. I tromped around and exclaimed at the beauty of the monuments, the history of the brave and the great sentiments, even as I shrank at the horror of it all.  My son Oliver, now eleven, has always been a bit star-struck by soldiering, and given his lack of enthusiasm for school, I get nervous, every now and then, that one day he might want to join the military. Last spring, when the Armed Forces took over a section of the parking lot of Sophie's large, public high school, populated primarily by the disadvantaged and minorities, with their trailers and tents and cheerful pamphlets, I felt nauseous. Cool! Oliver said, when he saw the recruiters, spanky shiny in their stiff uniforms. Awesome! It helps that The Husband is utterly and completely anti-war and also has a cool disdain for American jingoism, but every parent knows that our influence on our children is haphazard at best. For all I know, Oliver (much like his mother -- ahem --) might completely buck our system, vote conservative and become a general.

The Husband, disturbed by what he sees in our sons' starry-eyed view of soldiers, guns and blow-em-up escapades,  brought home a recent article in Boston Review written by the Pulitzer prize-winning correspondent Chris Hedges. It's called War is Betrayal: Persistent Myths of Combat. Hedges writes in simple, powerful language that from as far back as The Iliad, the allure of combat is a trap, a ploy, an old, dirty game of deception in which the powerful, who do not go to war, promise a mirage to those who do.

The Husband is going to have Henry, my older son, read it, and then discuss it with Oliver, too. I figure that, at best, it'll begin to help balance out the bullshit that they've already been exposed to, and we'll hopefully steer them toward a different sort of service in the world, recognizing that yes, this is part of life, but we won't kill to make it better.

Read the whole article here.

Genes and Tolerance

United States Army Recruiting Station, Los Angeles

When I pulled into the parking lot of Sophie's high school this morning, it was hard not to notice the array of camouflaged tents, trucks and soldiers spread out over the huge parking lot. It's gray in Los Angeles this morning, and when you don't have the patriotic gene , the sight of army recruiters at a city high school doesn't make you feel a surge of pride in your country. Call me unpatriotic, but I don't like teenagers to be recruited to fight for their country in the parking lots of their high schools. I don't care if they're promised an education, glory or one hundred vestal virgins in heaven. You're not going to see this scene a few miles away in the parking lot of a prestigious private school, peopled with the tender and the privileged. And no, I don't have an answer for how we're supposed to find kids to fight wars in countries like Iran and Afghanistan. I don't have an alternative, so I'll just sit in my car and steam a bit while I wait for Sophie's aide to come and get her.

The other day, Kim of Art in Red Wagons left a great comment after I posted about my struggles with moderation in politics.  She spoke of tolerance and directed me to a very interesting and eye-opening statement of tolerance as dictated by UNESCO, in 1995. Here's an excerpt that struck me, in particular:

Article 1 - Meaning of tolerance

1.1 Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world's cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness, communication and freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Tolerance is harmony in difference. It is not only a moral duty, it is also a political and legal requirement. Tolerance, the virtue that makes peace possible, contributes to the replacement of the culture of war by a culture of peace.

1.2 Tolerance is not concession, condescension or indulgence. Tolerance is, above all, an active attitude prompted by recognition of the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others. In no circumstance can it be used to justify infringements of these fundamental values. Tolerance is to be exercised by individuals, groups and States.

1.3 Tolerance is the responsibility that upholds human rights, pluralism (including cultural pluralism), democracy and the rule of law. It involves the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism and affirms the standards set out in international human rights instruments.

1.4 Consistent with respect for human rights, the practice of tolerance does not mean toleration of social injustice or the abandonment or weakening of one's convictions. It means that one is free to adhere to one's own convictions and accepts that others adhere to theirs. It means accepting the fact that human beings, naturally diverse in their appearance, situation, speech, behaviour and values, have the right to live in peace and to be as they are. It also means that one's views are not to be imposed on others.

You can read the whole thing here.

Wouldn't it be great if the thousands of kids at our high school could learn about that document instead of signing their lives away under bullshit pretext to fight in countries whose cultures are grossly misunderstood ?