Perspicacity and the Sundance Kid

So here’s a sappy post about how hard it is to leave my dog.  For those of you that know me, you’ll likely sympathize.  For those that don’t, you’ll probably find this post a bit maudlin.  Oh well.  Here ’tis:

This has been a month of divestiture.  All within the past few weeks, I had my last day at work; we moved out of our house, donated our car, sold our bicycles; and I brought my dog back to St. Louis so that my parents can watch her while we’re on our road trip.  While I’ve been excited to unburden myself of these first four, I’m having a little trouble coming to terms with the last.  I was ecstatic to leave my job behind me.  The predominant feeling with the apartment, car, and bikes was one of relief.  I have to admit that some part of me was hesitant to see those things go.  I’m attached to some of my stuff and have fond memories associated with all of those things.  But I’ve convinced myself that the things I loved the most about those things are things that I can take with me.

Z and I are headed off for a three month road trip before we depart for our Peace Corps service in Africa.  If this comes as a surprise to you, I’m sorry that I haven’t kept you in the loop or written a longer post explaining our plans and motivations.

Anyway, if you’d like to keep track of us on the road trip and throughout our time in the Peace Corps, you can follow us on our photo-centric travel blog: AdventurerZ.

The New York Times Opinion site has been running a series lately on veterans’ perceptions of war titled Home Fires: Retelling the War.  Before that, Shannon Meehan wrote an opinion article on his combat experience and readjustment to civilian life.  While I enjoyed the candor of Meehan’s article, there were certain parts that I found overly simplistic at best and self-servingly contrived at worst, especially when compared to the much finer offerings from the Home Fires series.

Firstly, I resented the implication that Meehan spoke on behalf of all military members.  His language frequently insinuates that his feelings and attitudes are representative of the feelings of all of us in the military.  For example,

Killing enemy combatants comes with its own emotional costs. On the surface, we feel as soldiers that killing the enemy should not affect us — it is our job, after all.

Throughout his article, Meehan shifts subtly between “I,” “you,” and “we.”  In my most cynical interpretation, I imagine Meehan would like to appoint himself the warfighter representative in order to help his book sales.  His 2009 book Beyond Duty recounts his actions and attempts to reconcile his experiences in Iraq.  I have not read it, but I should say that it is highly reviewed by other authors that I admire.  In truth, I think Meehan’s motives are pure.  But compare his language to that found in Roman Skaskiw’s article Narrative and Memory at War:

…the problem with war narratives isn’t lying. The problem is there’s too much truth. Everything you’ve ever heard or suspected about armed conflict is likely true. The enterprise is so vast that writers, myself included, can choose whichever truths support a particular thesis.  So yes. We struggle. We struggle famously, and probably more so as our wars approach the decade mark.

But who will tell the story of those who don’t struggle to adjust? Is there space in our consciousness for those who enjoy themselves? For those who choose to return to do similar work as contractors for a salary three times as high? Those who return because they didn’t get enough action? Who will admit that many of us are capable of facing combat? I never met anyone emerging from an intense firefight who wanted to go back, but those who folded under the pressure were the exception, not the rule. Who will admit that some of us even revel in it? And if such statements are made, who will listen?

I much prefer Skaskiw’s depiction of the diversity of combatants’ attitudes.  (In fact, it’s similar to something my good friend Nick once told me about assuming a representative experience of life in India, but you’ll just have to wait for Nick to start a blog to hear that one).  And I’m more receptive to his message when I know he’s telling me his story, rather than telling me what everyone else’s story should be (a point that Skaskiw makes much more eloquently in his entire article).

Secondly, Meehan closes with:

Soldiers bring the ghosts home with them, and it’s everyone else’s job to hear about them, no matter how painful it may be.

Again it’s easy to imagine that Meehan has concocted this newfound civic responsibility because it will help his book sales.  And yet again, I don’t think that’s correct but the truth is even scarier: he really believes it.  Let me start with my initial reaction to Meehan’s closing line (with the caveat that I’ve had a chance to cool off a bit):

1. Sorry Capt Meehan, but I am under absolutely no obligation to hear your war story or anyone else’s for that matter.  Your suffering is not more special or more deserving of consolation than civilian suffering.  Nobody says that it’s “our job” to hear the stories of rape victims or abused children, but it’s somehow incontrovertible that it’s “our job” to hear your story.  Yes, you should be cared for before, during, and after your service.  So should everyone else.  And I have no problem with my tax dollars going to fund your treatment.  If I know you personally, I will invest my time into hearing of your experiences and helping you recover.  But beyond that, I have no more obligation to hear your story and help you heal than I do to the untold numbers of other trauma victims.  Meehan is not invoking a national call to psychological service here, he’s advocating an unconditional support structure for military mental health.
2. And because this support is unconditional and accorded a special privilege above the plane of normal dialogue, it becomes much harder to combat when it supports the war or supports the military recruiting machine.  It provides protection to the myth that the military is uniquely qualified to foster good character or service ethic.  Challenging the soldier myth becomes conflated with obstructing veteran rehabilitation.  As Skaskiw puts it:

Although it puts me and many of my personal friends in a flattering light, I fear the narrative of the reluctant, well-intentioned soldier because, along with similar reverence for all things military, it seems a requisite for endless war. The misguided motives of empire hide behind the sympathetic portrayal of its servants. I also know, as we all probably do but hesitate to admit, that many of us servants were far from reluctant.

I’ve thought about it a bit more since my initial reaction and I applaud both Meehan and Skaskiw and the other Home Fires contributors for telling their story.  It is brave to confront your war trauma and even braver to do so publicly.  I don’t wish to silence anyone who wants to talk about their experiences.  More dialogue is almost always better.  And the psychological toll of any experience shouldn’t be swpet under the rug, especially not when that toll is taxpayer funded.  But I do have reservations about the simplicity with which we treat our war stories.  There is a fuzzy line between the glorification of war and the psychological repatriation of the warfighter.  As Skaskiw closes, “wars, like everything else, are replaced by the telling of them.”

“Destroying the power of white” is an insipid phrase that I once heard used to describe the act of scribbling or jotting on paper in order to get you thoughts flowing and to overcome the intimidation of the blank page. So here it goes.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while guys. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

• Published my first article in a scientific journal (I’ll link the preprint version once it’s available/legal).
• went back home to St. Louis for Christmas and reconnected with some great friends.
• Traveled to India with Zoë to visit my good friends Nick and Elizabeth.
• came back to L.A. and have been working crazy hard on my thesis ever since.
• plus some other career related developments that I won’t go into here but that are the subject of a future blog post.

So I’m starting to get back into the swing of things. Thanks for the harassment/encouragement from those of you who’ve been bugging me. I’ll try to not to disappoint.

This is a note I wrote on January 15, 2007 on Facebook in response to a blog post by my friend Ashley.  My apologies to my facebook friends who have already read this (please feel free to skip this); it just makes sense to me to have all of my notes in one place.  Unfortunately, Ashley’s original blog is no longer up and running so you won’t be able to see the post that inspired me to write what follows.  In short, Ashley was responding to a man who referred to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day as “black day” and argued that white people should not concern themselves with the legacy of Dr. King.  The original note was titled “On the Universality of ‘Black Day,'” hence the disclaimer in the first sentence.  I found it interesting to reread my note in this new, supposedly post-racial era.  Here’s the old post:

Okay, now before you go and get all offended by the title of this post, read this (http://ashleykilgore.blogspot.com/2007/01/drmartin-luther-king-jr-day.html). Ashley’s post inspired me to write a little note in response to the gentleman’s off-hand, and off-color, comment. Thus, the title is meant to be a somewhat ironic reference to Ashley’s article while also introducing a theme on the universal applicability of Dr. King’s legacy and of the civil rights movement. It is meant to persuade that man to care about the rights of others.

There is, of course, a selfish reason to care about minority rights. This is the most trivial of the reasons, but it’s a good start. Any society that can subjugate one particular slice of the population can do it to your slice of the population. If they (see footnote)* can oppress black people, then they can do it to women, blind people, vegetarians, people who wear blue watches, people with stars on their belly, and people without stars on their belly. A threat to one person’s civil liberties, represents, in the final sense, a threat to everyone’s civil liberties.

But even if this were not the case, I’d argue that decent human beings should still care about the rights of others, that each person has inherent worth and dignity (my UU roots are showing) that should be respected. If these are really inherent, then an attack on one person’s rights, is not just an individual attack. It constitutes a devaluation of rights, worth, and dignity themselves. I can’t really back this up without getting into a bunch of metaphysical, interconnectedness-of-all-life stuff. Not everyone would agree with me and I’d probably wind up preaching satyagraha (which I’m not comprehensively committed to anyway). But that’s not really where I want to go with this. My point is this: I think most people would agree with this at least notionally (perhaps for different reasons) and that even if they don’t, the more trivial assertion above should be obvious. So the treatment of others is important to us.

But more generally, we should celebrate Dr. King for a different reason: he helped to reconstitute the validity and power of one’s hopes and dreams. There is a reason that the “I have a dream” speech resonates so well within the American subconscious. To quote Barack Obama: “That simple notion—that one isn’t confined in one’s dreams—is so central to our understanding of America that is seems almost commonplace.” But oppression severs this idea from one’s life. Dr. King should be remembered not because of the power that he held, but because of the way he empowered others.

A few months ago, Zoe and I had the occasion to visit the National Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, AL.  It was an extremely moving experience for me for a number of reasons. Primarily, it did an excellent job of conveying the intensely personal stories that usually get lost when people talk about the entire movement.

I mention this because when we talk about the history of the civil rights movement, we tend to assimilate it entirely into the biography of a few key leaders. Furthermore, we tend to elevate these leaders to a level of perfection that belies their true nature and the attainability of their accomplishments. It’s easy to forget that that history was made by milkmen and postal workers, truck drivers and librarians. And in that forgetting, we forget our own power to change the world around us. We say, “I can’t fix these things; I’m no Dr. King (or Gandhi or Margaret Mead or whoever).” This is why Rosa Parks and Paul Rusesabagina are so inspiring to us. We must be reminded that mere mortals, with their own insecurities and inadequacies, suffered threats, beatings, and arrests in pursuit of a noble cause. This realizations allows us, perhaps obligates us, to take action against the injustices that we see today. That is, after all, one of the things Dr. Martin Luther King did. He empowered and mobilized others to make a difference in their lives and in the lives of others.

And there is still a lot more work to be done (as Ashley has already pointed out).  So on this day, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to reflect on Dr. King’s legacy and use this as an opportunity to change the world in some small way. Perhaps you’ll call your congressperson or write a letter to an editor. Maybe you’ll donate to a charity or commit to a smaller carbon footprint. Perhaps you’ll sit back in self-aggrandizing satisfaction because you already do all of these things. Just do not attest to your own insignificance because the entire civil rights movement will testify to the contrary.

* “They” is a very general term here and doesn’t really reflect the complexity of prejudice. I use it here because it’s convenient. But often, “they” serves to disassociate oneself from a problem. “They” really includes we, you, I, and others.