Post-election blues

I recently read Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect That Shaped the American Frontier by Jeffrey A. Lockwood. Good story. Would have made a good article. A little tedious as a book because it is over laden with the Lives of the Entomologists.

It opens with a description of a Kansas farmer watching an approaching swarm before taking shelter with his family. I thought about that guy on the day after the election. I felt the same way. I want to take shelter! A billion tons of conservative biomass are coming right toward me through the darkening skies!

And yet I feel strangely relieved as well. I wonder if that farmer reached a similar point, when he stopped flailing at the invading bugs with a shovel, gave up on the cow and the dog, and took shelter. It is out of his hands. A force of nature is passing. Later, we'll see what remains, what if anything is not devoured. For now, we can only marvel. And take cover!

IN RETROSPECT, I wish it had been Kucinich or Dean. Hell, if we were going to lose anyway, at least we could have had a campaign about the war. The only justification for the insipid Kerry/Edwards non-campaign was that it was necessary to win. But they didn't win, and they cheated America out of a real campaign. What a pair of losers!

After the election, Howard Zinn called for massive anti-war demonstrations. Is he kidding? For what? We just had the biggest pro-war demonstration imaginable: Bush was not repudiated. What is left to say?

Nov. 12

I WOULD HAVE VOTED Democratic even without the war. The environment, the supreme court, education, social security...take cover!

I believe that a lot of the things I value are under assault by the Bush administration, from old trees and pristine desert environments to social issues and civil liberties. Take cover! I would have voted against Bush on all of these issues.

But the war made me an enthusiast. I voted against the war, first and foremost. I saw the election as a referendum on the war.

I just watched the Bush/Blair press conference. I don't think anyone can watch this and persist in the claptrap that Bush is stupid, incompetent, asleep at the wheel, a pawn of Chaney or unseen powerful figures. I've thought so before, and think so now: This man is good under fire, stays on point and expresses himself clearly. He is quite a figure. And Blair even more so.

Many intelligent people agree with them that for the security and progress of the world, the US needs to be proactive to ameliorate a messy, potentially tragic situation. And Bush expressed a compelling vision of a world not ruled by terror, but by democratic institutions.

Concern for the thousands of American casualties and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties is really not a legitimate critique of the Bush/Blair vision of global progress and security, unless you are advocating a strict adherence to non-violence, which few would support. ("What about Hitler?" etc.)

If you're not against war, period, then it's just a matter of opinion whether a particular war is necessary, and you can argue about what the results might be. Bush and Blair say that after we've driven out the bad guys and helped promote stability and democracy Iraq will be happier, the region will be safer, and we will, too. I think that after five or ten years of ugly mess, the US and any remaining allies will pull out, airlifting the last holdouts from the roof of the world's largest embassy, leaving Iraq more fucked up than it has ever been, making peace in the mideast an ever-more distant chimera, and increasing the likelihood that someone will bring a nuclear bomb into Wilmington Harbor (a few mile from my home) in the hold of a cargo ship.

I hope I'm wrong about this, and George Bush is right. If not, take cover!

IN PRAISE OF WAR

This might be a good time to stop and think of the good things about war.

I haven't read the book by war correspondent Chris Hedges, but I love the title: War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning..

I think it was Anne Garrels interviewing green troops before the Falluja offensive. They were looking forward to it; tired of waiting around. "This is what we were trained for. Now we get to do it." And not just in military training. It's a deep part of our culture. I guess of most cultures.The glory of war.

Some of these guys will die and be called heroes. More will be injured or maimed. Their lives, not taken, will be reduced. Others will survive; some will thrive. They will have had the experience of serving together with comrades for a greater cause, and of stepping up to do what has to be done, however hard. Some will be ennobled by this. Some will be heroes, and take that heroism back with them to their communities. War is a force that gives us meaning.

For the culture, too, a good war or two every generation can have a lot of benefits, both practical and psychological. Just to start with the obvious, I heard that "defense"-related employment is up here in Southern California. That's good, right?

Then, too, there's the dramatic opportunity that every war provides for us as a society to play out the mythic struggle of good and bad, right and wrong, them and us. We can't get enough of this. Look at our books, films, etc. There are other themes, to be sure, but this is a good one that appears often and is never exhausted. It's fine to watch a good western or war movie, but a real war that we can follow day to day, month to month, year to year is so much easier to really get into. War is a force that gives us meaning.

And of course war has always been an engine of technological advancement from which the civilian sector benefits as well. One example should suffice: The internet was developed for the military.

ON THE OTHER HAND

You know what they say: War is hell. I do feel sorry for those thousands of amputees, and the hundreds of thousands who die under the assault of war. Like those poor Nile Valley farmers in the Exodus myth, assaulted by the locusts of war, for no reason. How cruel! How pathetic! Is this really the best we can do? I don't think so. Could it have been avoided? Of course. That's why I voted against it. Is it for nothing? I think so. Are we making the world less safe, less democratic, less hopeful by our belligerence? I'm afraid so.

AND NOW?

What should we do now, we who oppose war, who fear and detest the suffering it unleashes, and who despair of the results we anticipate?

Voltaire said "Cultivate your garden." Leary said "Turn on, tune in, and drop out." There is a time to turn inward, to focus more on the personal and the local, to nurture what works in our own lives, to cultivate the art of peace in our daily lives even though it is eclipsed in our national dialogue. Maybe we can find some other force to give us meaning.

I'm not saying we should eschew politics totally. Take back the House in '06! Yeah, sure. Whatever. But the locusts of war are swarming, and there's no sense in staging a demonstration. Take cover!

- Peter Rashkin

See also: 9/11 reflections