I try to not have multiple books going simultaneously, but a few months back I put a book on hold at the library – Death of the Liberal Class, by Chris Hedges, which argues in a mostly compelling way that the left-leaning territory has been ceded to corporate conservatism not by right wingers like Ronald Reagan but by the liberal establishment itself, which sought to cozy up to the power and the money and, in the process, kicked the socialists, the communists, the collectivists and all of the poor straight out to that proverbial curb. When I got the e-mail last week telling me that the book was waiting for me, I got it, and on Sunday night, believe it or not, I was reading about the erosion of our ability to engage in thoughtful, meaningful dialogue – not to mention the complete absence of grace – thanks to the hyper-masculine underpinnings of a society wired, it would seem, for war. It’s a form of porn, says the author, an infusion of violence into the once-sacred realms of love, compassion and empathy.
Though his work was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, Chris Hedges was fired from the New York Times for refusing to assume a posture of “objectivity” when it came to our war on terror. So it’s only fair to say that he’s probably a little bitter that Tom Friedman, who also reports for the New York Times, has created a niche for himself, traipsing from one talk show to the next to weigh in with his wisdom. It’s also fair to say that I, on the other hand, have never met Tom Friedman, worked for the New York Times or won a Pulitzer, but I’ve seen Tom Friedman on Charlie Rose several times, shamelessly stroking whomever happens to appear to be on the side that will eventually win, and if this guy represents the liberal point of view, we are in trouble. Don’t take my word for it, though. Here, speaking of porn, from May 30, 2003, is a bit from one of Tom Friedman’s many visits to Charlie Rose’s studio:
What Islamic extremists needed to see, Friedman told Rose, “was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying, ‘Which part of this sentence don’t you understand? You don’t think, you know we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna let it grow? Well, suck on this.’ That, Charlie, is what this war is about.” [Death of the Liberal Class, page 156]
My first problem with the breaking news that interrupted my reading on Sunday night was the president’s referencing the weather in New York City on the morning Sept. 11, 2001. Though it was but a warm up for the onslaught of much more, the president went on to crank out a few notes on the national violin with yet more greeting card sentiments about how some people will never see their dad again, and others will be forever haunted by the empty place at the kitchen table, places once graced by sons and daughters lost on that terrible day that we’ll never, ever forget.
It got worse, as it often does. We got him, the president said, and while we should resist the temptation to think of this as the end of terrorism, we should all join hands and hearts in unity … like we did in the days following Sept. 11, 2001. Monday, the president continued along those lines, referencing not only the Big Day but also the shooting of the congresswoman in Tucson and the tornadoes in Alabama. I cannot speak to the shooting and the weather, but massaging a terrorist attack into something that brought us all together is so distasteful to me that the word “offensive” doesn’t begin to convey it. If waving flags and bellowing crude platitudes at “flash mob rallies” and barfing thoughtlessness like “We got the bastard!” and “NAVY.SEALS.ROCK!” all over Facebook in celebration not only of killing someone but, even more astoundingly, to ring in the dawning of a safer era in the U.S., I need not only a new dictionary but a new language to go along with it.
But back to the president’s announcement on Sunday night. I have always enjoyed the way Barack Obama says certain words. Pakistan, for example. I the way I say it is pack-is-tan, with the emphasis on pack. Obama says pah-kee-stahn. When he gets going on religion, as he often does, he says the word Muslim as if it begins with the word moose: mooselum. To which I can only think, every time he says it, Jesus Christ. And my favorite is Taliban. I say it with a soft a and an equally soft i. Our president, on the other hand, says the beginning of the word Taliban with the word tally: Tally-ban. As in, numbers and scores.
On Monday, for the sheer hell of it, I decided to look up some numbers. I wanted to know how many employees of the U.S. military were killed. Via the Washington Post, which maintains a tally, here’s what I found. As of Feb. 20, 2011, 1,461 U.S. soldiers have died in Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan). For Operation Iraqi Freedom, the total number of fatalities for U.S. military personnel is 4,424. So if history repeats itself, as it almost always does, it will not be long before people like Thomas Friedman and his bud Charlie Rose and many of their friends begin silencing anyone who dares to put the operation under the return-on-investment microscope, which would require that the cost of the operation be measured against its value. So while the flags are still being waved and while the rallies are still going strong, I’d like to throw a preemptive strike, if you will. In the nearly decade-long pursuit of one individual – if that is indeed what the mission has been – the lives of 5,885 U.S. citizens were extinguished. Join hands with me, friends and neighbors, because apparently that’s what we call victory.
