Category Archives: politics

As I watched him breathe out the last part of air, I thought: Is this the best thing I’ve ever done, or the worst thing I’ve ever done?

12 February 2013

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zd30

The Navy SEAL who shot and killed Osama Bin Laden is staying anonymous, but speaking out in a recent Esquire article (“The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden… Is Screwed“) about how he’s unemployed and afraid for his wife and children’s lives.

About killing Bin Laden, he says:

And I remember as I watched him breathe out the last part of air, I thought: Is this the best thing I’ve ever done, or the worst thing I’ve ever done? This is real and that’s him.

If you’ve watched the recent film Zero Dark Thirty then you already have a picture in your head about how this killing went down. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s about how they found Bin Laden and how they killed him.

The movie ends with a similar sentiment as The Shooter’s above quote. In the last scene of ZD30, Jessica Chastain, who plays Mya the CIA agent who’s spent the last 12 years and her entire CIA career hunting down Bin Laden, boards an empty plane. In the last few moments before the movie ends something interesting happens.

After Mya sits down in the empty plane, she cries. It’s possible she’s finally shedding happy tears, or mourning the friends she lost in the war, or she’s simply having a cathartic moment. But I want to suggest an alternative interpretation to the moment, to the movie, and to the real life story that’s closely aligned to the questions of The Shooter.

I believe Mya is doubting whether it was all worth it. The years, the lives lost, the resources expended, and the eventual anti-climatic feeling of elation mixed with disgust.

Hunting down a man in order to kill him, regardless of his crimes, I think, will always force one to question the purpose of the particular/personal death, especially when the hunt comes at a great worldly cost.

Was this the best thing to ever happen to Mya? Or the worst?

I think the movie and the real life story want us to wrestle with the latter. In real life, Mya’s character did cry when she saw Bin Laden’s body. I think I would too if finding him was my life’s work.

This is not a question of whether or not a mastermind behind mass-murder should be brought to justice, that goes without saying. But the collateral damage becomes something more than ever imagined. It’s fair we ask the question. And then ask more questions…

Violence, in its many forms, raises for us questions about evil in our world that we would rather avoid asking. If we believe in a God, why does our God allow such evil to exist? If we believe in peace, when is it proper to resort to the violence of war? If we believe in a state of social equilibrium called justice, how do we restore it after violence has created chaos? (Tom Palaima, Higher Education)

As the Esquire article narrates, how does a Navy SEAL create a civilian/family life after war? As Zero Dark Thirty suggests, what’s a worthy life goal besides hunting down a man? And what we must consider about our own world, how do we restore it?

Conversations With My Novel In The Middle Of The Night

8 May 2012

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Do you have conversations with your book? Jim Behrle does,

Over my bed, or the thing I call my bed which used to be a couch but is kinda now more of a cot, suddenly bathed in an unnatural moonlight, is a seven-foot book with arms and legs. It’s a hardcover with a shiny commercial trade book cover. The title is set in a silvery font that jags and blurs out a little, like frost. It reads: THE COLDEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR. This was the title of a play the Drama Guild of my high school wrote and performed about homeless people for a one-act play competition. We didn’t win, but I always liked that title. I always wanted to use it for a kind of hard-boiled thriller thing. So here it is, looking down at me in the middle of the night as I lie awake worrying about writing it. Except this book is bigger than me and has huge, unblinking “Simpsons”-character eyes. And a vague look of frustrated disgust across its mouth. It even has an arched eyebrow. It lifts a lit cigar to its teeth and squints.

—So how am I coming along?

It even speaks without scare quotes, like one of those soulless characters in a Cormac McCarthy novel. The kind that kill people with like a special silver spork they’ve had made out of the cavity fillings of all their victims.

I’ll never look at my black moleskine notebook the same. And I’ll never turn my back to it  either. Or look it straight in the eye. It’s always judging me.

What’s your book saying?

Could an educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, be difficult to lie to?

20 March 2012

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Epitomizing most of our childhoods.

An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country. Most of our politicians and their political advisers and lobbyists would find themselves unemployed, and so would the gasbags who pass themselves off as our opinion makers. Luckily for them, nothing so catastrophic, even though perfectly well-deserved and widely-welcome, has a remote chance of occurring any time soon. For starters, there’s more money to be made from the ignorant than the enlightened, and deceiving Americans is one of the few growing home industries we still have in this country. A truly educated populace would be bad, both for politicians and for business.

(via NYR)

This of course assumes that stupid Americans will believe anything they’re told, which isn’t true. And I don’t even want to call it lying. Is it a lie when one believes what they’re saying? It’s more storytelling than lying. And the better stories will receive the largest audience.

I wouldn’t base future democratic intelligence on the stupidity of the populace, but on who is telling the better stories. I like stories with vision and hope and justice. Those are stories I cherish.

Obama was reported as saying he blamed Fox news for him losing white males. Perhaps Fox tells a better story. A story white males accept and trust and understand. It makes sense to them. (Not to me of course.)

But politics is the least needed place for better stories. We need better stories in our families, our marriages, our communities, our churches, our schools. Not stories of fear, but of courage, of new life, of love.

People need stories in order to grasp the inexplicable, to cope with their fate

18 January 2012

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This gets to the heart of the matter. “People need stories in order to grasp the inexplicable, to cope with their fate,” Mak wrote. “The individual nation, with its common language and shared imagery, can always forge those personal experiences into one great, cohesive story. But Europe cannot do that. Unlike the United States, it still has no common story.”

[...] The European Union has constructed common institutions, laws, and even a currency. It has created all the symbols of a nation-state, including a burgundy passport that places “European Union” above one’s own nationality, and a flag, even if it is only voluntarily waved at the Ryder Cup golf championships. It even has an anthem: Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” though it doesn’t have lyrics and most Europeans don’t know it is their anthem. What it lacks is a people who share a common culture, language, or narrative — or at the very least are able to identify with the political construct that has been created in their name.

–(Gareth Harding)