benign is nothing to brag about
maybe im terminally naive. or maybe im just too gullible.
if so, that would explain why, as a young boy, i so easily believed everything i read, heard and was told about america and the american way even though the way things happened around me was frequently, disturbingly, even disappointingly different.
i remember very clearly watching early morning news broadcasts while getting ready for school (i had just begun second grade), and seeing crowds of furiously angry adults trying to outflank uniformed soldiers in order to attack a few kids who werent much older than i. wondering if someday i was going get off the bus to find myself in a similar situation, i asked my mother what the kids had done to make everyone so mad. when she told some people didnt want them to go to school with their children because they were negroes, i thought...that cant be right.
the only black people id had any contact with were the maids who changed the linens in the hotel where my grandparents lived, and they were all such friendly ladies. furthermore, i had by then been made aware of at least some of the principles on which my country was founded. after making sure mom had the story straight, it quickly occured to me this had to be a fairly easy problem to resolve.
obviously, those people hadnt yet learned one simple fact: in america all people were considered equal. id grasped the concept quickly; there werent even any conditions or exceptions to memorize or apply. this whole misunderstanding could be cleared up in a few hours if someone just passed my insight along to the president. we could be back to normal by tomorrow morning. when my mom didnt drop everything to help me write a letter to good ol ike, it just as quickly occured to me there must be more to this than met the eye.
that was the first of countless often ongoing clashes between what id been told america should be or what america claimed to be and the way it was. only a handful...maybe two handfuls...weirded me out to the same extent as the events in little rock, ark during that autumn when i had just turned seven, but each of them has done some damage.
it hurts me to know the country i love so much is so often not the country it should be and could be;sadly the country i so fervently want it to be seems to the exact country it too frequently prefers to delude itself into believing it is. there are times i wish i could ignore the disconnect like so many others seem to do. after all, even with its flaws, america is at least as good as the best alternative, right?
the problem (its really not a problem tho) is im unwilling and unable to settle for less than i was bequeathed by the brilliant men who so masterfully crafted my country for me two centuries ago.
am i asking for too much?
are we that much less than the generation that brought america into being? possibly. no matter how much one may believe in and support the current administration, its difficult to ignore the huge gap between 'let''s roll' and the most pedestrian single sentence in washington's farwell address to congress. even if the vice-president should somehow be able (and willing) to demonstrate that every thing hes done over the past 4 years has been 100% selfless and done with the best of intentions, hes cloaked so much in such suspicious secrecy he might as well have done all the things hes suspected of doing.
and then there are the abuses in that iraqi prison that are 'understandable' and really not that big a deal compared to pow treatment by the visigoths or the former head of regime in iraq.
but imagine this: during a period of intense, debilitating guerilla attacks on our military--virtually on all fronts--in a location where our presence is fiercely resented despite what weve been told is a mission to improve the lives of a population that seems totally ungrateful and undeserving, a small battle support group notices a disturbing number of civilian casualties. looking closer, it is clearly evident that us military personnel are unleashing their anger and frustration on local residents who are very likely giving aid and comfort to the enemy but who are presently defenseless.
instead of writing the whole horrific scene off or making a mental note to mention these activities to the command at some point in the near future, the group acts as one to halt this abberation, going so far as to put themselves in the line of fire and notify the participants that if they persist, these three men will deem it necessary to open fire on troops that are officially their brothers in arms.
you can stop imagining at this point because all of that actually happened in 1968 in the hamlet of my lai, vietnam.
helicopter pilot hugh thompson, crew chief glen andreotta and doorgunner lawrence colburn stopped a massacre of unarmed villagers by 2 companies of us combat troops and evacuated a number of injured civilians.
it wasnt any easier to do the right thing then than now. unfortunately it took 30 years for the army to recognize this act of heroism. one officer was eventually convicted for his actions relating to the massacre; he was incarcerated for only 3 years.
hugh thompson is a hero but we owe it to ourselves and our country to expect nothing less from everyone in any governmental capacity with even greater levels of performance, dedication and honor demanded from each next-highest station. thats the only way we can bring the america that is into line with an america that we should be.