not so grounded

War Junkie

I just joined goodbooks.com and sharing my first book review. 

Early one Saturday morning when I was ten one of my dad's parishioners rode his bicycle with his infant son over for breakfast.  Apparently I was the only one awake, answering the door in my jammies with sleep still in my eyes, and we talked a good while, watching his son play.  I kinda remember the morning, or more accurately, I remember the wide front porch, the part of our circular gravel drive where he undoubtedly parked his bike and the way the early morning sun cast gold and silver light through the trees.  The man's name was Dennis then, 10 years older, and mostly I remember he hung out at our house a lot for awhile and gave me Stevie Wonder's InnerVisions album (which I still think is brilliant). 

Forty years later my mom forwarded an out-of-the-blue email my parents received from that same man, renamed Jon and the author of this book. He'd found my folks online, and in the course of several emails he described a breathless, jaw-dropping, sometimes horrifying, yet always magically inspiring series of decades.  And he thanked my parents for rescuing him all those years ago from a certain kind of death (whether literal or figurative I'm still not sure).

We are friends now, Jon and I.  I thanked him for offering a richer glimpse of my young parents, when I was too little to see them as real people. And for the Stevie Wonder album.  He replied with the memory of our conversation on that porch.  We keep up with each other, although as a quiet, ordinary, unknown writer I think I get more benefit from his encouragement than he gets from me.  He and his wife share a lovely life beneath an ancient belltower in a peaceful European city.  His novel, The Watchers, is due out shortly, and he is busy writing its sequel.

I cannot read more than a few pages of War Junkie without beginning to cry and returning it to my bedside table untouched for many weeks.  This is the story of global madness.  Jon opens with his own breakdown, witness to one too many tragedies, and in the self-deprecating self-awareness only a saint could posses, he softens the reader's journey through unspeakable horrors by allowing us to ride along more safely in his story as an addict to such circumstances.

But don't be fooled.  He describes his own descent, but he illuminates the world's insanity.  As a result, he may very well be the sanest and most courageous person I know, for he experienced this madness without filters, living events, perpetrators, victims and himself in stark real-time.  Then he wrote about it.  And finally, recognizing that ultimately all aspects of war are merely dangerous and destructive games, he bravely walked away.  He allowed his own being, maybe his own soul, to embody this madness long enough to experience and express its true darkness.  And now having claimed a different life, he's turning that darkness into light.

Happy Election

A Frenchman recently explained he was striking against the increased retirement age, in part, to avoid becoming like the U.S. I remain utterly bewildered that Americans still fight against things our international peers take for granted:  free universal healthcare, excellent k-12 education for all children, free university education, strong consumer-safety policies, commitment to global environmental protections and foreign policies that protect - not endanger - their citizens.

Save the Seed Bank

I'm shell-shocked that we have to sign a petition to preserve the world's first & most precious seed bank, but ...

Proficient at the sport of killing

Listening to Democracy Now on yesterday's long drive home, an active soldier nails it with harrowing eloquence.

Active soldier, Afghanistan vet and currently applying for conscientious objector status, BROCK McINTOSH: ... I was watching the World Cup a couple weekends ago, and I made a joke: why don’t we just settle conflict with sports, with soccer? And my friend was like, "Because then America would lose," because we’re not very good at soccer. And I realized that what we’re really good at is war and that there’s really not much of a difference between the sport of war and the sport of soccer, because in both cases values are irrelevant. It doesn’t matter who’s more righteous, who has the better values. What matters is who has the best skills at this particular sport. And being proficient at the sport of killing is not something that I want to be proficient at, and I don’t believe that being good at killing proves that I have better values.

Radicalizing the G20

I'm thinking about Charlie Wilson's War. For most of the movie Congressman Wilson creates a tidal wave of excited support for covertly training & arming various Afghan forces until they successfully drive out the Soviets.  But in the movie's final scenes he couldn't interest his colleagues in the follow-up -- rebuilding schools, roads & bridges, and helping with all the vital, but bland, infrastructure necessary to rebuild after war.

I'm worried I'll do the same this post-election, that I'll return to complacency now that my anxiety of the last 8 (or maybe 28) years subsides.  That I'll get disinterested or confused or too overwhelmed by the complexities our own re-building requires and retreat.  

So as one way to fight the urge, I'm forcing myself to think about the G20 that's been meeting this week, ostensibly to reshape the global financial markets, hinting at improving the global economic system.  I'm not an economist or an expert in any related field.  But I'm putting my vision out there, as naive & uninformed & potentially silly as it might be.

Here's what I think should be included in a new global economy:

• No one on this planet should ever have trouble finding enough healthy food & water.
• Everyone should have a comfortable place to live. 
• Everyone should have access to a good education.
• Health should be a priority and option available to everyone, utilizing what every culture -- old & new -- has learned about finding & maintaining it.
• Countries should be allowed to participate freely in a global system of trade & commerce only if they abide by certain conditions:   (a) their business laws demand protection of human & animal rights, environmental sustainability, as well as profitability; (b) their citizens are guaranteed free healthcare (physical & mental), education, and basic protections from poverty, homelessness, and social isolation; (c) they adopt a holistic way of measuring "progress" that expands from our narrow Gross National/Domestic Product (emphasizing consumption, mass production & markets, and money) to a broader array of indicators, like well-being, happiness, health, vitality, community building, sustainability, as well as security, comfort, and abundance; (d) a mandated 20/25-hour work week, minimum 5-weeks paid vacation, lengthy paid family leave; (e) domestic fiscal policies that encourage full-employment.  Countries that don't abide simply can't play.  
• Our financial systems should be fully transparent, violators sanctioned quickly, and the rest of us encouraged & rewarded for doing good work, preferably work we enjoy & that others find valuable.

There you go.