Camouflage

April 16, 2015 
next to of course god america i

               In arguments about what should be done – or should have been done – 
               the Puritans always win, even when they lose – because what they have 
               lost (they wag their heads sadly), so we have all.   – Uncle Albert

This was not an argument, not even a disagreement; it was a divergence of opinion, one bearing right and the other left. It circulated through one of those around-the-office emails, and everyone will decide sooner or later to put his or her oar in. 

i. American Sniper 
 It began with one bewailing that the University of Michigan, with which none of us has any link nearer than a sister’s husband’s brother’s son's girlfriend – bewailing that the University had canceled the screening on campus of American Sniper, the Clint Eastwood movie about SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. Students had mounted a petition suggesting that the film “sympathized with a mass killer” and promoted “anti-Muslim propaganda”; and the university had caved. Not “one” – let’s give our emailers names, like out of a Sheridan comedy. The emailer, Tickler, had no particular opinion (as if “caved” expressed none); what did any of us think? (For my friend and fellow blogger Tom Nashe’s take on the University’s decisions and the movie, see here.)

     Patronizia thought, in effect, that “caved” was a good word. Who was to be running the place, responsible administrators, of no political bent but only concerned that students should grow up, or the students that hadn’t?

     Because, “You’re right, Pat,” Miles added, the students hadn’t grown up, and they wouldn’t; they didn’t know what true adults, who had seen it, knew about war.  That might not be their fault, but it had made them what they were. They thought “in the aery leaps of soft sophistry that balletic graduate assistants in philosophy had taught them, no sense of the harsh, cruel, physical reality of battle." (I love the way Miles writes when he gets wound up.) But what will they do – on whom will they rely – when the shooting begins - no prelude for a seminar to wrestle with moral considerations and politically correct alternatives?

     “Yes, just what we need always: shoot now, ask questions later.” There I was butting in. You should never enter an email conversation with a smart remark you can’t resist, I know that; but, I added in an email that followed immediately that in any case, the University of Michigan had reconsidered and was showing American Sniper anyway.

There followed two or three quite favorable impressions of the movie. Fairbrother said his son had liked it but didn't think he would; so he hadn't seen it. Tickler, who had, concluded that it wasn’t anti-Muslim really; it wasn’t propaganda of any sort at all; it wasn’t political; it was a personal story, about a man that genuinely believed in what he was doing, his part in war.

     “Killing 160 people,” I wrote, “one-by-one.” I couldn't, can't fathom it.

     Tickler’s response, “How about all at once?” Which I characterized as” a different kind of insanity.”

Miles asked what I thought about the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. Granted it took 80,000 lives instantly and thousands more over time, but military historians generally agree that it shortened the war. (Do they? I don't know. But Miles probably does.) Had we invaded Japan, up to ten times as many lives might have been lost. The point of war, however terrible it is – so, it is never to be entered lightly: the point of war is to end it with as few casualties to your side as possible. What did I think of that?

     What I thought - and I think - is that the kind of history that says we had to do that thing instead of some other, because then the consequences would have been these, is bunk.  We can’t know what would have happened if we had done the other, because we can’t go back and do it. We can’t let the chicken cross the road today, see what’s going to happen tomorrow, then take her back to where she started and not let her go across yesterday.

     Miles: But “we can’t say we have no idea what would have happened if we hadn’t bombed but invaded; in fact, we have a pretty good one.” 
     “Perhaps,” I said, bowing out, partly because I like Miles; he’s a genuinely thoughtful guy, and there aren’t many of them where I work. “Perhaps. I’m not so sure.” 

     What I didn’t add is that when we ask what would have happened had we done this instead of that, our answer is always based on what we think should have happened in the first place. If we believe the bombing of Hiroshima was necessary to shorten the war and save lives, then we won’t build a case for any alternative, we'll dismantle it. If we believe the bombing of Hiroshima was a ghastly mistake, then we tear down the arguments advanced for it; and we argue that there were better alternatives because . . . , pretending we know those alternatives would have led to a better result. In neither case, however, do we have any real idea what would have happened had the bombs not been dropped. The chicken was already across the road, yesterday.

  
ii. Oslo, Norway - New York City, U.S.A.

I am not one of those that worries about his patriotism when he disagrees with the right wing, but my poor friend Rick is. He was telling me, not too long ago, about the time he’d spent in Norway as a child; it’s a story he comes back to, so I had heard it before.

     He was wondering (again) if the year and two summers his family spent there didn’t somehow ruin him as a “patriotic American.”

Puritan ski-jumper

     “Meaning,” I asked, “a jingoist?”

     “Maybe. What I learned those years in the late fifties and earliest sixties: there were people elsewhere, living differently from the way I'd ever lived, who were at least as happy as any I knew at home, and – I couldn’t have put it that way then - they were at least as happy and a damn sight less pretentious or, especially, defensive about it.”

     “These were people that loved their land, which – again, I think now – belonged to them, and maybe was in them, in a way our country didn’t, doesn’t belong to or live in us. They didn’t necessarily think theirs was the greatest place on earth; it was only the best place for them – it was theirs.”

     “They didn’t have to sell it like an insurance policy, stuffed with both guarantees and fine print. They could just show it to you, like a house.”

     “Yes.  Good.  Something very like that.” 
     “I try.”

     “I’ve told you, I know, about how I wept when we left the Oslo harbor, looking back at the Rådhus. Also, how I wept when we saw the Statue of Liberty, entering New York City. And I usually leave the story there, but it’s clearer and clearer that I wept for different reasons.

     “In the first instance, I was leaving something precious behind; in the second, I was enormously proud. And, there’s always something snaky in pride, you realize, when the tears dry.”

My sense is that Rick thinks he may be screwed – patriotism-wise. He might aspire to a Norwegian-style patriotism in the U.S. of A., but it can’t be.  First, even if he could achieve that delight that comes from showing people around a house you love as much for its flaws as its wonders, who (around here) wants that kind of tour? Such a tour isn’t patriotism in an office where the goal is to be salesman of the month. Second, he doesn’t own his house in the same way the Norwegians own theirs anyway; nor will he ever: history, the way we tell it now, won’t let him.

iii. “A tradition like no other”

Speaking of patriotism, or the lack thereof, it would be an overstatement to say I hate The Masters golf tournament; but I watch it with the sound off.  Why, and what that has to do with either American Sniper or the Norwegians’ love of their land – or with Puritans and insurance salesmen: my next post.