How can we embrace not just those parts of ourselves we are proud of, and would like to be known by, but also—and especially—those parts of ourselves we are not proud of, and would not like to be known by?
Read moreWounding Warriors: Their Own Wounds That Time Can't Heal (4)
As I have said before here, the issue is not to engage in some comparison of atrocities, trying to decide which atrocity was worse, which nation guilty of the most or worst crimes. We should have no patience for the disgusting business of drawing such comparisons, trying to establish the victor in the race of nations into moral depravity. That is not in the least the issue.
Read moreWounding Warriors: Their Own Wounds That Time Can’t Heal (3)
I have never killed any children, either intentionally—whether under orders or not—or by accident. Nor have I ever stood by and watched while others did such killing. But I certainly have done things of which I am far from proud, and I have suffered at the knowledge of my deeds. What is more, I will even disclose, share, and confess that I can understand how it is possible to do even such things as such vets themselves once did.
Read moreWounding Warriors: Their Own Wounds That Time Can’t Heal (2)
A news-piece appeared in the “Science News” section of The New York Times for July 7, 2016, under the byline of Jane E. Brody, and was entitled “War Wounds That Time Can’t Heal.” Beneath that title came this one-sentence blurb: “Moral injury resembles post-traumatic stress disorder, with an added burden of guilt.”
Read moreWounding Warriors: Their Own Wounds That Time Can’t Heal (1)
One idea that I find germinating in my own thoughts is that I might do something under some title such as ” ‘Forgetting Ourselves’: Poetry and the Obligation of Remembrance.” In that context, one thing I would want to do is to play upon the ambiguity of the American expression, “forgetting oneself,” which can have both a negative and a positive connotation.
Read moreRemembering Ourselves
...to remind Americans of just who they really are, given their own bloody history—who they for far too long have been, and are called upon to stop being and, in fact, to atone for having been.
Read moreA Brief Reflection on Remembrance for Veterans Day
Some in the United States have said that Mr. Kerrey is also a victim—of an unjust war and disastrous leadership—but such a claim seems ironic, if not outright ludicrous, when one compares Mr. Kerrey’s prominence to the obscurity in which the survivors of the attack he lead and the relatives of those killed now live. His life and career have barely been impeded, except for any personal regrets. Indeed, as Mr. Kerrey was once in Vietnam as an expression of United States power, he now arrives in a different guise but still as a symbol of Western influence, this time as a leader of a university.
Read moreRemembering the Third Reich American Style (6)
Discrimination” ceases to mean the systemic subordination of the social, economic, and political interests of an oppressed population by an oppressing one. Instead, it comes to mean no more than individualized inclinations of anyone in general against anyone else of a different religion, county of origin, sex, sexual orientation, ethnic group, economic status, or whatever.
Read moreRemembering the Third Reich American Style (5)
We need to learn how to listen to our emotions—and also how to address them, if we are to move ourselves together to act wisely and well. Unless we do, populism degenerates into demagogy, and democracy is lost.
Read moreRemembering the Third Reich American Style (4)
It is by just such semantic means that we are all robbed even of any voice and vocabulary to report—even, and most especially, to ourselves—the robbery of our very freedom, let alone to protest against it.
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