My son forwarded me one of those emails. You know the ones, they are designed to try and get an emotional response and to shut off your brain.
It is not so much that you disagree with the email, it's just that it is manipulative.
This one was about Veterans, about how they are the ones who gave us everything good in this country. You know, because none of this would be possible if they had not fought.
And it is annoying because you never get these emails about the brilliance of the judiciary or great immigrants of history. That would encourage people to think like liberals I imagine.
Still my son sent this to me for a very sweet reason and it made my day.
cross over the dotted line and read my response to him.
My poor younger son. He has a liberal Mom. He's a democrat and he votes that way. But for years he has been involved in his fraternity and his political views aren't exactly compatable with his peers.
I have to say for him that he is kind of a renaissance frat boy. When he was pledge master he would not allow hazing. He also banned a kid from his presense for making cracks about gay people, telling him that his "uncles" in Florida would be hurt if they knew he was allowing people to make bigoted remarks around him. Then for good measure he also said "and don't think I will tolerate bigoted remarks about black people either, my best friend is from Zimbabwe". He kept up the ban until the kid promised to never do it again.
All the years he was there he also tried to encourage less drinking and more charity work.
Several years ago his house burned down due to a furnice explosion. Ian and one other boy were there that weekend. He woke up, covered his face with a towel, ran up the stairs and busted the kid's door down, woke him up and basically saved his life. Ian lost everything because the fire starte right under his room. No one but the boy's parents ever thanked him.
But the alumni love him. He has been sponsored for several national conventions and was depended on to do the fund raiser to build their new house which they move in to last year.
I am very proud of my son. But I have to wonder what it is like for him to have an opinionated liberal mother who has political views he is not really sure he totally agrees with.
Never the less, when he sent me this email, I couldn't help but respond with a big old lecture about liberal politics. And it occured to me that we have sent a reality into the future that will effect our children's lives long after we are gone. It doesn't feel so good and we can not put this particular Geni back in the bottle.
To understand the email to Ian you need to know that Jack was my room mate/companion and best friend. He came in to our life when Ian was still in High School. He died of cancer two years ago. You can read about him here
So here is the email I sent him. His words to me were "this made me think of Jack".
Thanks Honey. I have been thinking a lot about Jack lately. He would be so happy that democrats may be able to take back the house and put some brakes on the bush aggenda and endless war in Iraq.
One of the things that turned him from a republican to an independent and finally to a democrat was learning from the kids who worked under him in Viet Nam. When Jack joined the military in 1960 there was no draft. When those younger men, the draftees, started showing up in the late 60s, dying for a war we could not win, it effected Jack very deeply. He began to wonder why even one more had to die. No, even on the battle ship New Jersy he did not have to watch anyone die next to him. North Viet Nam didn't have a Navy and was never sucessful in hitting his ship with any sort of large guns they might have tried to use. But he ended up with PTSD anyway due to the constant gun fire rocking the ship and being woken at all hours of the night by a siren, having to go on deck and having the guns go off all around him.
The kids on his ship (most of them younger than you) told of their friends who were army and marines who were dying "incountry" . By that time Jack was in his late 20s, early 30s. He looked at the young men who were 18, 19 years old and he could not justify in his mind dragging them away from home to serve in Viet Nam.
After that he always had a love/hate relationship with his time in the Navy. He was proud of serving, felt a real bond with his ship mates but was very angry at what he was asked to serve for. He left the Navy feeling we never should have gone to Viet Nam and deeply angry about the death of 58,000 american kids and the maiming of countless others.
Ian it just occured to me that here we are 40 years later and we are still dealing with the consequences of that war. In 40 years when you are in your 60s you will still be dealing with the aftermath of this one. I hope it does not go on for 10 years killing as many of your peers as died in Viet Nam.
A lot of young people, your peers, are coming back missing arms and legs and with severe brain injuries. Some of them are going to live for the rest of their lives with Post traumatic stress disorder and other emotional and mental problems.
I pray that your generation is smarter than mine and can find a way to bridge the gap between those who believe this war was wrong and those who want to believe that they were fighting to protect america. Then there are those who understand it really is just about their buddies on the ground and trying to keep each other safe. I think that group is the group who is most likely to come away from this with their lives in tact.
That this can happen is why we must always protect our service members and make sure they are not used to fight an unjust war. And in particular, guerilla wars in countries where we are not wanted can NEVER be won. Eventually we are going to leave there in defeat. I wish it were not so, but I believe Iraq is going to fall in to the hands of religious fundamentalists and it will be many many years before Iraq is anything but the hell we have created for those poor people to live in.
Ask your Dad, he and I have discussed this. We were the tail end of our generation, too young to go to Viet Nam but old enough to have left our middle school classroom and done out little bit to protest. We had the long hair and we believed that love could change the world. We were the little brothers and sisters of those who most remember what happened in Viet Nam, who internalized the lessons but never paid the price directly, rather lived with seeing our older friends suffer and die.
We thought we changed the world but we did not. Now we are counting on you guys, the "Millenials" to do what we could not. I hope you know what extrordinary time you are living in and what opportunity you have to change the world for the better.
Yes Jack was that old man gazing at the flag, old before his time. He lived in extrordinry times too. The 14 year difference in our ages made him a whole different generation from your Dad and I. He had more in common with your Grandfather George in WW2 or your Grandfather David who was in Korea, than he did with any of your peers or the guys who fought in the first Iraq war.
He spent time in Scotland, did you know that? He was based there for a while and he loved it. He always wanted to go back but he never was able to.
I think God Ian that you and your brother are not serving in the military. I could deal with losing you to a war that was really about saving the nation from terrorism. But this one is not. It's a war about oil, wealth and power and George Bush's ego. Yet I am proud of those of your friends who are serving. They are making the best out of a bad situation and I hope that they can learn the lessons of this war and your generation does not do to your children what we have done to ours. Do not send your children to fight for oil, for profit or for lies.
I love you and thank you for thinking about Jack and sharing that with me. When people die I always worry about two things. I wonder if they had happiness and I worry if people will remember them, if their life had meaning. When you remember Jack you ease that little bit of grief that still lingers with me. In some ways you had a more intimate relationship with him that his own son. He loved you Ian and he did the best he could to be a good friend to both of us and to be a positive force in your life and mine. I wish Ben had known him better.
I love you Sweetheart,
Mom