Last night in my household was difficult. The Pennsylvania results sent me into a state of virtual despondency, and a pall descended over an otherwise frenetic and vibrant family normally quickened by the optimism of the two young college-aged adults in residence. We were indeed a sad lot, until a most extraordinary thing occurred.
As I sat licking my wounds and despairing for the future of our Republic, my son and I suddenly found ourselves completely transfixed by a late-night PBS airing of David Haig's excellent anti-war drama, My Boy Jack.
Quite by happenstance, and perhaps even by grace, two generations experienced simultaneously a reminder of exactly why we are joined together in this battle and why we will see it through to the finish.
I will not discredit Haig's excellent screenplay by providing a poor precis here. Suffice it to say that the play is a dramatization of the events leading to the tragic death of John Kipling in the battle of Loos in 1915. It proved to be a transformative event in the life of Nobel Prize winning writer, and Imperialist poster boy, Rudyard Kipling, where the myopic and sometimes chauvinistic patriotism of this paragon of English bourgeois decency and rectitude was challenged to its limits.
The play speaks for itself and is a powerful testament to the folly of imperialism and the personal toll it exacts from its defenders. Watching it last night, my son and I breached the thirty-year divide between us, and for a moment were as one mind in the overwhelming realization of why government exists at all and what constitutes a human commonwealth.
Kipling lost his way by confusing the hubris of power with the righteousness of cause and the superiority of race. And, in the end, it cost him the only real and precious thing he had -- his future.
It is a metaphor for our current situation, and it is the common thread which binds two generations in my household.
Despite last night's temporary setback in the cause, we remain convinced that history does not condemn every generation to repeat the mistakes of its forebears. The Age of American Imperialism does not have to end with the sacrifice of a whole generation as a reparation for our manifold sins and wickedness. We can learn from men like Kipling, who were forced to examination of their consciences only through the most exacting of tribulations.
The cause, for me and for my son, is justice. That is why we came together for Barack Obama, and that is why we will see it through to the bitter end. The alternative is an Establishment too blinded by its own arrogance and corruption to see the folly of its ways and the ultimate disaster of its course.
Perhaps the moribund communities of the Rust Belt are satisfied with things as they as now, but we are determined to avert the consequences of the juggernaut which was set in motion many decades ago by an Establishment which apparently now believes the jingoistic propaganda it employs to mollify its masses.
I cannot speak for others, but I will not sacrifice my son on the altar of some mistaken national pride, nor will I mortgage his future for the perpetuation of a system so far removed from the very people it was created to protect.
Thank you, David Haig, for helping us make it through last night.