We in the white middle have had a luxury here. Even though we are outraged we have not felt ourselves to be at war. In peace there is room to disagree; in peace we value and respect the other reasoned opinion. But in war there is no nuance, no room for dialog: you are either friend or enemy. If I ask you to help, you better say ‘Yes’ or else. That’s war.
We went to a book signing tonight, innocently enough, and walked into a war. Actually, the war had been raging all around us for decades; we just hadn’t felt it. We walked into the awareness of war.
Our nation as an institution has negatively affected our southern neighbors, Mexico, Haiti, Cuba and others, for decades if not centuries, regardless of what you have been told. We economically profit from their poverty, their instability, by being more free to take the resources from them we wish through invasion or international law. Our border with Mexico has been more and less open, more and less humane, more and less a battlefield in these centuries for those economically ravaged people having the desperation to try to enter our country.
If things go badly long enough for one group without a redress of grievances, there’s war. In the French Revolution, the only question the people had was, “Were you rich? Did you own property?” Eventually, when all the rich were caught, the question was, “Were you friends with those rich people?” That was it. You were dead.
During our nation’s history, if you were a soldier for the enemy in any war, we might kill you or imprison you, but we would not have a dialog with you as long as the war was enduring. That would be treasonous. Being considerate would only be allowed if you were a prisoner, and even then it might be frowned upon. After the war we would likely place a burden upon you to work off your shame for having been a soldier for the enemy, perhaps forcing you to clean up the battlefield or bury the dead that you helped kill. It would be a long while before we were comfortable having a dialog with you.
How long would it be before you allowed an enemy from your war to write a book about his part as your enemy, a book about how the war was hard for him? Would you allow him to sell this book for profit and to speak in honor in your home town? No? You may then understand the outrage at the book signing event for the border patrol officer who has become a thoughtful author, a man who became circumspect in his job, who took his mother’s warning about losing his soul and left the border to write a book.
You may have noticed that we can not reach those who hate us. These last years, decades even, when the republicans/conservatives have broken all rules of normalcy to obstruct societal progress, be it through redistricting, voter suppression, the fight against women’s rights, the denial of a rightful Supreme Court nominee, the willful turning to a foreign power to gain the presidency, the attack on the free press, and jingoism as a foreign policy, they have been at war. We with our openness to other cultures and norms, our tolerance of all but the intolerant, our equal rights to all religions, have apparently hurt them, squeezed them so badly, scared them so deeply, that they now feel themselves at war with us. The rules no longer matter to them, only winning. That’s how war can be. Using every means possible short of warfare, we have appealed to their decency, their morality, in vain.
There are civilians in war. If you can’t imagine it, you can see scenes of war in film where civilians find themselves amid a battle, find themselves exposed on a street between warring parties. These people can certainly face the soldiers with open hands, say, “Come now. Let’s be reasonable,” and look surprised as they are shot dead in the street. Believing that you are not at war does not make it true that you are not in a war.
How was it that the soldiers forced to fight in Viet Nam came home to find that they were seen as enemies to the peace movement, sellouts to youth and liberty? How long was it before they could honorably write and profit from their experiences? We don’t easily forgive. When the sex offender, or even the convict, has completed his sentence, do we call them rehabilitated (that quaint term) and allow them free access to our world?
We are in a war, life and death, though we have (most of us) had the privilege to not feel ourselves a part of the war. The bullets are flying none the less. The very earnest and disciplined protesters at the book signing one by one, apparently solitary but actually in coordination, expressed their outrage, expressed clearly and loudly their conviction that this man, recently joined militarily with their enemy, was not welcome in this city, not welcome to reasoned dialog, certainly not welcome to profit from the death and suffering of the desperate people forced by economic necessity to flee to our beacon of wealth. I, with my middle position, could see his effort to do right, his attempt to sort out his feelings, to stand in public and take the scorn rightly thrown at him. And I saw how I would have felt if I had been harassed, threatened, or arrested for trying to ease the suffering of those people lost and dying in our desert, if I had seen the border patrol following orders that cause the deaths of people that already have so little hope.
White supremacists in and out of government are attacking non-whites, corporations through their congressmen are stealing and dispoiling the wealth of our world, and a man who has worked in the border patrol can not speak at a book signing for the purpose of making a profit regardless of how we in the privileged middle might think he deserves the right to speak. Our disbelief in violence has no effect whatsoever on the war as it rages.