Time to end our domestic wars

According to today's edition of The Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1865 that the Civil War came to a formal end. Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, surrendered, and the last Confederate army ceased to exist. The war that cost 620,000 American lives was over.

How appropriate would it be if, on this anniversary, we brought to an end our own current civil war, before it gets worse? Watching riot-equipped (how apt) militarized police, joined by national guard troops, with the recent threat from The Dark Side in the White House to use US military against US civilians, brings us frighteningly close to a rekindling of hostilities that were declared ended more than 150 years ago. We know the embers of that conflict have smoldered and occasionally been fanned back into flames from time to time but we hope this will not become one of those times. Remember, as William Stafford tells us "Every war has two losers." In that volume he also asks:

“Those who champion democracy, but make a fetish of never accepting anything they don't agree with -- what advantage do they see in democracy?”

do we need more veterans of our domestic wars?

Photo by J. Harrington

It was 50 years ago this year that national guard troops shot and killed four unarmed students at Kent State and wounded nine others. Charges against the 8 guardsmen were eventually dismissed. Even had justice been served, lives lost could not be restored nor wounds inflicted healed without scars. Is that really what we as a society seek? Do we insist that our version of "democracy" be enforced by military action? Doesn't that turn democracy into a charade? Isn't gerrymandering another form of corrupting democracy? Our current deep and dramatic fall from world leadership seems warranted if a nominal "leader of the free world(?)" maintains authority over us at the point gun barrels held by our fellow citizens. Vlad must be absolutely gleeful at the way we're attacking each other, instead of repairing the climate we've broken. Soon there will be so little of real value left that there will be nothing left worth protecting. Our sense of priorities is short-sighted and counter-productive.

No, I do not believe either arsonists nor those who, in the name of "restoring peace," perpetrate excessive and unwarranted force against civilians should be allowed to "get away with it." I was born and raised in Boston, within sight of the harbor where the tea was thrown at the one and only legitimate Tea Party. I have, many times, walked the Freedom Trail. I once was proud to call myself an American. Not so much these days. We have had many opportunities to create a more just and equitable society during my lifetime. Our efforts have been insufficient and have failed. It is past time to restructure the systems on which we depend for "law and order" and for governance. Rebuilding what we have had won't lessen the frictions that keep the embers of our civil conflicts smoldering.

I will again make obvious my advancing age and liberal leanings by recommending that many of those who think they are winning, or will win, the current conflicts spend time listening, on a repeating loop, to this Stones classic from their album "Let It Bleed." Then, perhaps, we can all visit and celebrate

At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border

By William E. Stafford

This is the field where the battle did not happen,

where the unknown soldier did not die.

This is the field where grass joined hands,

where no monument stands,

and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,

unfolding their wings across the open.

No people killed—or were killed—on this ground

hallowed by neglect and an air so tame

that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

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