keep your eyes on the flag and your head in the sand
So John Kerry went to war. He served honorably. He came home disgusted with the horrific and unnecessary loss of life on both sides of the battle. He voiced his anger. He had reason to be angry. After all, 58,219 American soldiers lost their lives in that war. Another 153,356 were wounded. It cost America 111 billion dollars--only a fraction of what we will spend in Iraq, but a staggering sum nonetheless. Surely, history has proven his anger to be justified. Most folks who know anything at all about the Vietnam war will agree that it was a disaster marked by poor conception, worse planning, and a degree of hubris among our military leaders that left many thousands of American and Vietnamese homes ravaged by grief and death. We lost that war. It is not the soldiers' fault either that we fought it or that we lost it. They were merely serving a country that demanded their service. Many believed they were doing the right thing, many questioned their orders, but America gave them no choice: fight and die in Vietnam, or suffer disgrace and jail time at home.
Kerry was one of those soldiers. Because he was and is a thinking man, not a robot, because he is a man who saw how horribly wrong the war was on so many different levels and in so many different ways, he came home and voiced his concern. He did not mince words. He knew that there were tens of thousands of American soldiers who served as well and as ethically as they could under tragic circumstances, and he knew there were some who committed atrocities. No nation, no matter how adamantly it cloaks itself in the veil of God's will, is immune from producing men and women who will are willing to commit evil deeds. One need not look too far into history to see this: have we already forgotten Abu Ghraib?
It seems, however, that many Americans on the eve of this election are condemning Kerry for being a thinking man. Never mind that his opponent never served in Vietnam and refuses to release the records of his own shadowy National Guard service. Never mind that his opponent never saw a moment of combat or saved another soldier's life. Somehow, Bush seems to be getting away with attacking Kerry for serving honorably in a war and then coming home to tell America how terrible war really is. Maybe if Bush had seen war, he would admire John Kerry's courage. Maybe if Bush had lost a leg in Vietnam or a daughter in Iraq, he would understand the terrible price that members of the American military are paying at this very moment. Maybe if he were ever put in the position of attending the funeral of a brother who died in combat, he would think twice about sending tens of thousands of young people into a war zone in which many are sure to die and be maimed.
Those who allow themselves the luxury of not thinking often find comfort in condemning those who do think.
the exercise
The writer is not exempt from civic duty. In some ways, all writing is political in the sense that we cannot entirely extract ourselves from the context of our times. That is not to say that every story or poem has a political slant. Clearly and fortunately, this isn't the case. But we humans are political beings. We cannot help but notice the injustices around us. Writers observe, and then interpret what we see. Some of the most riveting fiction comes from writers engaged in a political struggle: witness Milan Kundera, Chinua Achebe, Gao Xingjian.
Write a story or poem in which there is a clear political context. Politics need not be the driving force behind the piece, and it should not dilute the complexity of the characters or the fullness of the language. It should be there, though, in the background, a presence which leaves its mark, if subtly, on the larger world of the story or poem.
11:45:53 AM 
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