On this day in 1864, American generals Grant and Meade
learned a tragic lesson: an entrenched and fanatical enemy can withstand determined
frontal attacks. Will we ever learn?
For the Union, at Cold Harbor that day, the result was some
7,000 Union casualties in less than an hour of fighting. Later, for the “leaders”
who thrust the planet into World War One, the lesson cost the combined
countries some 17 million deaths, 11 million of them associated with the failed
tactic of assaults on entrenched forces.
Our “lightening war” to pacify the Middle East is going on
15 years now and will probably end only when the last few homo sapiens die of thirst.
But we press on, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “boats against
the current.”
We, as a nation, appear to be struggling against that
current. I sense that the America I know is more divided today than it was a
week ago, and more divided than I have seen it since the tragedy of the Vietnam
War.
This week features two opposing forces, as at Cold Harbor. One,
let’s call them The Deniers, is a tightly entrenched group consisting of a “Duke’s
Mixture” of true-believers. Some in the group don’t recognize science as a
source of guidance for a healthy planet. Instead they believe in a supernatural
being who will, eventually, save us from destruction in mystical fashion,
although this has never happened in the history of the earth. They will vote
for any politician, no matter how craven or mendacious, who simply promises to
follow their religious agenda and eschew those of others.
Other members of the group may or may not believe in science
as a proper endeavor. Truth is: they don’t really care as long as it, science,
doesn’t interfere with their goal of exponentially increasing profits, thereby
adding mathematics to the pantheon of truths they ignore.
Another faction has sworn allegiance to a political party,
and would follow it lockstep into a firestorm of destruction that would make
the Battle of the Somme look like a tea party.
Whatever one may think, this group is entrenched and
practically impervious to frontal assault. It has, after all, unimaginable
sources of money at its disposal, and its battalions include massive churches, a
supportive media channel, and popular commentators, on radio, on TV, and in
print. Perhaps, though, its most powerful weapon is its ability to instill and
employ false realities into the minds of so many Americans. “Be afraid,” they
say, “and we will tell you of whom to be afraid. But first, be very afraid.”
On the opposing side are what we might call The Believers.
They trust science to do good. “Look,” they say, “it wasn’t prayer or politics that
eliminated polio as a world-wide terror. It was science.” This group believes
in the power of education. It promotes a diversity of both thought and lifestyle.
“Trust us,” they say.
This group includes its own fanatics. They push the others
into a myriad of unsupportable positions, from denouncing our brave police
officers to denying free speech that doesn’t fit their world view. Also, they
aren’t above denying science when it presents facts concerning such things as the
food they wish to eat.
In short, the Believers are certain they are right. They believe
in the efficacy of logic over emotion.
Ah, logic. This brings me back to Cold Harbor. As our planet
slowly dies, the group of believers, seeing the danger, still attacks with
logic. As the bodies, in a figurative sense, pile up before the belief-structure
breastworks, they attack again and again.
What will we do? I honestly don’t know, and that is why
today I see little chance for healing the breach that threatens us. In olden
days, leaders would sooth us by saying that we only had fear itself to fear, inspire
us by saying that our country was too great—a city shining on a hill—to be
divided, or challenge the “better angels of our nature” to think what we might
do for our country.
We long for such inspiration now, but instead find a social
media outlet filled with taunts, falsehoods, and divisiveness, a dialogue built
upon the boast of “We won. you lost. Now begone with you to losers’ hell,”
hardly a balm for a discordant reality.
That’s where I see us today. Maybe tomorrow …
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| Another day. Another battle. |
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