communal expiation of guilt and sorrow, then the screwing just goes on and on.
And, as with rape, one would need the wisdom of Solomon to judge who is the greater victim, the one who must accept the perversion of a love act or the one who was driven to initiate it.
The analogy with rape is, of course, imperfect. A country decides to go to war. Its citizens acquiesce in the decision, whether they care to admit it or not. Women do not choose to be raped. Yet many Nam veterans share an almost unknowing empathy with those women who have been raped and who must face the silent, looming conspiracy of thought that too often awaits them when they try to return home—after all, it was your fault; after all, it didn’t happen to me.
This value stripping without any concurrent value reinforcement represents one of Viet Nam’s most pernicious legacies. Like the war itself, this phenomenon has affected all Americans. If Viet Nam veterans must grope their way back to stability without any real help, then what conclusion must be drawn about the nation that raised them and sent them? Perhaps there was no help given because no one had any to give.
If such a conclusion is accurate—and there is considerable evidence that it is—then not all of the war’s casualties were injured in the combat zone. Can a nation’s sense of itself suffer multiple fragment wounds? Perhaps so, because in this tense and gloomy country our injured self-image is making us very strange: barren, bottomline materialism stalks the streets, the young listen to lyrics like “all we are is dust in the wind,” and too many people snort, drink, smoke, and inject themselves into a state of forgetfulness.
Dust we might be, but more than dust we have been. We forget our own heritage. To paraphrase the line from Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to understand.”
For while we see accurately, most clearly we do not understand. We Americans are better than our own view of ourselves.
The fire that has powered the engine of America has always burned partly on coal, but mostly on dreams. And the dreams haven’t just been of another car or of a new coat, as some of us have attempted, rather successfully, to convince the rest of us. A large chunk of this country’s coal has been composed of the American Dream of truth and freedom and right and goodness and helping others.
It is a sign of these disturbing times that few Americans would give voice to these private thoughts that many of us have, and it would be a rare politician who could utter them without provoking a rage of ridicule.
But the evidence denying the moral bankruptcy of this nation is incontrovertible: if there were nothing more to America than money, cars, and cocaine, why would so many people feel such a sense of loss?
But Fred, who knows you can’t deposit dreams into a checking account, has an answer to such introspection. “Enough of the heart and flowers. Next you’ll bring out a violin. Everybody has problems, but you assume that yours are the same as the country’s. Stop with the analysis and go out and do something practical. You guys spend more time philosophizing than a Park Avenue shrink.”
While Fred has a point, he is not completely correct: few veterans devote much time to philosophizing. We have our daily bread to earn. In fact, it is the earning of the daily bread that says much about us and the lingering influence of the war.