“We are a naïve society.”
I met Sergeant Kalif Abdul back in the mid 80s. I’m not sure that I remember exactly how he phrased it but it stuck with me as “We are a naïve society.” Sergeant Abdul was probably the blackest Marine I had ever had the pleasure to work with. He had immigrated to America from somewhere in Africa. Nigeria and Kenya are the countries that rattle around in my head. I could be wrong on both counts but it doesn’t really matter.
He spoke flawless English with a distinctly African accent. Profanity never sprang from his tongue. He also spoke at least three other languages. Perhaps that’s where he stored his profanities. Sergeant Abdul could have been featured on any recruiting poster: Mentally sharp, physically imposing and damned good at his job. Along with “We are a naïve society” his other frequent utterance, when speaking of his adopted country was: “Never cease to amaze.” Sergeant Abdul’s perspective on life clearly had not been distorted by a personal history of American abundance, convenience and entitlement.
I thought of Sergeant Abdul recently while sitting in my car in the parking lot, outside Wally World, waiting for my logistics coordinator to return with the supplies necessary to ward off any potential micro-famine. Weather conditions could not have been better: temperature right around 70, perfectly blue skies with a few high and scattered cirrus clouds. A gentle breeze blew through my open window. On the island beside my parking space a tired looking shrub was pushing forward its first small white blossoms of the season – Corporate’s rather lame attempt at beautification, I suppose.
When I park outside Wally World I try to choose a spot that provides an unobstructed view of the entrance and the approaches to it. Ideally, the position will also lend itself to rapid extraction and egress when the time comes. Having established my observation post, I watch. I watch for the return of my logistics coordinator. And I watch the comings and goings of the stream of humanity with its baggage of wariness, anxiety, depression, narcissism and such. I watch them first being devoured by, then disgorged from the mouth of the cavernous consumer monster.
Yes, the economy has certainly taken a hit since the evil Alpha left Washington. Hitting some harder than others. Still, I see no indication that UNICEF is about to spring into action. America continues to be a country where obesity is an ever expanding problem regardless of economic status.
The relative quiet that had existed to that point, was abruptly interrupted by loud, animated voices a few spaces south of my position. I could not see the source of the commotion nor make out any of what was actually being said. My first thought was: Probably friends having a jolly time.
I was wrong.
Someone, somewhere, somehow had apparently committed some intolerable offense that someone else could not allow to pass unaddressed. I had heard no crunch of metal so ruled out a fender bender. Did someone take someone else’s parking space? Did someone not return their carriage to the carousel? Did someone take too long getting a baby situated? Who knows?
A voice grew louder and came closer.
In the next moment a middle aged woman came into view on my flank. She was shouting uncomplimentary instructions and tossing unfriendly gestures over her shoulder. This self-appointed guardian of public decorum continued in this manner, insuring she got in the last word, until she too was devoured by the consumer monster. When relative quiet resumed I got to thinking:
When you break it down to its absolute simplest terms, isn’t that really what wars ultimately come down to — Who gets the last word. The only difference being, in war, the people most hotly pursuing the last word are never the ones doing the bleeding and dying. Then I imagined our decorum guardian, or someone similar of righteous temperament, waving a banner in an anti-war demonstration and being similarly decorous in expressing their particular discontent.
You gotta love human nature: so full of contradiction and paradox, seldom entirely consistent, and always manifesting on a spectrum of virtue and vice.
The monster disgorged my logistics coordinator. We loaded the supplies into the rear of the transport vehicle and without further delay we egressed from the zone and headed east. My thoughts drifted to the children hauling water from the village well outside Kabul.
Never cease to amaze.
Uncle Grumpus