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Tuesday – Veterans Day
This year my church is sponsoring, as its Sunday Forum, a lecture series based on the Hebrew prophet Micah’s injunction to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly before your god.” Fortuitously, on the Sunday closest to Veterans Day we heard a veteran talk about what the passage means to him. Gene Hart is this year’s seminarian—basically a rector in training—and his talk on “Justice, Mercy, and Humility in the Land of Violence” traced his own evolution into a man who has cares deeply about the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Or put another way, he embraces Jesus’s vision of love for all humanity.
Gene informed us that he hasn’t always thought this way. When he was growing up in rural Georgia, he acknowledged that he had the ingrained racism, misogyny, and homophobia that came with the territory. The military changed that, however, as he served alongside comrades who were female, LGBTQ+, and belonging to various races, ethnicities, and religions. A retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel with over 32 years of distinguished service, Gene served in Bosnia, Israel, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. His bodyguard in Kabul, he reported, was a woman whom he trusted with his life. Now that he has left this profession for the church, Gene is determined to live out his new understanding.
As Gene was talking, I thought about how the armed forces have taken to heart the ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence, so much so that reactionaries like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump are conducting an all-out assault on women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ folk who have advanced in the military. While I know that one finds rightwing bigots in the military, most of the veterans I personally know are like Gene, including one officer—recipient of a bronze star for service in Vietnam—who turned in his medals after he returned from the war and who is appalled at what the United States has become under Trump. And another, who passed two weeks ago, who was passionate about civil rights. A number of protesters who have stood up against ICE, sometimes getting arrested, are veterans. My own father, who served as a military policeman in Munich in the last year of World War II, had his eyes opened by the African American soldier who was paired with him, so that when he returned to the States he worked ardently for racial integration. All these veterans were or are appalled by America’s history of macho white supremacy.
The dream that military enlistment offers a path towards achieving the American DEI dream shows up in Ceremony, by Laguna Pueblo author Leslie Marmon Silko. The novel is about a veteran, Tayo, who survives the Bataan Death March but returns to his reservation with a severe case of PTSD. The healing ceremony he undergoes addresses not only this illness but also the psychological impact of racism on native Americans.
Tayo follows his cousin Rocky into the army after a recuriter assures them that the military is the pathway to equality. “Anyone can fight for America,” he says, before adding—as though he is being wonderfully tolerant–“even you boys. In a time of need, anyone can fight for her.”
A little later in his spiel he tells them,
“Now I know you boys love America as much as we do, but this is your big chance to show it!” He stood up then, as he had rehearsed, and looked them in the eye sincerely. He handed them color pamphlets with a man in a khaki uniform and gold braid on the cover; in the background, behind the figure in the uniform, there was a gold eagle with its wings spread across an American flag.
Initially the dream seems to be working:
The first day in Oakland he and Rocky walked down the street together and a big Chrysler stopped in the street and an old white woman rolled down the window and said, “God bless you, God bless you,” but it was the uniform, not them, she blessed.
After the war, Tayo—drinking with his fellow veterans—articulates their longing to be accepted by white society. I think the passage explains why many minority voters were willing to vote alongside white supremacists for Trump in the last election, but put that aside for the moment. Tayo says that Indians saw the military as their golden ticket out of their inferior status:
One time there were these Indians, see. They put on uniforms, cut their hair. They went off to a big war. They had a real good time too. Bars served them booze, old white ladies on the street smiled at them. At Indians, remember that, because that’s all they were. Indians. These Indians fucked white women, they had as much as they wanted too. They were MacArthur’s boys, white whores took their money same as anyone. These Indians got treated the same as anyone: Wake Island, Iwo Jima. They got the same medals for bravery, the same flag over the coffin.
Then come the rumblings that it may all be an illusion. I wonder if those in the military whom Hegseth has unjustly demoted and fired sensed ahead of time what was coming:
See these dumb Indians thought these good times would last. They didn’t ever want to give up the cold beer and the blond cunt. Hell no! They were America the Beautiful too, this was the land of the free just like teachers said in school. They had the uniform and they didn’t look different no more. They got respect.
When they return from the war, however, the discover nothing has changed:
First time you walked down the street in Gallup or Albuquerque, you knew. Don’t lie. You knew right away. The war was over, the uniform was gone. All of a sudden that man at the store waits on you last, makes you wait until all the white people bought what they wanted. And the white lady at the bus depot, she’s real careful now not to touch your hand when she counts out your change. You watch it slide across the counter at you, and you know! Goddamn it! You stupid sonofabitches! You know!
The civil rights movement in the south was set in motion, in part, by Black war veterans returning from World War II expecting to be treated differently by the country they had served. In “Will V-Day Be Me-Day too?” Langston Hughes addresses white America. The Jim Crow cattle car may be a reference to the Holocaust:
You can’t say I didn’t fight
To smash the Fascists’ might.
You can’t say I wasn’t with you
in each battle.
As a soldier, and a friend.
When this war comes to an end,
Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car
Like cattle?Or will you stand up like a man
At home and take your stand
For Democracy?
That’s all I ask of you.
When we lay the guns away
To celebrate
Our Victory Day
WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO?
That’s what I want to know.
Sincerely,
GI Joe.
Tayo’s war buddies, however, don’t want to hear what he’s dishing out, preferring to blame the truthteller. Tayo realizes that they
spent all their checks trying to get back the good times, and a skinny light-skinned bastard had ruined it….Here they were, trying to bring back that old feeling, that feeling they belonged to America the way they felt during the war. They blamed themselves for losing the new feeling; they never talked about it, but they blamed themselves just like they blamed themselves for losing the land the white people took. They never thought to blame white people for any of it; they wanted white people for their friends. They never saw that it was the white people who gave them that feeling and it was white people who took it away again when the war was over.
Ceremony is powerful in how it shows a healing way forward, not only for Native Americans but for all Americans. At the end of the novel, Tayo opts for non-violence as he builds a new life for himself and for his people.
It seems ironic that an organization like the military would be a driver of the American Dream, but so it has proved in numerous cases, including Gene’s. And now, as we see veterans all over the country running for elected office to save American democracy—this includes Virginia’s recently elected first woman governor—we have reason to hope that what they saw modeled in the armed forces can put us back in touch with our founding ideals.
It’s another reason to thank them for their service.
