The photo on the mantle

“And once again to our honor roll . . .” says Jim Lehrer. So, take a deep breath, brace for the blows. How many this time? Five or six or seven are the norms this bloody month, it seems. This time, Lehrer puts the count at 23, a fist in the belly.

The silent screen tolls off 23 names, ranks, ages, hometowns under the photos of young men. All men this day, all gone. Twenty-three more despairing families left to dispose of ruined dreams, left to wonder what light their sons might have brought to the dim and cloudy days to come.

The generals and admirals will retire to Hilton Head and Tucson and Colorado Springs to play golf, sail and consult for handsome fees. The Pentagon suits who once happily showered billions on the Threat Industry will pass through the revolving door to spend a few rewarding years on the receiving end of the money pipeline.

Sitting in a darkened family room somewhere in rural Illinois, a father will stare at the image of the young man in the frame over the fireplace. He'll wonder if a granddaughter might have had green eyes, strawberry blonde hair and a bright smile like her daddy. He supposes that a grandson might have been a southpaw, like his dad and his grandpa. He'll wonder if those grandkids would have liked the little bedtime stories he would have told them. What would have been their names?

As this father sits in the gloom at the end of another day, behind his sad eyes is one more question. It took up permanent residence there, crouching in the blackness, the moment they handed his weeping wife the folded flag on that awful day. The question was etched there by the glint of the rosewood casket, fixed by the smell of burning gunpowder from the rifles.

It is now, as it will always be, the awful question a dead soldier's parent dares not ask.

Will this only end in the streets?

A generation of Americans has grown up believing that ordinary people take to the streets only for Mardi Gras, Labor Day and neighborhood garage sales. This generation knows nothing of uprisings to protest war, massive civil disobedience to battle oppression and discrimination, migrations and marches to reverse cruel economic policies. All have occurred in the United States in the lifetime of this writer, but not in any major way since the 1970s.

For a time, I believed we were past all that in this country. After the Nixon hoods were trundled off, and then again when Reagan's subversive hooligans were exposed, it seemed Americans understood how criminals can insinuate themselves into our governments and our lives in the guise of public service.

I believed our people were smart enough, alert enough, well enough informed, to prevent that from happening to us again.

I was wrong. The syndicate running our federal government commits high crimes and misdemeanors daily. Each new revelation of malfeasance comes to light even before we have absorbed the last. The tipping point for a people's revolt is approaching. The streets will fill again with anger.

Our national machinery has been taken, piece by piece, by an undemocratic one-party thugdom which defines its achievements in bribes, contracts, global power schemes, capitalist alliances, concentration of wealth, brutal social policies, repression of dissent and always — always! — a relentless stream of propaganda.

The ideals of the common good, the greater benefit for the common man, the ethical social contract to preserve human dignity for the least among us — none of this matters to Washington's 21st Century princes of power. They scoff at these principles and insist the world has grown too complex, too dangerous, for such old-time whimsy as representative government.

To such people, the common man is a source of cheap labor — nothing less, nothing more.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

— Samuel Adams, 1 August 1776, speech at the Philadelphia State House   
— March 2006