One of the great gifts I received for Christmas was several Civil War magazines which I have found wonderful reading. One of the articles deals with Robert E. Lee’s criticism of the South for not willing to sacrifice for the war effort. Before he left his own home he told his wife to expect a war of 10 years and for her to lose their home, their land, and all of their possessions if they truly wanted to see a sovereign southern nation. He was off by five years but he was right about the rest, they lost every bit of it.
The article goes on to speak about the speculators, the hoarding, the selling out of farmers to gain a higher price at the expense of starving their own army. This became even more apparent when the northern armies came through and during the rape of the cities found huge stores of grain and supplies in the homes of “good southern people committed to the cause.” It does make me wonder if you are raping yourself first, then does it make it rape when your enemy comes in and does the same thing? Hmm…
I think we have same scenario in any national crises. You have to hope the citizens are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice but in our cynical minds we know they aren’t up to it and lip service will be paid while secretly they hoard their goods. I think we have seen this in about every major crises this nation has seen.
9/11 – for a year we rallied, gave generously and did what we could to ease the pain of the people of New York. Even gave up some of our “rights” to make sure this wouldn’t happen again. Just like our predecessors we soon tire of sacrifice and war and move on with our own lives.
Katrina – Oh we rallied longer because this had more than disaster overtones to it, there were racial ones as well. So we stayed a little longer but if you ever drive by Hope, Arkansas and see the thousands of FEMA trailers sitting in storage while there are still homeless folks in New Orleans, then maybe you might think we have moved on too.
So how about the current “wars” we have declared? The war on ignorance (no child left behind) or the war on illegal immigration (oh, let’s build a wall) to name a few. You can see the war on drugs (wait, weren’t we just to say “no” and everything would be alright?) has been a rousing success.
My point? Hmm, I don’t know if I have one but this; national crises can only be overcome when as a nation you come to a consensus that you won’t accept the current condition and will do anything and everything to defeat it. As long as people are too involved with themselves and are not willing to sacrifice then we can pretty well just write our history of defeat. (and yes, I would say that apathy is a nice form of defeat in a tasty dish that we can eat with a bit of relish and a sprig of parsley)
I think the saddest part is the folks who truly believe in the cause and do lose everything in their attempt to defeat it because in the end they are without anything but the dignity of knowing they fought the good fight… which is hard to take when you are looking at the uncaring drive by in their BMW’s, sipping lattes from Starbucks, on their way to a $200 a ticket concert.
Move over Robert E. Lee, the line of dreamers wallowing in defeat forms to the right.
