Sh*t To Help You Show Up February 25, 2022
Integrity and War
I’m sitting here this morning thinking about war. Unless you are one of the unlucky few with loved ones in the military who have already been deployed there, the war in Ukraine has not yet touched you directly. This is true for me, which makes it tempting to simply block the whole thing out. I mean, what does any of it have to do with me?
And, yet, I don’t think people of good conscience can ever ignore the realities of war.
I remember when I was in college and the first Gulf War kicked off. The government seemed to have learned its lesson during the Vietnam War when the nightly news covered the brutal, violent realities of that conflict up close. Americans could not hide from the carnage, and scholars have suggested that was why protests against the Vietnam War became as widespread as they did.
So, in the first Gulf War, the U.S. government was not going to make the same “mistake”. The images of that war that filtered through to the nightly news were distant and sanitized— U.S. troops decked out in combat gear and high-powered weaponry yet unharmed, footage of bomb strikes that looked like nothing more than scenes from a video game. All of it was carefully packaged to provide justification for U.S. imperialism while not upsetting Americans overmuch.
Am I a pacifist, with all this skeptical talk about U.S. military action? Ambivalently, yes. By which I mean that I do not presume to tell oppressed or victimized people that they have no right to rise up in their own defense, individually or collectively, and the reality is that sometimes those situations involve violence. I pray and work for there to be other alternatives. That’s all that’s within my power and I hate this truth. It keeps me humble, though. I’ll say that for it.
The current war in Ukraine is, therefore, complicated. Does Ukraine have a right to defend itself against an imperialist invasion from Russia? Yes, I believe it does, having repeatedly tried everything else in its arsenal to avoid armed conflict. Should allied nations step in militarily to help? The honest answer is, I don’t know.
What I do know is that today my integrity requires me, within the safe confines of my home far away from the center of this conflict, to sit with the terrible discomfort that comes from contemplating the realities of war. Not to get carried away by the news, or the war propaganda about just causes, or the bickering between the Left and the Right about what America’s role should be. Right now I can hold the reality of the destruction and death that is likely even now as I type this raining down upon soldiers and innocent civilians all over Ukraine. Today I can refuse to look away.
Here are some of the words and art I’ve been letting sit on my heart this morning…
An excerpt from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to the Russian people on Wednesday:
They tell you that we’re Nazis. But how can a people that lost 8 million lives to defeat the Nazis support Nazism? How can I be a Nazi? Say it to my grandfather, who fought in World War II as a Soviet infantryman and died a colonel in an independent Ukraine. They tell you that we hate Russian culture. How can one hate a culture? Any culture? Neighbors always enrich each other’s cultures. However, we are not part of one whole. You cannot swallow us up. We are different. But this difference is not a reason for enmity. We want to determine our own course and build our own history: peacefully, calmly, and honestly.
They told you that I would order an attack on Donbass, order indiscriminate shootings and bombings. This leads to some questions, some very simple ones. Who are we shooting at? What are we bombing? Donetsk, which I have visited dozens of times? Where I looked in people’s faces, in their eyes? Artyoma Street, where I strolled with friends? The Donbass Arena, where I rooted for our boys together with Ukrainian lads at the European Championships? Shcherbakov Park, where I drank with friends when our boys lost? Luhansk, where the mother of my best friend is buried? Where his father also rests?…
This is our land, and this is our history. What will you fight for and with whom? Many of you have visited Ukraine. Many of you have relatives here. Some might have studied at Ukrainian universities and befriended Ukrainians. You know our character, you know our people, and you know our principles. You know what we value. So stop and listen to yourselves, to the voice of reason, to the voice of common sense.
Some Russians are listening. Thousands have been arrested across the country calling for an end to the war.
And lest we demonize Putin while forgetting our own history, read the following poem. Written to President George W. Bush following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the wake of 9/11, it could just as easily have been written about Vladimir Putin today:
Complaint and Petition
by Hayden Carruth
Mr. President: On a clear cold
morning I address you from a remote
margin of your dominion in plain-
style Yankee quatrains because
I don’t know your exalted language
of power. I’m thankful for that. This
is a complaint and petition, sent
to you in the long-held right I claim
As a citizen. To recapitulate your
wrong-doings is unnecessary; the topic
is large and prominent and already
occupies the attention of historians
and political scholars, whose findings
will in the near future expose your
incontinent and maniacal ambition
for all to see. Let it suffice to
say that you have warped the law and
flouted the will and wisdom of the
people as no other has before you.
You have behaved precisely as a tin-pot
tyrant in any benighted, inglorious
corner of the earth. And now you are
deviously and corruptly manipulating
events in order to create war.
Let us speak plainly. You wish to
murder millions, as you yourself
have said, to appease your fury. We
oppose such an agenda—we, the people,
artists, artisans, builders, makers,
honest American men and women,
especially the poets, for whom I dare
to speak. We say, desist, resign,
hide yourself in your own shame,
lest otherwise the evil you have
loosed will destroy everything
and love will quit the world.
Though I will say I disagree with Carruth’s conclusion. I don’t think that any leader has the power to chase love from the world. Love lives in each of us, our choices. Its continued presence depends only on us wrestling with our obligation to preserve and propagate love in the face of violence.
One of the best tales of a great wrestler for love in the face of violence was told by Utah Phillips about a man named Amon Hennessey. Listen to it:
We must not look away from the true horrors of war. We must wrestle with our personal relationship to violence. And we must always, always remember not to be swamped by despair, but instead to act on behalf of hope. That is what all this work on integrity is preparing us for.
The End and the Beginning
by Wisława Szymborska
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
Finally, here is a heart-wrenching piece written by one of my favorite Substack authors about her brother who is deployed to Ukraine right now. Real people— soldiers and civilians— that’s who are in harm’s way right now as you read this. Hold them in your heart. Don’t look away.
