Registering for military conscription, June 5, 1917. Courtesy Library of Congress.
Often in life you do something without realizing until later what it meant. When I wrote “The Penalty for Holding” (May 10, Less Than Three Press) – the second novel in my series “The Games Men Play” – I had several goals in mind. Sexy male-male romance? Check. A story that continued the series’ themes of power, dominance and rivalry? Check. A novel about leadership, the workplace and how violence in the workplace spills into everyday life? Check, check and check.
What I hadn’t counted on – what I hadn’t foreseen – was the return of isolationism that ushered in Brexit and Trump and that provides the context for the novel’s theme of belonging. And belonging is one of the great themes of our time. Who are we and where do we belong? For the answer to the first will determine the second. Or at least it should.
Now I’m not so sure. We see The New York Times’ excellent piece on whither London post-Brexit and you read about a Brazilian hairdresser with a Polish wife and a British daughter, wondering where do they belong? We watch “PBS NewsHour’s” excellent reports on illegal aliens deported from the United States who are totally adrift in Mexico, sleeping in cemeteries – grown men weeping, without money, direction, jobs, shelter, without hope – and you think, OK, they crossed the border illegally. They made a mistake. But that was years ago. This is the only country they have really ever known. Where do they belong now?
George Weigel, inveighing against Democratic wrath in the March 30 Catholic New York – funny, I didn’t see any Weigel pieces criticizing the Tea Party for its similar treatment of President Barack Obama – writes “Americans once knew a different way. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the civil rights movement promoted not rage and disruption but nonviolent civil disobedience.”
First off, many of Trumpet’s resisters – most, I would hazard – are nonviolent. Secondly, while the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached nonviolence, there were those who certainly espoused a more aggressive approach to civil rights. And the movement often met with violence.
But more important, this has always been a violent, isolationist, even racist country. You watch the excellent documentary “The Great War” on PBS’ “American Experience” (the best series on TV) and you see a not-so-distant mirror of our time – isolationists versus internationalists; certain ethnic groups demonized; young black men feared and murdered; dissenters silenced; the rich and powerful extorting money from those who could least afford it.
German-Americans, black soldiers, conscientious objectors and anti-war activists were all sacrificed to the World War I effort. Where did these people belong?
Where do we?