by Barry Friedman
War .. or When Men were Men
I sit, yes, in a daze. It is too early, perhaps—the apricot sour staring back, urging me, cajoling me to use my impressive skills to make clear a nation’s fog; yet, I feel nothing. Numb, perhaps, but with memory. I wonder about love and pride and a time when men were men, men who bought drinks for willowy Wasps at the end of a bar.
It is so hard sometimes—these words that will not come, or come too often. The memories that strike against my bosom. And strike. And strike.
I think of this president, this president who is gray now and tired (Did Reagan ever show fatigue? I think not) and the way he plays WORDS WITH ENEMIES. (See what I did there?) Were it Scrabble, he’d check the dictionary to see if his obfuscations, his dodges were permitted. ISIS … ISIL. "Rejected" it would say.
He is being rejected, for while words are not really his friend, this president, anymore than air traffic controllers were Reagan’s, at least those in towers came to respect the tough Irishmen, would have a Guinness with him or cursed England. However, consonants and vowels mock this man from … where exactly? No, not Kenya, but Kismet ... of his own making.
Yes, he must strike at evil, pound it, as these memories pound my yearning breasts. But first he must--this is so tough to say--articulate it.
The Arab state, Arabs, they’re so—what’s the word?—so not of us, so of themselves. It's a fight, a battle, a struggle ... so many words. I swim. Mano a Mano, like the Spanish youth like to say. It is tough to understand those who do not wish to be us. Reagan cared not for those who didn’t love Louis L'Amour and funnel cakes. If the world doesn’t want to be American, he would tell me late at night, before aides brought him his milk and Ambien, it is the world's loss.
This president, though, this man who looks more Arab than Americans want him to look—friends, that is just the way it is—is ambivalent about his own ambivalence.
Strike, stand tall, send into battle our honor.
The bartender, a man Tom Friedman would glom wisdom from in bunches and then elevate, is America—befuddled, ready to act, ready to serve. He needs direction.
He knows me; I know him.
The president knows neither of us.
We weep. He pours.