12 THE LAST NIGHT TRAIN: WHAT IS A COUNTRY FOR?

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

T.S. Eliot, from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1920)

As of late I have wondered if redemption has a shelf life. Is there some kind of use-by date or line that, once crossed, makes nearly impossible the ability to correct our course? I don’t know, but it seems one must engage in a great deal of denial in order to stay on a track which, when looked at closely, runs counter to what that society proclaims as its values. At some point one would think a choice could be made between the illusion of self-righteousness and the real thing. Perhaps not.

My late father, a former soldier, once told me that words like honor, duty and courage are just that: words that lie on the floor until our actions give them life. He believed it is in actions of sacrifice, not for grand manufactured causes but in the little actions of day-to-day living, that such virtues are to be found. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it, but I have been thinking, what if it really is just that simple.

What is a country for? Is it simply to be an arm of business, advocating and then creating laws and regulations that serve the interests of a select few, often at the expense of the common good? Does it exist to exercise power over weaker nations, forcing them, by coercion or other unsavory means, to do that which conflicts with the country’s own interests? If so, to what end?

Should a nation allow business a free rein even when its actions reduce citizens to a cash crop annually harvested for the benefit of the corporation’s interests? Should a country invest in education and roads and infrastructure before it spends the ‘people’s’ money on ever more military hardware, or should a nation be something more than that, something that rises, or attempts to rise, above commerce alone, striving to better all of the country’s citizens?

Should a country be first and foremost humane and less a grouping of economic tribes that finally devolve into nothing more than a giant store? If not, then who among us would want our children to die for such a thing? Who then would believe the lofty words that would precede a call to arms? Would there still be the cheering crowds and if so which flags would they wave: the stars and stripes or a variety of flags with corporate logos?

Clearly a country can be an economically viable state while at the same time an unsuccessful nation, for to be a country is not to be one thing or the other but rather to be many things, with the priority being the real interests and well-being of all of its people. The rich don’t need much help: they’re doing just fine.

The United States today very much reminds me of another place in a time not so long ago. In England, the East India Company, along with the government and monarchy, morphed into a kind of corporation with each of its branches helping to facilitate the other’s wishes and goals. They profited well from dark agreements and did despicable things, using lofty words to sell a perverse and not so cloaked suggestion of racial superiority and nationalism. They used biblical phrases to justify their actions and to declare their mission of wishing to ‘help’ the godless people find God, before relieving the newly faithful of their country’s treasures.

The British used the same words that we Americans use today when invading other countries. We declare it is to ‘help’ the people, but it is odd that more often than not the people we always try to help sit on oil or diamonds, minerals or geography that help facilitate or stabilize our own business interests. Is that what a country is for?

I look forward to the day when we use our own escape hatch and let the empire that even now is crumbling around us finally fall. It is my hope that as a result of that we shall be able to finally exhale and, for the first time in a long time, look around and see each other and the world and our place in it in a different and more humane way. Quite simply, I think our best days lie in front of us, after empire, when we may be able to remake ourselves into not merely a powerful country, but a meaningful one, that places virtue, truth and ethics at a level higher than monetary profit. As Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to think so?’