Leave it to a conservative Republican to make me miss the Cold War.

I made the mistake of answering the phone at a friend’s tonight. It was her 73-year-old grandmother who proceeded to give me a 10-minute rant on the Muslims who “are taking over Europe,” “already own all the media outlets” and have their sights set on U.S. domination through Barack Obama. She finished her tirade by bemoaning my generation’s naivete. Of course, she sighed, she won’t have to worry about the consequences of our short-sightedness because she’ll be dead soon. It’s we younger people who will reap the devastation for having failed to eradicate the evil that is Islam. (Oh, and the pro-choicers and the homosexuals.)

I handed off the phone as quickly as possible, but I couldn’t help being shaken. Not because I was worried about the terrible danger my children are facing from the Muslims. Not because I was concerned about the gays and abortionists. No, I felt dizzy. As if I’d just been sucked through that phone line into 1935 Germany and then shot back again in an instant. Just replace the word “Muslim” in her rant above with the word “Jew.” I got a serious chill.

Don’t get me wrong. This woman is not a Fascist. She’s not a Nazi. But then, neither were most of the good German Volk who put Hitler into power. She believes that what she’s saying is true. She believes that she is talking about a fight between good and evil, and she wants good to win. Sadly, that can also be said of the Germans of the 1930’s, the residents of Salem during the witch trials and the European Catholics during the Inquisition.

What makes me believe that she’s wrong? It’s the labels. It’s the focus on “otherness.” It’s the us versus them mentality that characterizes most oppressive regimes. It’s the overly simplistic, fear-mongering view of the world that is being put forward. We cannot say, “All Muslims are evil.” Nor can we say, “All Christians are good.” Unfortunately, it’s just not that easy. The world would certainly be a simpler place if we could identify the good by what church they attended, for whom they voted or with whom they have sex. We can’t.

So what makes me miss the Cold War?

Well, religion was not much of an issue in those days. The Soviet Union was an atheist regime. The Cold War was a conflict of political ideologies. Scary, yes, but much easier to debate than religious faith. How can I argue with a woman who’s sure that Muslims are brainwashing Americans into electing Barack Obama through all the media outlets they own? Argh.

I spent most of the night under a blanket.

The game was too intense for me, a 23-year Indianapolis Colts fan. I’d had my hopes dashed too many times. Very often by THAT team, the New England Patriots. A few other times by that OTHER team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. This time we were so close. One minute and four points away from a Super Bowl. One minute and four points away from erasing many years of disappointment. One minute and four points away from reversing Peyton Manning’s reputation as a QB who chokes in the big game.

I had already taken off my Colts t-shirt in agonized desperation during the 2nd quarter. I couldn’t watch many of the plays, opting to clean the kitchen (where I have no TV), do the laundry  (again a TV-free zone), or finally, hide under my blanket. My daughter thought I was playing with her, and she kept pulling off my blanket, exposing me to the anxiety of the last quarter.
And then Marlin Jackson intercepted Tom Brady.

23 years of waiting, and we’re finally in the big game! I get to use my horseshoe cake pan for a Super Bowl party!

GO COLTS!!!

Wednesday night, President Bush went on the air and told the American people that he is going to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq (Chicago Tribune, 1/10/07).  That’s odd. I thought he was listening.

After the bleak report from the Iraq Study Group, President Bush went into “listening mode” (CNN, 12/11/06). He told the U.S. troops that he was “meeting with the Pentagon…the State Department…outside officials, [the] National Security team and…Iraqi leaders” and that he was “listening to a lot of advice to develop a strategy” that would help our troops succeed in Iraq (whitehouse.gov press release, 12/13/06). Hmm…Aren’t these groups some of the same folks who gave us the crummy intelligence that linked Iraq to al-Qaeda and insisted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? One would think the president might turn elsewhere for good advice on how to improve the situation in Iraq.

Perhaps the Iraq Study Group? After all, the Republican Congress appointed this commission. It was led by the president’s father’s good buddy, James Baker, a politician with a long and impressive conservative resume. It included some Democrats, yes, but it was also comprised of many well-respected people from the president’s own party, including Sandra Day O’Connor and Ed Meese. The commission spent “a lot of time,” money and energy coming up with a thorough report to help guide Congress and the president in “The Way Forward” (whitehouse.gov press release, 12/6/06). The president thanked the commission for their work, but did he ever actually read the report? Evidently not.

Perhaps he was listening to his generals? After all, they have the combat experience on the ground in Iraq. President Bush told the Washington Post that he believed it was “important to trust the judgment of the military when they’re making military plans (12/06). Yet Pentagon insiders say that the Joint Chiefs have long been opposed to increasing troop levels, and General John Abizaid, the outgoing head of Central Command, said just a couple months ago that increasing the number of troops in Iraq was not the right strategy (msnbc.com, 1/10/07).

Perhaps he was listening to Congress? After all, until last week, the Republicans still held the majority. It seems, however, that President Bush was not interested in what American Senators and Representatives were saying, not even those who are in his own party. Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) believes that an increase in troop levels merely “perpetuates the status quo” (Fox News, 1/11/07). Even the House Republicans’ leader, Rep. John Boehner (R- OH) cannot endorse the president’s decision, saying that the plan needs to be examined first (dailynewsonline, 1/11/07).

Perhaps he was finally listening to the American people? Was he listening to his citizens when he decided to send thousands more of their sons and daughters into a violent quagmire? Well, let’s see. We were so displeased with the way things were going in Iraq that we completely overturned his party’s control of Congress and tossed out as many local Republicans as we could.  In an AP-Ipsos survey taken before the president’s speech on Wednesday, 70% of Americans opposed sending more troops to Iraq (AP, 1/11/07).

Already, protests are being staged and planned. On January 27^th, United for Peace is staging a protest in Washington D.C. (www.unitedforpeace.org), and Christians are planning a rally on March 16^th, the fourth anniversary of the invasion (www.christianpeacewitness.org). The American people sent a loud message at the polls in November. The American people are screaming at him from outside the White House windows. If the president were listening at all, he’d have no trouble hearing us.

Once again, President Bush has said one thing and done another. Once again, he seems to be operating in a bubble. Once again, he is doing precisely what he wants even when it is completely at odds with the will of the American people. So who was the president listening to when he was in “listening mode?” Evidently, just the voices in his head. Again.

I cannot believe it’s been almost a month since I wrote a blog entry! It’s been quite a month too. The holidays plus a whole lot of illness equals one wiped-out mom. So now the holidays are over, and everyone is healthy for the moment, *knock on wood* so I’ve had a minute or two to think. And I’ve been thinking about storytelling.

For most of my life, I didn’t really have a grandfather. My dad’s dad passed away when I was just eight years old, and my mom’s father was an abusive alcoholic so we didn’t have much of a relationship with him. So when my husband’s grandpa Fred heartily welcomed me into his family, I was pleased. It was a new experience to me, and I liked listening to his stories. He was from a wealthy family in New England, and his stories painted pictures of a more refined, more conscientious way of living. He came from a world where you “dressed for dinner,” where women wore gloves and men wore hats, where etiquette was not a fifth-grade vocabulary word but an everyday behavior.

But my adopted grandfather was not a snob. For the last fifteen years of his life, he lived in West Baden Springs, Indiana, in a converted Amish pole barn that was probably not much bigger than my parents’ garage. He liked his place in the woods and told us of the intrigues at his country church as well as of the antics of the cats and wildlife that inhabited the woods around his home.

In between his wealthy youth and his modest retirement, Fred served in World War II, fathered two children, lost two wives to cancer, lived in homes all across the country, and tried his hand at several different careers. He met some fascinating people along the way, and I got to hear many stories about these folks as well.
Perhaps it’s because I didn’t really have a grandfather of my own. Perhaps it’s because I never lived with Fred or had to put up with his foibles and peccadilloes for very long. Or perhaps it’s because I hadn’t heard them for years and years, but I enjoyed Fred’s stories and often, I felt like the only person in the room who was actually listening. My mother-in-law and her brother would sometimes interrupt him with an impatient, “Yes, Dad, you’ve told us that before.” My husband would zone out or find a way to sneak out of the room. And it’s true that after a couple years, I started hearing the same stories over again, usually prefaced by Fred’s favorite intro: “Now, I have to tell you this…”

Fred passed away a couple days before Thanksgiving, but he was cremated and will be laid to rest in New Hampshire. So instead of the usual funeral, we’re having a memorial service this Saturday. In preparation for it, my husband’s putting together a slide show, and so we’ve been going through pictures. Some of the photographs are very old and damaged; some of them are of people my mother-in-law does not recognize. And I started thinking about all those stories Fred told over and over again.

I’ve seen it in old people before, this tendency to repeat the same stories, but I’ve always written it off as poor memory, senility, or a need for attention. But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s God’s version of Knowledge Management. It’s a way for human beings to pass down what they’ve learned to the next generation. After all, before the invention of written language, oral storytelling was a vital tradition. It was our only way of passing information along to others. Sure, we have other means of preserving our collective knowledge nowadays - books, video, audio, the Internet - but maybe we’re hard-wired to tell our stories over and over again as we sense the end of our lives.

Whatever the reason, I’m glad I listened. I’m glad I can tell my son and daughter a little about the life of their great-grandfather. And I hope they’ll listen to their old mom’s stories. “Now, I have to tell you this!”