Progressive Review - A Year of Living Dangerously

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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - January 3, 2005

 

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A Year of Living Dangerously

By James Carroll

The Boston Globe

 

The turning of the year is one of the great markers. Time

runs out on one period and begins anew on a next one.

Memory and anticipation meet.

 

Observing an old ritual, I pull out my thumb-worn appoint-

ment book and flip through the soiled pages to recall what

2004 was made of. Going back to last January, the notations

fill me with surprise. Could it have been almost a year

since that sweet night at the opera? How did all those

morning meetings come to so little? Why was I traveling so

much?

 

To glimpse my life whole, week by week, is to recapitulate

one of the year's great feelings - which was, alas, of

being

harried. I recognize myself anew as a man at the mercy of

this very book. Yet now, its blank places are what leap out

at me, the unscheduled hours and days, intervals of home

and intimacy of which there was no need, week by week, to

be reminded.

 

In the public realm, the year just past was passionate. The

misbegotten war revealed itself explosively, especially at

year's end, but it had already turned the unfolding

presidential election into the meaning by which, for many,

hope itself was measured.

 

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In Boston, the impossibilities of politics were defined by

the counter-drama of baseball. After the World Series, Red

Sox fans had to reinvent their understanding of themselves;

a people doomed no longer. Such reordering of self-image

was a positive version of the negative task with which,

after the election, many Americans were then charged -

citizens facing the truth of their status as passengers on

a death ship whose course was set without them.

 

2004 will be remembered not least as the year when the

tragedy of Iraq showed itself fully for what it was, and

when, nevertheless, those responsible for this catastrophe

were recommissioned by voters to carry on.

 

I confess that, looking back on this recent American past,

I find myself deeply saddened. If that note seems unduly

grave, or partisan, for this festive week, apologies. In

truth, few Americans seem happy with what we are becoming.

The expansive sense of historic open-endedness, so palpable

across all political divides a mere five years ago, as the

year 2000 was dawning, has been replaced by a national

claustrophobia, with the growing suspicion that we are

hedged in by walls of our own creation.

 

Yes, fear and a sense of victimhood understandably stalked

us in 2001, but instead of shaking those alien feelings

off,

we used them to construct an emergency garrison, from which

we take aim at others, but which, also, is turning out to

be our self-made brig.

 

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Iraq, above all, is our prison, the place where America has

taken its own self hostage. Thousands and thousands of men,

women, and children who meant us no harm are now dead

because of our striking out so blindly. And many more are

living on the edge of disaster. But we Americans, too, are

victims of our mistake. It is not only that options in Iraq

seem so limited (How, exactly, do we get out? Well, by

getting out), but also that the deathtrap of that war has

come to define a vast shrinking of possibility, as the

shape

of our new century begins to actually show itself.

 

Only five years ago, the uncharted future was spread before

us. We were an optimistic and confident people. Our firm

membership in the global community was as clear as the

televised sequence of midnight celebrations - Sydney,

Tokyo,

Hong Kong, Delhi, Johannesburg, Paris - that circled the

earth at the glorious millennium. Watching that rotation on

an axis of joy, the only " homeland " we wanted was the very

planet, and our " security " was everyone's. The human family

was never more aware of itself than that night, and we

Americans were never more a part of it.

 

But this year, what a lonely nation we have become. And to

how many fewer peoples are we the tribune of hope. How like

exile is our " homeland, " and what is " security " if it

depends on suspicion of those who are unlike us?

 

The point of the New Year, traditionally, is to leave such

brooding behind, but this broadly felt emotional weight is

a warning that great things are at stake in America's

argument with itself. Equally, it is a summons to

resolution - New Year's resolution - to do nothing less,

at last, than say no to the war in a way that will be

heard.

 

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End of PROGRESSIVE REVIEW

Copyright 2005 by PENN LLC. All rights reserved.

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