A Frightened Little Man

Last Friday, I attended an hour of Korean War veteran John Fortier's two hour peace vigil, held alongside Pacific Coast Highway in Redondo Beach, CA. While I was there, a man nearly 73 years of age, a retired aerospace engineer, walked up and proclaimed the U.S. should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran to show them the U.S. is serious about it's warnings to them about Iran not potentially building a nuclear weapon.

This came as no surprise for the U.S. news media, as the U.S. government does, often speaks of Iran as a "threat," without explaining how it is a threat, and rarely speaks of Iran as men, women and children, who have families like American families and are people just as we are. Iranians are instead, an empty abstraction deserving of death as a people for defying U.S. demands.

In 2001, after 9/11 the U.S. government and U.S. media repeatedly declared Afghanistan a threat and in effect, its people an empty abstraction and we are now nearly 11 years into that war, which has claimed thousands of lives. The same was done with Iraq, and a nearly nine year war was fought that claimed as many as a million lives, and today Iraq is a disaster of nation, barely able to function as the killing continues.

But this man was sincere about bombing Iran and never saw the contradiction or irony in his statement about using the destruction of a nuclear weapon to prevent someone else from potentially having one. I explained to him what he proposed could kill many of Iran's 75 to 80 million people, and that they are families just like we are.

And to further make the point, I compared what he proposed to someone dropping a nuclear weapon on Redondo Beach, the Los Angeles area community in which we stood, and the place where he lives. He backed off his statement about bombing Iran.

But as he spoke, he expressed his frustration with what is happening in the world, a world in which he has no control. He seemed to feel the same way about the U.S. political scene. As he continued speaking, it turned out that he has no wife or children, and looks to his sister and her three adult daughters in their 40's, as his family

But recently when he was sick and hospitalized, none of them came to visit him, nor did the adult daughters call. In answer to a question, he sees them only once a year over the holidays at his sister's home and makes no effort to keep in touch with them or their families.

Like many people, this man is lonely and has a sense of powerlessness, like his life doesn't really matter to anyone. In that frame of mind, and despite being well-educated, he is angry and frustrated and in the abstract, it is easy for him to want the U.S. to use its vast military might to kill others.

The Nazis used this scenario in Germany 80 years ago to take control, as they scared the German people, many of whom felt powerless, with all the threats around them. Of course the Nazis specified those people who were the threats, domestic and abroad, kept them largely as empty abstractions, and then used the Nazi military might to destroy or subjugate them.

But that was another time and another place. This man joined John's peace vigil for about half an hour, for what he really wanted were caring people to make him feel welcome and to listen to him. For in that half hour, he mattered and he felt good about himself and better about life.

Dick