Garrison Keillor. (photo: Wisconsin Public Radio)
19 March 17
Now that Putin's our buddy, why do we need another $54 billion for defense?
he $54 billion bonus
heading for the Pentagon is a beautiful thing, and so far I haven’t
heard a dog bark against it, even though we don’t appear to have $54
billion worth of new enemies and we’ve now come to admire former enemy
Vladimir Putin, and the idea of throwing billions at the Islamic State
is like going after bedbugs with bazookas, so there it sits, a big lake
of cash waiting for water skiers.
Base pay for a private first class these days is
around $22,000 and, granted, it is not rocket science — aerospace
engineers can earn a hundred grand or more — but a Radio City Rockette
earns about $1,500 per week. Should we be paying more for precision
tap-dancing than for the defense of our country? Meanwhile, apple
pickers are hauling down around $23,000 while orange pickers get
$20,000. I’d say our soldiers are due for a big raise. Those caissons
don’t roll themselves, you know. The shores of Tripoli are an
ever-present threat to our security. And the halls of Montezuma are out
for revenge.
I just hope that my good friends in the Pentagon will
stop and think about the value of the arts and literature to our
national defense. Some of that money, perhaps $3 billion or $4 billion,
would be well spent encouraging writers and artists to cast a warmer
light on our uniformed services than what we’ve seen the past century or
so when, aside from George M. Cohan’s “Over There” (1917) and Frank
Loesser’s “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” (1942), the arts
have been decidedly anti-war.
When was the last time a great poet wrote an ode to
the importance of following orders? 1854, that’s when. Alfred, Lord
Tennyson wrote, “Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die,”
immortalizing Lord Cardigan’s botched mission in the Battle of Balaclava
— “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Tennyson was England’s poet
laureate at the time and felt obliged to turn a military disaster into
something heroic.
No American poet laureate ever wrote anything similar,
and maybe that’s because they’re paid
$35,000 a year. Make that $350,000 and give the laureate the rank of
major general and a cap with a plume and see if the tune doesn’t change.
Our Nobel laureate Bob Dylan could have written (but did not):
Well it ain’t no use to sit around the barracks
And ask why you must drill.
Or ask why we have to carry rifles:
They are to injure, maim and kill.
Get out of bed at the break of dawn,
Put your helmet and your uniform on,
You’re not a bishop, son, you’re just a pawn.
Don’t think twice, it’s all right.
It’s no wonder that wealthy New York real estate heirs shopped around for physicians to diagnose heel spurs
to exempt them from the draft. For a century, nobody has written a
great work of literature celebrating America’s military —
“Slaughterhouse-Five”? “Catch-22”? “The Naked and the Dead”? “The Things
They Carried”? I don’t think so. Nobody read “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
and went down to the recruiting office to sign up.
It was not always thus. Look at what Homer did for
the Greeks with his “Iliad.” It’s an action epic, one hero after
another, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, Ajax — no introspective
nonconformist in the ranks, wondering, “Why are we brutalizing each
other? Why can’t we sit down and talk through our differences?” Because
we are us and they are them, and it’s one for all and all for one, so
grab your spear and go puncture those Trojans, son.
What we need to make America great again is American
literature about greatness. Look at Leo Tolstoy. He could’ve just
written “Peace” but he wrote “War.” too, both of them, glorifying
General Mikhail Kutuzov, who engineered the defeat of Napoleon.
Spending
some of that $54 billion on the arts would be an excellent investment.
If they need someone to write an epic poem, here I am, my pen is poised.
Media to the right of him,
Media to the left of him,
Democrats embittered.
Loud was his battle cry,
The man with long red tie,
Onward he twittered.
Rising in early dawn,
Turning his smartphone on,
Texting he bravely fought,
Tweet after tweet he shot
With his red hat on,
Looking like George C. Scott
Playing George Patton.
It’s the story of a man who overcame his
heel-spur handicap by playing golf regularly and eventually took command
in his bomber jacket and led the country to greatness. It’s going to be
fantastic. I promise you.
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