To continue...

Again, the casual and matter-of-fact manner in which the potential "nuking" of Iran is discussed in this country has been gnawing at my guts. In recent days, the Gang of Four (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld) have laid low on this issue, but I anticipate hearing the pounding of the war drums in late August/early September--remember, never roll out a "new product" when your potential customers are away from their flat screens (on vacation, etc.)...Of course, this summer, the cost of travel may prove prohibitive for all those SUV-driving believers in the Cause. The cost of gasoline--not lives--may well be the undoing of the current Administration. In addition (and in my fondest dreams), the summer of '06 may turn out to be the Summer of Indictments. Summer is a good time for political fortunes to unravel. Well do I recall the summer of '73: when I should have been out in the warm sunshine playing ball, I was instead in the cool darkness of my parents' basement watching the Watergate Hearings--confident, until John Dean's testimony, that the road of political duplicity would never lead to the Oval Office. When it became clear that it did, my political childhood was over. But the bungled Watergate break-in was nothing compared to the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Gang of Four. As the bumper sticker says, "I never thought I'd miss Nixon." Think again...

Looking for solace, I turn (as ever) to literature. A week or so ago I sat down and re-read Conrad's brief but brilliant novella The Heart of Darkness. In prose as dense as the Congolese jungles he was describing, Conrad weaves a tale of colonialism, of European imperialism, of Romanticism run amok. Towards the end of the book, Mr. Kurtz (the man the narrator of the story was sent up the river to bring back) was described this way:

"All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz;...He had faith--don't you see?--he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything--anything. He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party..."

And I thought of Iran's current President (Ahmadinejad); and I thought of George W. Bush.

It is generally conceded in the press (which has shown itself to have a vital interest in stoking bloodlust) that Iran has no nukes, but what if it did? Our President has his finger on the trigger of the most powerful arsenal of weaponry in the history of the world. And he can get himself to believe anything--the twisting of the "evidence" of Iraq's WMD's has demonstrated that.

I am far more concerned about the hardening of the average American's heart than I am about the potential of an Iranian attack upon U.S. soil. I find the very notion of such an attack ludicrous beyond words. The hardness of our collective hearts disturbs me and I find that I am at a loss to understand how we got to where we are today. When I was in college (late 1970's, early 1980's), people who spoke nonchalantly about nuclear war were typically regarded as "kooks" and "nut cases" and generally ignored. I could never understand what Jimmy Carter saw in that rabid Russophobe Zbigniew Brzezinski. Of course, back then, everyone understood that the enemies du jour (the Russians and the Communist Chinese) had nuclear arsenals themselves--and could do to us what we could do to them. The Cold War's status quo had a lovely acronym: MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).

Kurtz, Conrad tells us, was mad and his methods were unsound. "His was an impenetrable darkness." I cannot seem to shake the apprehension that his spirit is now abroad in our land. Where is the voice of conscience? Where is the Christian church? Why aren't Christian ministers and priests and preachers coming forward to intervene?

About a year before his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began speaking out on issues of war and peace. Perhaps that is what finally sealed his fate.

I have decided that, this summer, two books will be indispensable: The Modern Library Edition of the Complete Works of Tacitus (available in paper for about $13.00) and the Library of America's Hardcover edition of the complete works of Walt Whitman (entitled Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose and marked down about 40% to a mere $22 at Amazon). The hardcover edition of Whitman is to be preferred because this one is for the long haul. It is the American scripture.

The ascerbic commentary of Tacitus on the cowardice and stupidity of people who sold their freedom for "security" could not be more timely reading for an American today.

On the other side of the coin is Whitman--Bard of an America that never was but yet could be--if enough of us could summon the courage to share his vision. To get there, however, we must read him: over and over again. Poetry can save lives. I believe that.