We’re swimming in glaciers, drinking the floe. We are fallout People traversing the gradient, challenging our lungs and skins to mutate with relative quickness to survive the results of our appetites.
All hail the warmonger, emulate his bullyboy strut, pig eyes, jealous and mean. We gotta get ‘em, get ‘em, get ‘em before they get us, his hands full of dead birds, his face, a masque of innocence.
We are a nation starving for heroes, drowning in a television river, feeding our children an orgy of movie and sports’ stars, teaching them to be like, be like, be like and no sense of self.
The lonely man might have wept into his hands at the mess we have made. Resolution and resolve written on his stately face, he might take a note from his pocket, hastily written and say to us:
Eleven score and fourteen years ago our fathers brought forth on this planet a new concept, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all People are created equal.
Now we are engaged in war and threats of war, asking ourselves whether this world, or any world so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a global battlefield. We are here to dedicate portions of the killing fields of our latest armed conflict as a final resting place for those who have given their lives there that others may live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave soldiers, living and dead, who have struggled on these fields, have consecrated them, far above our power to bless, give, or take away. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it must never forget the sacrifice they have made. It is for us, the living, rather, to dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work which those who fought and perished have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this world and its People, given each their vision of God and government, shall share a new birth of freedom – and that a worldwide respect of government of the People, by the People, for the People, shall exist wherever they are found and not infringe upon the beliefs and rights of others, that these may exist in peace and harmony and the tenets of their faith shall not perish from the earth.
We are standing in tall shadow, must remember to know, hear the echo of voices from the camps. The cloying smoke of their ovens has joined our water, rides the currents of our winds, is reproduced and multiplied in the shock and awe of our bombardment, breathed into the bodies of our children. What will he say to us when he comes? How will she see herself and know the way; will she say the words we could not teach that our children’s ears will hear?