(The new calendar promulgated by the Revolutionaries of France.)
John-with and Jon-without bookended the Amen Corner at the Willow Bar. I had wrestled with the notion of going to the bar, and the inclination to just go home and cocoon was in ascendance as I walked slowly back from the Mediterranean food cart to eat a salad at the desk while linking up to another conference call.
It was cold, unseasonably so, and waiting in the line made me shiver against the chill.
It is good that business is flowing again, but the system is rusty and there are some kinks that needed to be worked out. I thought a tall drink and some time with the latest addition to the Kindle app on the iPad sounded appealing. Mark Mazetti’s “The Way of the Knife” covered the last years of my professional career with eerie fidelity: the rise of the robot drone and the Special Operations community and all the euphemisms for terminating our opposition with extreme prejudice.
It has become easier to kill by remote control than arrest people, and that is what the game is about these days.
I had to chuckle over some of what was in the book, since it was a classic Washington read with people I knew on every page. Other parts of it, the inevitable parts, made me cringe to have been part of it. But all that went onto the back burner when Old Jim called on the cell. “You going to Willow tonight? There are some things I want to talk about.”
Jim has not been a reliable fixture at his seat at the apex of the bar lately, and if he wanted to talk I was eager to listen. So, I said “yes,” and gathered up my crap at the desk and walked over to take my chances crossing the rush hour traffic buzzing down Fairfax Drive on foot, drivers with their cell phones screwed into their ears.
The bookends of Johns in the bar made Jim a little cranky. He gestured to the space next to him and I moved a stool over to sit next to him.
Jim glared at me as the conversation rolled through the music that was playing in the background- I think we got stuck on The Small Faces and the progression of young Ronnie Wood from boy-toy teen throb to Rolling Stone, and the migration of The Turtles into Florescent Flo and Eddie. Jim was clearly was intent on something he considered important, and between the hard right political view of John-with and Jon-without’s Sedoku puzzle, we clearly were not getting to where he wanted to be.
It was a bit of a pensive afternoon, what with the chill of the weather and events. We all decided to call it quits early, though that provided the opportunity to get at what was bothering Jim when Jon-without and John-with eventually rose and went about their business. There are no coincidences in this world, and though Jim is an Old Democrat, our topic was essentially in agreement.
“It’s the end of history,” he growled at me, ordering a last Bud. I put my hand over my glass- three was enough for me, and hearth and home called out.
“You mean like Fukuyama contended after the Wall came down and the Commies were routed?”
“No, the millennium is not at hand. I am not an idiot. It is the end of our world and it was slipping away and now it is gone.”
I looked at him quizzically. “No, it is all there,” I said. “Mac was right here just a couple months ago.”
Jim nodded. “Exactly my point. The War? The touchstone of all our common experience? Gone. Gone with the fucking wind. The 60s? No news, no relevance. Vietnam? No one remembers, not the President, not any of the kids who may or may not remember to vote. Desert Storm? C’mon.”
“So you are saying that history is over.”
“If no one learns it and no one remembers, we are cut loose. We are in new territory now. No past. The future is not connected to anything.”
“I heard that asshole Tamerlan caused a stink at his mosque when the Imam held up a picture of Doctor King. He was offended that a non-Muslim could be held up as an example of anything. Then he went off on a rant that the bible was nothing but a cheap rip-off of the Koran.”
“Wait, you got to be shitting me. The Old Testament was around- at least in part- a couple thousand years ago. The New Testament is from Christ’s time. The Koran wasn’t written down until around 600 AD, right?”
“It doesn’t matter. People can think up anything they want and start killing because of it.”
“You mean like Year Zero in Pol Pot’s Kampuchea?”
“Or the French Revolution’s new calendar, with all the monarchy stuff scrubbed away. New beginnings, detached from all that came before.”
“That is ridiculous,” I said, finishing the dregs of Happy Hour White. Then it occurred to me that Jim was completely correct. “Wait, maybe it is not crazy. Everyone who lived it is dead. Mac’s war is as far away as Appomattox was to us.”
Jim nodded. “Gone with the wind and even less relevant. I am just describing what is. There is no history. There is only now, and what comes next. It is not going to be based on anything you or me understand.”
“Crap,” I said. “You could be right.”
“Forget about it. It doesn’t matter whether I am right or wrong. I am describing fact. No one knows, no one cares. Not in the slightest. So don’t be surprised at what comes next.”
“What the hell is that?” I asked. Jim took his bull-dog cane off the hook under the bar and leaned on it to stand. He just shook his head.
I pondered the end of history on the way home to Big Pink. And ponder it this morning, with everything new and everything unknown. The news says that there is no connection between the Boston assholes from Dagestan and any other enemy, foreign or domestic. The BBC reported that three other assholes- from someplace in the Middle East- were plotting to de-rail a freight train in downtown Toronto.
No connections. It just is what it is. Like Old Jim says, it isn’t about anything as quaint as “good” or “bad.” It just is what is.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com