healers,” the captain told Spencer. “Whatever other title or rank we have is just splitting hairs. We’re one of those or we’re nothing, just taking up space.
“This country has three times as many billionaires now as when you, YOU, first went to Afghanistan. Eight hundred new billionaires. How many of them are warriors? Teachers? Nurturers or healers? They’re thieves!”
Man, I’ve been a warrior for a long, long time, Spencer thought to himself. Don’t tell me that we’re all being used, that the wars were for nothing, that they were about money and nothing else. I don’t want to hear it!
What he wanted was to get his PEB done and to get back to his real life. In Afghanistan.
He was meant for war. He knew that. Sitting on lawns had his mind was drifting to the soccer kid in his red Manchester United shirt. He was thinking about him too much, and about Miller, too.
Captain Sam asked him point blank “Are you going to find Miller and kill him? Is that why you want to go back?”
Spencer never gave an ounce of energy to imagining revenge, but if that was how the captain could make sense of his plans, that was ok. Captain Sam, a great man, and that piece of shit Miller were actually on the same page about the war, but Spencer never told that to the captain.
How could he explain that he was made for what he did, that what he brought to the table and a million dollars worth of training went into a purpose? He, MSJS, might well be the best in the world at what he did. The missions were fact, objective proofs. That was something. That had significance.
In the quiet of the night he also sometimes asked himself what else did that say about him, that he was better at war than anyone else he had ever seen? It did stuff to him, to his insides. There were periods he couldn’t take a crap for weeks. His insides were too tied up. He could have taken the bus down to visit or had his dad drive up; Jack was only two hours away from Walter Reed, but that never happened. From Afghanistan, he couldn’t make himself call Jack, not even to say he was OK. Life outside war was what was really scary. How fucked up was that?
“Just 85 people in the world have more money than the lowest 3.5 billion people,” the captain continued. “The more the rich take, the faster everything falls apart. They can’t justify that, Jonathan, not even if they own the Supreme Court, the government, the police, the intelligence services, and everything else. Which is exactly why the rich are consolidating power. They know they can’t take everything and then expect to hold onto it for long. But they can’t stop themselves.
The captain continued: “Jonathan, consolidation is the one fundamental flaw of tyranny. When the people fight back, and they will, concentrated power also concentrates the targets. There is no changing things from the inside! We are supposed to be one man, one vote, but that’s over and it’s not coming back. Oligarchs, all over this planet they’re strangling democracy like boa constrictors.
“You don’t talk to snakes. You cut off their heads!”
“Captain,” Spencer suggested, “let’s get you dictation software so you can write your ideas down by saying them out loud. Just talk into a microphone like you’re talking to me.”
Captain Sam should have been talking to a microphone. He certainly wasn’t listening.
“They wiped out Occupy in one coordinated night,” he went on. “Swept it out of existence just like the Chinese wiped Tiananmen Square.
But people won’t take getting poorer forever. Hard work either brings the reward of a better life, or things are going to bust loose. We’re right back in the same fights we had in 1789 and 1889 and 1932, only this time the bad guys are winning!”
“Whoa. Cap, bring it down to scale, OK? Look at a regular day. You could cook the girls’ breakfast. I know you could! You could work on the telephone and organize vets. It’s all good, Cap.