Chapter 20
Maneuvering the skimmer along the causeway leading west towards San Francisco, he was driving into the setting sun. The bright light hurt his eyes and he lowered the driver’s side visor which helped. It helped until the road veered, and the sun dramatically appeared around the side of the visor, momentarily blinding him. He did not become annoyed at this. Instead, he did what he did best, he waited. He monitored the progress of the sun as it lowered toward the horizon. Although the view was painful, he knew that if he waited the sun would set; it was inevitable.
As he skimmed along noiselessly, he considered the speech he had delivered to the assembly of student protesters gathered on the campus of Sacramento State University. The students were raucous, but he felt no anxiety leading up to his speech, no nervous jitters, no butterflies, no excitement. Sometimes it bothered him that he never felt nervous. He never felt stage fright or intimidated by the audience. He had heard about these reactions, but he never experienced them himself. It was a quirk with him, like how some people are color-blind. But in his case, he never felt anxiety. Sometimes it bothered him, but he rarely considered it. It was a trait, or absence of a trait, that he was able to use to his advantage.
He did not have an invitation.
When an anti-war rally began to organize on a college campus it started as an idea that soon began to grow from student to student. It would spread out exponentially until students were frantically organizing. He watched for this, and when he saw an impending rally he traveled to join the aimless mass.
When he stepped onto the campus in Sacramento, he simply followed the students who, like him, seemed drawn to the ruckus; attracted by the noise and action. He followed in their wake. What he found at the epicenter was a gelatinous mob, willing to be led.
Angry students crowded along the walk and grass area in front of the library steps. They bumped him, and blocked his way as he tried to move to the front of the crowd. He was planning to give a rousing speech that decried the war. He had delivered this speech or a version of it to many similar audiences many times before. When he thought of his words and key points of the speech, he realized they seemed flat and uninteresting. He realized he was bored of this speech. As he watched anti-war signs shaking above the crowd he decided to change his position. He would deliver a speech supporting the counter-argument.
Like any debater, he firmly believed in the axiom that style rules over substance, or in other words, how the message is delivered is more important than the message itself. The challenge was never to win based on the substance of the argument. This would mean that there were underlying moral certainties. The real challenge was to control the discourse. There was no morality in debate. No right or wrong, no good or evil. There was only argument and counter-argument. The prize went to the debater who controlled the conversation.
He stepped around the cliques and clusters of students like an oceanographer picking his way across the rocks at low tide.
The students clinging to each other, or to campus structures, gently swayed with the ebb and flow of emotional appeals and short speeches delivered from the podium that had been setup at the top of the library steps. He made his way between the tide pools and around the aggressive students with sharp signs protruding from their soft bodies. He climbed up the steps until he reached the podium. He tapped on the microphone to hear the amplified sound to confirm it was working. Then speaking directly into the microphone, he introduced himself.
“My name is Hans Hoobler.”
When he had the crowd’s attention, he began by saying, “It is the burden of the young man to fight wars instigated by old men sitting in high office. But it is a burden that we must shoulder.”
Hans waited for a reaction, there was none. So he continued.
”Our generation will earn our place in those high offices by fighting and winning, and when the war is won, when at last the military objectives are achieved, the new leaders, our leaders, the veterans who led the men of our generation into combat and back again. These new leaders, honored for their courage and admired for their strength will displace those that set us on this path of destruction, and then, this new generation of peaceful warriors will set things right.”
The audience was quiet now. Not sure if they should cheer for this.
Hans turned up the rhetoric.
Let this war be our last war. If the blood of our generation must be shed, then let us stand in line at the recruitment office so that no one can say we shirked our duty. Let us take this burden, we will bear it. We will win this war, and when we do, we will also win the larger fight.
This is the war to end all war. Is that why you are here today? Is this not the cause you believe in? Read your signs, they say STOP WAR NOW!
Are you sincere? If yes, then now you know the way. Fight war by waging war. Slay the enemy army and in doing so, slay the ideology that set us on this path.
And when young heroes fall, let a new marker decorate their headstones. There, in the veteran’s cemetery, among the noble gardens of stone. There, among the Christian cross and the Jewish star; let the fallen heroes of our generation rest below a sign that represents our cause, our belief, our religion. Let the sign of peace be carved in white stone and mark the graves of the soldiers who fought in this. The last great crusade. The war to end war.
The audience unexpectedly cheered at this and then applauded. Hans registered satisfaction, but not excitement or happiness. It was gratifying to change the speech. It was a challenge to the debater, but the result did not stir him emotionally. If the audience had jeered him and pushed him off of the stage, his reaction would have been the same.
Thinking about the speech and the reaction of the crowd helped him pass the time as he skimmed back towards Berkeley. He accelerated and listened to the low hush of wind across the windshield as the skimmer climbed over the rise leading into Vallejo. Once he crested the top, he had a panoramic view of the bay. The setting sun had dipped behind the mountains now and the sky was illuminated with gold that reflected on the flat water. Silent black mountains punctuated the skyline and split the gold sky from the gold water.
Looking at this vista, it reminded him of a crystal glass of whiskey; a drink to be savored, and then consumed.