She took an elongated breath.
"It's impossible to grow from experiences not properly assessed,
because you are dragging the weight of your errors in judgement behind
you, and applying them to new circumstances. This is why it's beyond
America‘s view that events like Vietnam represent the culmination of their
evolutionary ways. This is not closure; it is the end of a cycle in which
their momentum has caught up with itself, a nd now it's tearing them apart
from within." Bonnie thumbed toward the door. "Like you showed me that
you are still at war with yourself."
"My core behaviours parallel America‘s?"
"As do the Iranians under different auspices."
"There goes that audience."
"Joking won‘t derail me: When we first met, how you relayed your
stories of combat, and your high opinions of those who participated
alongside you, made it clear that your memories of risk and terror are
memorials to your self- image. Your superior attitude tells me that you‘re
keeping a secret that undermines your basic camouflage of an affable
intellectual, whose adventures have made you a just and fair man, if not
always wise in his impetuous incursions into other‘s lives. Our society has
effectively thrown you away, because of what your experiences did to
you."
She looked at me for a piercing moment. "O ne of your deepest secrets
is about courage. You don't think you have any, which is why you can act
in verbally brutal ways to prop yourself up."
Snorting at the ridiculousness of the idea, I said, "What do I have to
be frightened of?"
"Where to begin?" she said to herself.
"Not so easy, is it?"
"No it isn‘t," she said, contemplatively. "I thought you‘d catch on by
now." Resettling in her seat, she said, "You‘ve made your secrets
monuments to your misery, and altars from which you defend them with
the forces at your disposal. America portrays their powerfully virtuous
selves through military incursions that essentially defend their bloody
history as a memorial to their national- image. They are also keeping a
secret from themselves about true courage; they cannot demonstrate it,
because the politics of fear has taken hold of their reasoning. Like you,
they relentlessly express their fear through what have become more than
acceptable acts, but what are now seen as acts of courage, such as killing
whoever the government tells them are impinging on their freedom: the
courage implied comes from facing death in defence of their country. The
courage fighters infer comes from having the balls to kill people—which
