Back home...

  It did and didn't matter that the guy had said faggot because he didn't know the word hustler.  It didn't matter because we'd battled across Continents to work for the Americans, the Patriot-Americans to be exact.  Bathing and Confession wasn't the sum total of our needs once the talks were over.  It did matter to the Nation's blood supply being rapidly organized into Types. 

  It did and didn't matter that spoiled, grown, "children" were fussing and fighting over who gets what and where.  Jewish mothers had already picked younger children up from schools and made a point of being "clucks".  That mattered because people could be seriously reprimanded for giving away any and all information about military.  So the mothers, some too tired to stand, others almost instantly bereaved, decided to talk loud about the Jewish soldiers already back Overseas.  It didn't matter that some people can't put anything but themselves first.  And, "to be fair" a mother-to-be from the Metro world had explained, everyone's individual priorities are different in moments like these. 

  It very much mattered that inside the trailer there'd been built a special 2x4 triangle.  That a mother-in-law and daughter were determined to learn how to fold a flag into a triangle.  That they were learning this to support a then-one-armed brother determined to support other Veterans and survivors.  Like it had mattered that without knowing exactly how, our generation had stepped into the traditions of the United States of America.

"I need to find me a

  "BRIC, it's all about the money stuff right now!" 

  Back from War College, back from assignments, back from Court cases, back from Odd Squad and Transforce meetings and ignores, back from Cadet training, back from vacations and drunken escapades...        D.C. into war stance. 

  Don't budge.

  Don't cave. 

  Don't look at me. 

  Do bring this over there. 

  Don't stay.  Don't say.  Anything?  Here rearrange the desk. 

  High and mighty among civilians is standing on an ant hill when military commanders are surviving a military that is at times the only "thing" between freedom and other forms of nationhood. 

  Besides winning scholarships and scraping by on less and less, people don't have good options without systems that function for a future.  Men and women in dysfunctional relationships and collapsing houses of cards financially had to pull up the bootstraps or lose it all.  The Chinese had sucked the money away from us in a hot air balloon of debt and chintzy product.  It was said to be a last straw.  The finer points of how our Country was already collapsing, well, not everyone can stomach the same knowledge.  

Some of the locals had said,

  We're on it. 

  Now the health care tech under observation by State and insurance technical experts on procedure was picking up hypodermic needles and dropping them one by one into the Needle Ball. 

  "Don't you even care we all went to school together?!" A frantic girl started at the Tech but stopped short of interference.  "Maybe that's why they sent me.  I'm not from here." The Tech responded cooly. 

  The Tech deposited the Needle Ball back in a Hazmat container in a kind of ambulance and took off gloves and face shield.  She walked to a nearby car and blurt-yelled at friends, "I used to care.  But that may have been the millionth." 

  "What time are you done?  It's beans and hotdogs at the Bat Cave campsite!" 

  A piece of paper drifted toward the ambulance-van on a light ground wind breeze.  A form.  Observations.  The script wildly bubbly.  "What happened was that the guy whose missing now told everyone around the fire that they'd been told they could try out to join, but we can't be faggots anymore. The guy that was told this said, okay." 

  "Then what happened?" The Tech asked while handing the page back to the frantic girl.  "Write it.  I'll turn it in." 

"The man could not stop

  "Saying faggot?" 

  "Said it like it was coming out a machine gun." 

  "More often than he quoted the Bible." 

  Other people in our generation but hardly old enough to vote let alone drink lit cigarettes. 

  An already-real-writer drove up to the campsite rambo-quiet.  Perfunctly donned his backpack, tucked his keys into a fannie pack inside his shorts.  "YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT ALL WE'VE SEEN SO FAR," a people pleasing but somewhat domestically abused young woman stealthed to him and practically yelled.  The writer didn't flinch.  "Toldya." 

  Most of us were not yet committed to Service and Corporations and spouses and children.  The fact that we'd only seen so much of the world-in-action lent itself naturally to discovering.  Almost right away our minds started comparing multicultural to wars, and, we fought vertigo to debate...when do we write? 

  On our own, at first, in our minds anyway, there was a free-for-all on how something should be written. 

  "So.  What did you think about assignment?" 

  The fire crackled and taunted can't just live in the forest.  "To be honest, I felt lucky to not be living in that State.  And among the many things I can't tell anyone I feel like I should tell you that we hid our Black person under clothing to get back into this one non-violently." 

  "I'm not yours," the Black girl grumbled from a sleeping bag surrounded by chairs facing outwards.  "I didn't mean it to come out that way." 

  "Then you shoulda said it different." 

Informal questions and answers led

  to teams having "handlers". 

  "Why did dey have peace talks in Pakistan?" An Indian asked. 

  Guy fires off an answer.  "They owed us one since Osama Bin Laden was holed up in there without them knowing." 

  "Let us proceed to the main room!" A host cheerily urges. 

  "But why? What does it mean to call a staunch Catholic leader weak and liberal?" 

  "I heard a football team kind of fake insult a faggot not tied to the bleachers like that once.  It's like, I guess, how men sometimes navigate as Velcro when all kinds of sticky stuff is being thrown around.  I mean, it's not like defenses that are in the Middle East and Eastern Europe can save somebody in a funny hat on a different Continent if some guy offends another religion.  Jeez." 

  Good thing technical experts do their thing so well.

The first thing that happened

  at an attempt to have an interfaith meeting of the minds was two different kinds of Christians hitting each other with picked up protestor sticks. 

  "Come on.  Let's just leave." A group of Academics did.  Wound up at a fast food joint sliding into a conversation anyway prompted by a ham dish called something like Moons Over Miami.  "Speaking of moons," one pensive woman, who'd been a sole family survivor of war where she came from, said, "That's how they know when to get pregnant." 

  "Now I've lost my appetite," a man said.  He sipped the glass of water that had had to be asked for since a lot of water had been being wasted. 

  "There are reasons the Mooslims disagree too." A world travel woman harkened back to what had prompted us to leave and be here. 

  "Everyone's interpreting the holy books their own way!" A student roused from deep thought space. 

  "Yes!  How did you know that?" 

  "Kinda obvious I guess.  I pay attention." 

  The food came.  If Grace was said it was internally.  Private gesture in public.  "Just knowing about the world doesn't solve anything," the student directed the complaint at the world traveler. 

  "That's true.  Yet, it seems to help people stay out of the way." 

  "People will do whatever it is they will do," the man drained his water.  "Hungry yet?" Someone asked.

Wars have many battles.

  In the years of our own Civil war, many battlefields.  Not only the fighting was decisive in coming to union.  Some moments in history are pivotal.  Now everyone in the world is thinking of what the world is doing now. 

Romans 9-12, 

Acts 11 

  Both readings show a relative few believers approaching regions where Jesus was not well known and the culture was very different than notions of loving your neighbor, using your freewill to follow God's Commandments, believing that man/humans are not omnipotent...our attempts and efforts to forge "good" are noble, but not mandate-able.

  I am proud of the Trump administration's perseverance, innovation, and odd-squad way of making progress in this much survival in a weirdly violent world.  And grateful for our service people. 

Robeson singing,

  while someone is peephole camera-eyeing factory workers from the top of a building.  The "footage" will have to be spliced into going films of the day.  A view into the reality between State-made fake "news" and a developing documentary witnessing of the world. 

  Some of the still caring "freaks" cautioned the "popular" kids. 

  An ear full of earrings and studs.  "You know who's not here?"  Sometimes a question disarms, you can maybe get closer to the foot of "the walls".  Kid sloppily, nervously poured orange soda into a paper cup.  Asked: "Who?" Other kids in oxford shirts and collar-tees gave looks like, oh shit, someone talked. 

  "Just so your people know," the freaky-looking girl addressed all "the sheep", "Simon Michael tried to kill himself since y'all made it clear he's not good enough to be one of you." 

  The soda bounced out of the cup as it was put back next to the giant bottle of the bubbly.  "Um, where is he?" 

  "We've got him."  Eyes grew wide. 

It's not a Louisiana Purchase, but

  it is also NOT a "war of choice". 

  In all the rhetoric you can really hear influencers putting their slant on the speaking floor.  Perhaps that's why, in order to stress the importance of issues, people use circus-advertising language in these matters.  When really we are just humans deciding what to do next.  And what to do now.  And what then? 

  Of course if we could agree on some factors we might be able to co-exist.  This is where we get to in all relationships.  

  It helps us to re-forge ourselves to solid in nationhood.  And meet each other as we are.  And maybe honor the basics but not much more at first.  So we can keep working on stuff as we go. 

At first everything was awkward.

  True to our alpha and follow-pack natures we were all momentum. 

  Thinking of ourselves as new men in new clothing, that of living by faith in the Jesus piece, and trying to abide the Ten Commandments was really in friction with the pyramids of what politics and culture had become towards the end of the twentieth century. 

  The stumblingblocks were huge and microscopic.  Would appear in any encounter or in isolation. 

  There were habits and addictions, comfort zones, and obligations.  "So different from us," people clung to each other and acknowledged by way of fear.  

  "Protect each other." The generations meeting us in the liminal places, the thresholds, were adament about that.  Though people couldn't really agree about hardly anything past next step in one foot in front of the other.  We were under orders as surviving next generation; as Service people; as future world leaders and participants; as forging beach heads and bridges and boundaries. 

  There were astounding crashes.  "That was a miracle!" Some said rather factually without as much wonder as acceptance--comes with our God's package.  That God in which we can trust.  "Remember when we scraped the hurricane mud off that old bent up license plate and saw that phrase anew?  We had nothing again." 

  We nurtured each other as fellow Americans through collapses, personal and public.  And kept proving our generation will not cave to too hard.  Navigate that he or she couldn't. 

  Couldn't save everyone. 

  Couldn't seal the deal. 

  Couldn't stay sober. 

  Couldn't say. 

  And pass the baton as we can. 

  One of us opened a backpack briefcase to reveal a multitude of actual batons.  "No backing out.  We exist." 

  "We won't be bored." Final assurances.  One of us closed the airplane's door and locked it against being sucked away.

It's that point...

  Isreal has to be careful not to lose its nation status in this crush of "disruption".  Going back to its permissions to be a State and Nato which was complicated by Allies/Axis split as worked out by World War II.  This brought us all to a different kind of brink way back when as we all started seriously talking about anihilation or survival.  Hezbollah is not a State.  So the world tangled with "terrorism" and two state solution as a peace move and tried to explain capitalism. 

  Back when we talked about layers of politics and culture.  What to call stuff in the air? How to place a humanity into a place-centered situ?  

  As changes in global trade and money flow bloc'd and channeled we had to have deals and negotiations.  We needed treaties between enemies to survive hope of survival.  Violations then needed law enforcement and dealing with.  People scrambled to mount into thinking/action groups that were as tall as toddler tyrants ripping up pieces of paper. 

  As hedge against total loss in the case of world war, America developed that point-peace-plan put forth regarding Gaza (also a layered place).  So even if the elevator shaft of two-state bickering with war machines collapsed the antiquated title of MidEast would be the big pillow of region.  

  As a great nation America has to tend to itself as a nation.  One of some allies.  In a world where resources and ownership create "enemies". 

  It's that point again!

  Which world do you want to live in? 

  The tank rumbled forward.  We were down to a small extraction team, the very tip of a fertile crescent.  When we found the war-crazed husband that would never surrender until all the hurt was avenged a lady took the speaker's mouthpiece. 

  "I see you're still alive." Boots on crushed glass and smoldering ash stood to ATTENTION at the sound of her voice. 

  "They killed our baby, our future." The man shout-wailed into a megaphone. 

  "YOU KILLED OUR BABY.  THERE IS NO BABY IN OUR FUTURE." 

  "HOW CAN THAT BE?" 

  Silence from the tank. 

  A diplomat's pouch attached by handcuff.  Barely legible writing: How can that be?

  It took a couple minutes to find the file.  Classified information showing what was coming at the area from air; what was fired from the ground; where the women had gone through a toxic nuclear cloud of gas and crud. 

  Gorbachev started talking. 

  W started listening.