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Show 113 I sensed - though I could not have said i t then - t h a t the war would dissipate the n a t i o n a l ideal of democratic equality. The Constitution would be snipped and slashed into c o n f e t t i. The wholeness of America would be l o s t - for a time Aperhaps, - forever. Despite my awareness of the psychic dimensions of the war, I was as incapable of d e a l i n g with i t as before. If anything, my terror escalated, my f a i t h diminishing as I rememberd Brian's contorted face, saying goodbye. When I daydreamed of i t - as I found myself doing as I drove to school or sat through class or fed the baby - I f e l t t h a t I was watching some primordial contest between l i g h t and dark, good and e v i l , wholeness and dismemberment, and I trembled. The sides were not c l e a r l y chosen. Life versus death? Whose life? Whose death? All could not survive Vietnam at war. And I sensed t h a t l i n e s of good and e v i l were no more easily drawn. There would be good men and bad men on both sides - the North Vietnamese o f f i c e r was not my B r i a n ' s enemy. They were in accord. I sensed t h a t i n d i v i d u a l a t t i t u d e s were somehow at stake. The acts of the i n d i v i d u a l would count most of a l l in t h i s war, the acts of conscience r e g a r d l e s s of the o v e r - a l l s t r a t e g y. To obey the r i g h t order, to disobey the wrong order - a continual Process of s o r t i n g , choosing sides not d e l i n e a t e d by a Demilitarized Zone - these things I f e l t , but could not say. How could I write them to Brian without p a r t i c i p a t i n g in the deadly American self-righteouness, without being g u i l t y of the u l t i m a t e presumption. |