Dave Eggers - Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

— I don’t think Thomas Paine … Anyway. They didn’t like that?

— I guess not. They were nice enough about it after I explained myself. But they made me withdraw.

— I can see you’re a fan of grand gestures, though.

— Sometimes. I guess so. But that’s how we met.

— In Sacramento?

— No, but through Boys State. There was a parade through Marview on the Fourth of July, and you rode in the back of a convertible. I don’t know what you were doing out here, but you were in the same car as me. It was some old vintage car, and that year’s local Boys State reps were in the car with you. You were exotic that year because you’d come all the way from Wyoming. You remember?

— Sure, I guess. I mean, I’ve done a couple hundred parades over the years, so I don’t know if …

— But no one ever comes to Marview. We’re just forgotten. People see this broken-down military base and assume anything near it is toxic and dead. I don’t know. Maybe it is. Sometimes it is.

— I remember the day being bright.

— I love you for that, sir. Sometimes it was bright here. It really was. This was always some kind of model for diversity and a strong middle class and all that, then the base closed and it all fell down a few notches after that. It’s like steroids, right? You ever know a guy on roids?

— I believe so.

— They get huge and the muscles get shiny, right? But when they stop, it all sinks like mud. Round shoulders, potbellies. Saggy breasts.

— Okay.

— But you were right. That day of the parade was bright. And I was sitting next to you, with another kid. We rode for a few hours together through Marview. I even helped you get in and out of the car. You dropped an ice cream cone someone got you and I helped you clean up, wiping your shirt and pants and …

— Okay. I remember you.

— So you remember what you said to me that day?

— No, son. I doubt that I do.

— You said that I should play by the rules.

— Okay. I said that to a lot of people.

— And I did it. So where am I?

— And this is some failure of the formula? That you didn’t arrive at where you expected to be? And that your astronaut isn’t on the Shuttle? That somehow this puts in question the entire framework?

— Yes sir, that’s my thesis.

— Well, I have to say, that is a cockamamie thesis. That’s like saying that if you lose a certain football game that the sport itself is flawed. Son, not everyone can win the game. Some people play it poorly. Some people quit. Some people don’t even read the playbook. And some people expect the rest of the team to carry them into the end zone.

— No. What I’m saying is that you moved the end zone. And you turned the grassy field into mud.

— I don’t know what to say to all that.

— You changed the rules.

— We did not change the rules.

— It just seems chaotic.

— You think it’s more chaotic now than when ? The fucking frontier days? Then it was perfectly organized, kid? When people were sleeping on hay and eating squirrels?

— No. But during postindustrial …

— Post goddamned what ? When you had to save a month for a radio? When having indoor plumbing was a sign you’d arrived? Jesus Christ, son, the worst thing your predecessors ever did for you young pricks was to succeed. We made everything so easy that you cry yourselves up a storm every time there’s a pebble in your path.

— Okay, at least tell me this: Is it all the same money?

— Is what all the same money?

— The money that could have saved the Shuttle, and the money we send to random countries, that we use to remake unchangeable countries ten thousand miles away.

— Is it the same money?

— Yeah, is it? I mean, you guys complain about not having money for schools, for health care, that everything’s broke and we have government shutdowns and every other goddamn thing, and then we look up and you’re spending 150 million on air-conditioning in Iraq.

— Listen, you’re preaching to the converted here.

— I don’t want to be preaching. I’m asking . I don’t know how that works. Where does the money come from? You guys fight over pennies for Sesame Street , and then someone’s backing up a truck to dump a trillion dollars in the desert.

— So you’re asking where does the money that finances wars come from?

— Yes.

— You’re smart enough to know that. We create that money. It’s not a standard part of a year’s budget. There isn’t a line item for war.

— So is it true that we’re essentially borrowing money from the Chinese to finance these wars?

— Oh shit. No. But we create and sell bonds, and people here and elsewhere, for example in China, see these bonds as a good investment. And no doubt the Chinese like the leverage it gives them, holding so much American debt.

— But couldn’t we just sell bonds to pay for Social Security, education for all, college for all? I mean, everyone wrings their hands about cutting or saving some microscopic government program, and Where oh where will we get the money? — but then we turn around and there’s a billion dollars for Afghani warlords. I mean, I know I’m stupid not to understand this, but I don’t.

— The problem with all those things you mention, education and whatnot, is those are chronic problems, as opposed to acute problems. We fund the things that are urgent, that everyone can rally around and more or less agree upon. And everyone agrees on funding the troops that are stationed abroad. You fund some advisors, then you inch it toward full engagement, and pretty soon no one wants to be the one denying body armor to our young people in uniform. So we find the money. We sell bonds, we borrow money. But will we get that kind of momentum to borrow money from China to pay for some national education reform? No. That’s not an acute problem. If there were an alien invasion tomorrow, and the only way to win against the aliens would be to fully fund Head Start, then sure, we would find that money.

— So it’s not a matter of possibility, but of will?

— What’s that?

— Will.

— Of course. Everything is a matter of will.

— My mom always said that.

— Well, she was right.

— Not often.

— Son, did you bring me here to talk about your mother?

— But don’t you think there should be a plan for people like me, for the guys you were talking about, the vets whose brains are scrambled?

— What sort of plan?

— Don’t you think …

— What, son?

— Don’t you think that the vast majority of the chaos in the world is caused by a relatively small group of disappointed men?

—

—

— I don’t know. Could be.

— The men who haven’t gotten the work they expected to get. The men who don’t get the promotion they expected. The men who are dropped in a jungle or a desert and expected video games and got mundanity and depravity and friends dying like animals. These men can’t be left to mix with the rest of society. Something bad always happens.

— Something bad like this. Like you bringing me here. I agree.

— When I see these massacres at malls or offices, I think, There by the Lake of God go I.

— Grace of God.

— What’s that?

— It’s “There but for the grace of God.”

— No. It’s “there by the Lake of God.”

— It’s “grace of God.”

— It can’t be.

— Son. It is.

— I’ve always had this picture in my mind of the Lake of God. And you walk by it.

— There’s no Lake of God.

— It was like this huge underground lake, and it was dark and cool and peaceful and you could go there and float there and be forgiven.