But "Sheehan" isn't French...

I find the Cindy Sheehan phenomenon very interesting. Troubling, too.

Of course, as a parent, I understand her pain. I try to imagine what losing a child would be like and I quickly withdraw from even the notion of it. But I find her response to the pain -- and the response of media and other groups to that response -- to be a very telling snapshot of the state of our culture.

Strangely, Ms. Sheehan seems more upset by the world with which she has been confronted than by the fact that she is now without her son. His death in Iraq suddenly forced her to actually confront the difficult issues of pain and evil in a complex world, and she has summarily rejected it in favor of an existence in which her son, exalted to some sort of Sheehanic sainthood and surrounded by tens of thousands of militant angels, points an accusing finger toward those who have made difficult decisions and urges his Beloved Mother to set them straight. Apparently, this can be accomplished by giving her a few minutes of time for a "meeting." One imagines from all reports that this meeting might be characterized as "a sound thrashing" -- Martyr-elect Cindy presents the harsh reality of the world, and those so reprimanded walk away shaking their heads to clear the fog, thanking her for helping them to see the light.

To Ms. Sheehan, the world is thus a caricature; a morality play in one act. Those who claim to be good are in reality evil because their decisions cause people to die, and those we are told are evil are really just misunderstood and demonized heroes. The moral of the story is that we could live in peace and prosperity if we would just learn to be kind and mind our own business. People are basically good and will do the right thing if given the opportunity, and we will have a happy ending if we all just decide to live in harmony.

I wish that could be true. But if history tells us much of anything, it's that, regardless of how we interpret or revise humanity's past, we see an imprint on the world of a creature that is anything but "basically good". Ms. Sheehan has set up President Bush and a myriad of government entities as straw men for a humanity she cannot accept.

But she can take comfort in history as well. It shows us that she is in abundant, if not good, company. France comes to mind. The French have made commiseration a way of life, and I believe that perhaps "We mind our own business, and mind it well" is the French National Motto. Ms. Sheehan need only look back a few years to the German occupation of France to achieve a level of mental and emotional clarity around what happens to nations who believe that the lion will lie down with the lamb just because the lamb sits quiet and aloof, sending an occasional smile or wink of the eye its way as an invitation. The nature of the lion has to be changed, or the lamb will realize too late that it isn't having a picnic - it is the picnic.

What I find most interesting, though, is how easily some Americans find it to despise the environment that provides them with the very freedom that enables men and women like Ms. Sheehan's son to volunteer to defend it. At best, this is disingenuous, at worst, hypocritical and destructive. It seems to me, actually, that Ms. Sheehan and her worship by various interests is the cultural equivalent of an autoimmune disorder. Society begins to eat away at itself, suddenly seeing as dangerous what it used to correctly recognize as healthy. To Ms. Sheehan and her tagalongs, the taste is very sweet, and no one can make them understand the bitterness and tragedy that will follow.