These United States come full circle

A year and a half. Almost forty columns. Over fifty single-spaced pages. All this and, if asked, I couldn’t really tell you how far I’ve come and in what direction in all that time.

But the folks I’m talking to nowadays are more concerned about all of my last four years and I can’t even tell them entirely what they meant to me now that I’m so close to being ripped from my alma mater’s womb. Sigh. And it’s exactly that kind of arcane reference (to Macbeth in case you care) that makes my readers, casual and regular, wonder why I even bothered trying to get a point of view ya’ll don’t often hear out on campus at great risk to my credibility and some would say my safety.

Fortunately, though the previous ones confuse me, I can easily answer these questions. I promised in my first column to bring people the truth, as I knew it, culled from media outlets the world over in an attempt to make a perspective available at SMU that was habitually ignored. I was trying to poke breathing holes in the shrink-wrap surrounding and suffocating all of us here in Highland Park. Whatever you think of the last year and a half of The Daily Campus commentary, you can’t deny that there’s been a dialogue going on that’s fresher and more challenging than at nearly any other time before this.

And that was always the point; just getting the word out there and asking the consensus questions about itself it didn’t like to consider. If that meant sorting through hate mail week in and week out or going out to accost a former senator, then I went out to do it and then some. But like I also said from the get go, this column was never intended to be about me. Even though I managed to negotiate its size to nearly half over the original word limit, there’s still never enough space to go over every fact in every story, let alone what’s been going on in my dull life.

That last remark may have actually constituted my first bald-faced lie to you, reader. This last academic year has certainly given new meaning to the curse of living in “interesting times” for all of us I think. Maybe a friend of yours is stationed overseas. Maybe you lived under the threat of deportation. Then again, maybe you went out of your way not to give recent events so much as a glance. Not if I can help it, I say, and have been saying a good deal before these United States got turned on their ears.

We’ve been at war for some time now; the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about delighted at the stand-in for the old Soviet Union. Remarkably, government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from this earth. That had to be one of the reasons I wrote this column: to celebrate our freedom by doing what little I could to defend it from the real threats at home. And while I’m paraphrasing previous leaders of this great nation, I want to remind you of something James Madison said in 1799: “The fetters on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad.”

I wouldn’t go looking in the same general vicinity Madison once occupied for that kind of wisdom nowadays. Two years ago, one of Bush’s early campaign promises came to fruition. This is ironic considering he did not intend to say what came out of his mouth in March of 2000. Regardless, his vow to “use our technology to enhance uncertainties abroad” is about the only thing he promised to us back then that didn’t turn out to be another in a long litany of lies.

Not the kind of leadership I imagine you were hoping for, but while I wouldn’t encourage turning your eyes to Washington D.C. for answers, I do recommend another DC for a constant message of hope for the future: The Daily Campus. It doesn’t matter whether you look at my eminent absence from these pages as a triumph or a travesty; I have faith that the dialogue will continue long after I’m gone. If this last column sounds a little like a last will and testament in parts, it should, because I want to contribute in my own little way to this extraordinary gift.

On a more selfish note, I had hoped that my legacy would be a little more concrete. You know, a protŽ#233;gŽ#233; of sorts willing to follow in my footsteps and continue writing These United States except this time around with a little note signifying the date of its creation and the original author. Well I may never get that, but I can look with pride at the pages of our paper and realize I’ve left a mark. And just in case you’d like to know, I’ve been in touch with a young lady doing graduate work in theology here by the name of Lauren Bourell who’s expressed an interest in carrying on the spirit of this column, if not every single point I used to make, with some admirable work of her own. I hope you’ll be kind to her and lend her an ear and don’t forget that you can always reach me at [email protected], whether I’m here or not.

But with about three hundred words left before I have to sign off, I’m not quite ready to stop jawing your ear off on my own for the moment. I, Jonathan “Oz” Trammell, being of relatively sound mind and manageably large body, have one last wish before this student becomes alumnus subject to all the letters begging for handouts.

See in the long run, it doesn’t really matter to me all that much which way you went on these issues. I could worry myself to death about the hate mail and all, but I always figured that since it was always either anonymous or coming from those of you who hoped to get training instead of an education, that I must be doing something right if I’m pissing you off. After all, when you’ve got a quorum of the faculty standing behind you, Joe First-Year, business major doesn’t really impress you.

So with me or against me on the fine print, I just want to leave knowing you at least tried to make some room in your lives for this thought. It’s the last one I’ll be around to give you, but if you hang on to it tightly, it’ll guide you forward to thoughts of your own and that’s the point. Besides, wouldn’t it be nice if, just once, I let someone else have the last word? Peace be with you.

“Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country-hold up your head. You have nothing to be ashamed of.” — Mark Twain