Mallory's Camera

On the rides back and forth between Ithaca and rural squalor, RTT and I talk politics. It is, of course, the only time we speak of much beyond, “Gee, your room is a fucking pigpen” and “Ms. Reeves says you’re missing three English assignments. Do them tonight.”

Recently we’ve been talking Syria. RTT thinks we should send troops in. I disagree.

“But innocent civilians are being killed!” he says indignantly.

I shrug. “Same as it always was. What’s going on in Syria is a civil war. Neither side has the moral high ground, so far as I can tell. What do you know about the Syrian rebels? Absolutely nothing except that they’re all big sharia law fans. Look at Libya. Look at Egypt. You think people there are better off than they were a year ago? I can tell you: They’re not.”

RTT makes a prom girl moue and tosses his head. “So you’re okay with innocent people getting killed.”

“I didn’t say that. If anything makes me hope this is my last reincarnation as a human being, it’s random violence. But break down what happens in any altercation like that. It’s a power grab. The US has no business in internal power grabs.”

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“But there are situations where I think it’s definitely the right thing to intervene,” I add just so the kid will some day speak to me again.

“Like when?”

“Well. Like I think we should have sent troops into Rwanda. And into Darfur. Like I think it was justified when Clinton sent troops into Serbia. I think World War II was justified. But what you have in those situations is very different. It’s ethnic cleansing, the Cro Magnons wiping out what they perceive as the Neanderthals, if you will. That’s morally reprehensible. That represents all that’s worst in humans and as a species we should rise up against it.”

He had his headphones on and I couldn’t tell if he was listening to me or not. Then he said, “And Sierra Leone. You forgot Sierra Leone.”

Yes,” I said. “I forgot Sierra Leone. Did you ever see the movie The Killing Fields?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I think. What’s it about.”

“It’s about what happened in Cambodia under Pol Pot. Not ethnic cleansing exactly. Annihilation based on social class. And they used children to accomplish it.”

“Yeah, I know about boy soliders,” RTT said. “I’ve seen documentaries. That’s what they did in Sierra Leone.”

“Why do you think they use child soldiers?” I ask. “People your age.”

He made a face. “I suppose because they don’t have a well developed sense of right and wrong.”

I made the bad TV quiz show buzzer sound. “Wrong. They do have a sense of what’s right and wrong. Possibly a better sense of what’s right and wrong than adults do. But ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are social constructs, not absolutes. What they think is right is not what I think is right. And that’s always the problem when you’re fighting about right and wrong. No, what the child soldiers lack is empathy.”

“Empathy,” he said thoughtfully.

“If I started to cry in front of one of Pol Pot’s soldiers, they would think that’s hilarious. An old woman crying, shaking, begging for her life! They would think I was all three stooges wrapped up in one. Most people under 21 would think it was funny. They have no feeling for other people’s pain.”

“I wouldn’t think it was hilarious,” he said.

“Well, I should hope not! I am your mother, after all. But what if you saw some other old person crying? Would you care?”

“I might not care,” he said. “But I wouldn’t think it was funny.”

So yesterday he asked me, “Can we watch The Killing Fields tonight?”

So we did although he fell asleep just about the same time Prahn gets snatched by the Khymer Rouge. I watched the whole thing, and thus am sleep deprived this morning. The film stands up really, really well, and I think is a much better anti-war movie than something like Apocalypse Now, which, after all, romanticizes war. I mean think about it. What do you remember about Apocalypse Now? Flight of the Valkyries, right? Robert Duvall surfing. What you remember about The Killing Fields, though, is Pranh walking through that soup of mud and human bones while that eerie choral music plays. It's a much stronger indictment.