Pro Patria Mori

In a recent introduction at a Hillary Clinton rally, Tom Buffenbarger, President of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, had the following to say about Barack Obama's supporters:

"Give me a break! I've got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won't last a round against the Republican attack machine. He's a poet, not a fighter."

Putting aside the fact that my husband possesses neither Prius nor Birkenstock and may possibly not be entirely clear on exactly what a trust fund is**, I take particular offense to the last line — "Hes a poet, not a fighter." This is not because I am a great lover of poetry (in fact, I prefer a good commie joke), but rather because the mascot of my alma mater is The Poet.

There are better reasons to find Buffenbarger's assertion offensive, though, not the least of which is the fact that "poet" and "fighter" are hardly mutually exclusive terms. As Exhibit A, I offer World War One soldier and honorary latte-drinker Wilfred Owen, a.k.a. the guy who wrote one of the handful of poems in the world that I truly love. I suspect Mr. Tom "I Build Weapons for Other People to Use" Buffenbarger would find it edifying:

"Dulce Et Decorum Est"

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

** Disclaimer: Yes, my husband knows what a trust fund is. I think he's trying to set one up for the dog.