An open letter to the Trench Potatoes

Every American schoolkid has been compelled at one time or another to write a letter to Congress. Then, it was for our benefit; now, I think it might be good for them. I address this to those legislators who, waist-deep in Capitol Hill mire, may need a little bucking up. A little inspiration. A little perspective. A boot in the rear. Here’s the text that – amended to include a few specifics – I’ll be tossing into a few Congressional mailboxes.

Dear Representatives of the American People,

Perhaps our most tragicomic instinct as human beings is to seize control over little things when all other control is lost. Survivors who escaped the towers on 9/11 have described hovering near their desks as fire alarms blared, calmly and intensely deliberating and then, finally, picking up a book to carry with them down the emergency-lit stairwell. They didn’t need the book, or want it – they just needed to make a decision for themselves, at a time when all decisions were being taken away from thousands of their fellows.

When nothing can be done, we feel the need to do something. But when something must be done, and we have the power to do it, all too often we stand by and let the moment pass.

In the towers, people who never asked to face danger made choices that saved or ended their lives. These are the same kind of choices that a soldier in a trench might have to make – simple choices with profound consequences. To stand up and shoot, or to duck and cover? Neither option guarantees safety, and when you’re sitting in the mud with bullets singing overhead even the act of lighting a cigarette is neither easy nor without significance. Once you’re in the trench, the decision to “go over the top” – to force your nerveless body up and into no-man’s land – is one that humans are not designed to make.

That’s why you make that decision before you set foot in the trench.

Hard decisions are one thing, decisions under hard circumstances quite another. C.S. Lewis describes ‘courage’ as not itself being a virtue, but rather the form of every virtue at the testing point. Courage of conviction can be as simple as pure, bloody-minded obstinacy, a determination to do what you came to do no matter how different things look when you arrive. That’s not an easy quality to develop, especially once you come under fire. However:

THIS IS A TRENCH YOU CHOSE.

You chose to fight. You fought to fight. Every one of you sits where you sit now because you campaigned, you struggled, you battled, and you were victorious. The trench is your prize. You could be making more money, working shorter hours, and taking less abuse if you went back to your legal practice or took a corporate job. But you are where you are because you chose it, and you chose it for a reason: you, along with a scant handful of your fellow citizens, are in a position to fight for the future of your nation. Your constituents picked up the one rifle they had and handed it to you.

That doesn’t make the decision to fire any easier; therefore, remember that it’s a decision you’ve already made. I won’t argue that fortune favors the bold, or that the warriors who stand up in the face of controversy tend to outlast those who seek safety. I don’t have to: it’s self-evident, and it’s not the point. The point is not the medals you may earn or the speeches you may make, though both will be brighter for being harder-won. The point is that we, the people, didn’t accept your application for a spot in the trench so that you could sit in it. We want you to fight.

So, fight.

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