Here is another excerpt from Mona’s February letter, containing a question that might be taken up in the shuttle between your lives and ours:

I feel very deeply that if all soldiers were required to study philosophy for one year prior to military training, our world, and our armed forces, would be something to admire.  The kids and I watched “Forest Gump” the other day, and I think it was their first look into the horrors of war, and a look at what it meant to protest against your country, as well as a look into life from the vantage of a good man.  The world has forgotten that part of our history — do you think we are better for it?

I need help understanding the question.  Does it mean: are we better for having forgotten this period?  Or are we better thanks to all the peole who did protest the direction their country was taking?   I wonder how Uncle Tom Jenkins would answer those questions.  I wonder how my sons would answer them.  And Marguerita and Nancy for example.  Above all, I wonder how Brian would take off for one of his flights after the long runway of “Forest Gump.”

There’s an unforgettable image in “Pulp Fiction” when John Travolta, the greatest disco dancer of the 80s, shoots up with heroin.  There’s a close-up of the teaspoon heating up, then the needle, majestic, enticing, like the biblical tree of knowledge, and then one of his face, smooth and blissful to be in the grips of an artificial paradise.  This was an unforgettable reminder of the power and promise of heroin, to provide pleasure and ecstasy.  I’d like to compare that image with one from “Forest Gump.”  We see him running, awkwardly because he’s got those braces on, but then he picks up speed, and it’s another runway, and all of a sudden the air-currents and the muscle movements are too much for those braces and they just fall to the wayside.  There too, for anyone but the most jaded of spectators, we suddenly confront waves of pleasure and ecstasy, on the screen and in our hearts.  Here’s a man who is about to take off, destination unknown.  What strikes me about his trajectory is how home-grown he is, how close to his mother, how confident and trusting and well, how utterly “country bumpkin” he is.  Something close to a moron, to be honest.  And yet his speed will take him far from these original coordinates, before it brings him back home.  And I think we have here the figure of his protest: the man saw his country slowing down, getting bogged down, becoming cautious and dishonest and self-seeking, spending useless hours in front of the mirror of national identity when the sky above was beckoning.  So he said, naively, in his unforgettable Southern accent: hey guys, this is not for me.  I’m not used to this sinking into molasses.  I’ve known other skies, and other more satisfying and exhilerating cruises.  Even ping-pong is better than what you’re doing over there in Vietnam!  Wake up guys, and shake off your shackles! 

Are we better for having seen Forest Gump on his own glide path back to his birthplace?  I’ll say only this: it’s unforgettable.  And, to register a criticism of Robert Ebert, I find Forest Gump far more inspiring as a role-model and source of that tinkling in the spine than Mickael Jordan fighting against his flu to beat the Utah Jazz.  There’s no protest there, and, despite the case made by Ebert, it’s bargain basement heroism. 

I wonder what Dean would say about Mona pondering a year of obligatory philosophy for soldiers?  If she only knew how bored Dean was with religion classes, she might think twice before concluding that philosophy would be, once made obligatory and subjected to grades, something that might help our soldiers.  Today soldiers don’t need obligatory philosophy to operate their conversion to a higher plane: circumstances in their theatres of operation are providing them with opportunities like that day in and day out.  It’s called winning the battle for the hearts and minds of peoples.  The Petraeus doctrine.  One of the prouder moments of the American experience.  And one that will send the philospher’s back to their drawing board.