As a master, I’ve found out that the country I fought for is no longer a democracy — but something far more sinister
Staff Sergeant Stehval* had an alleged 56 kills.
His room was no more than 75 square feet, complete with white concrete walls, peeling and faded from the Iraqi sun. Black tally marks scribbled above his cot indicated the weaponry he used for each shot. A .50 caliber sniper rifle, M24, or a modified M16 with an adjustable gas block each carried the death warrant of an Iraqi man, woman, or sometimes a child carrying an IED.
Back home, Stehval was an accomplished golfer who had earned his way into a celebrity golf tournament after crushing the competition at a local country club. When I heard that, I remember laughing and shaking my head in disbelief until other members of his squad spoke in his defense.
“Golf or killing people. He’s the real deal,” they told me. I later found out he played next to Charles Barkley or some other legend (I don’t follow basketball so I forgot the name of the celebrity).
Prior to the Afghan and Iraq Wars, grunts would read about famous snipers like Carlos Hathcock — a Marine sniper with 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam. So, when Stahvel’s troops swore by his 56 kills, that alone sounded impressive. That is, until they told me about “some SEAL asshole named ‘the Devil’” racking up kills in southern Ramadi. He turned out to be none other than the legendary American Sniper, Chris Kyle. In fairness, Ramadi was a turkey shoot with fast and loose rules of engagement, so while it may seem heresy to say, there have been better snipers in military history. Perhaps in an alternate universe, Stahvel could have taken Kyle’s place as the “legend,” but the Stahvel I knew was far more even-keeled than the Chris Kyle I’d read about. In fact, it was Stahvel the Sniper who planted the seeds of democratic doubt in my mind during my time in Iraq.
Once, I asked about his golf handicap and average, still uncertain if his troops were pulling my leg. When he responded with impressive numbers and knowledge, I knew he was telling the truth. Embarrassed, I stared out the side of the Humvee as the sporadic beeps of our radio punctuated the silence. Once we dismounted, we took positions around a fueling station, pulling security while another group interrogated the tenants.
As our boredom grew, I asked the question every soldier asks during a war: “What’re you going to do when you get home?”
Stahvel’s chuckle and head shake showed I already knew the answer. “Play more golf,” he stated. I waited, expecting more. When he turned back to scan the area, I asked again.
“You’re serious about that? You actually want to be a professional golfer?”
The hot Iraqi wind howled between the walls of the fueling station while we continued to peer around corners. Once the wind settled, Stahvel spoke. “These rich senators on the golf course send me to war, and I pull the trigger for them.” His brute honesty wasn’t what I’d expected, so I turned my full attention toward him, ignoring my responsibilities. He continued to scan, peering through his scope, then said over his shoulder, “I’m just doing this until I become good enough to beat all their dumbasses. And earn more money than we make in this shithole.”
Stahvel’s words rattled me, though I’m certain he meant some of them in jest. When we returned to Camp Ramadi, our vehicle passed by Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) facilities. KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton and ran government contracts throughout the Iraq War. During my tour, senators and high-end officials toured the KBR facilities, and then used the opportunity as a photo op to shake hands with troops. As we rolled past the facilities, I considered how so few politicians’ sons or daughters were fighting in the wars. In fact, most everyone I knew in the military — even college-educated grunts like myself — wasn’t rich or connected, but blue-collar, poor, and middle-class at best. If someone was wealthy or special — like Pat Tillman — you knew about it.
With the light fading, I returned to the ramshackle plywood building I called home. I slept on a cot covered in mosquito netting to keep out sand fleas. Underneath the cot, mousetraps littered the floor to keep the rat bastards from stealing my beef jerky. I plopped down in a nearby chair and opened my olive green journal. I flipped a few pages to pull notes for a report, then paused. Slowly, almost methodically, I turned the book over to the back. Then, almost without thinking, I scribbled, “When the rich wage war, it’s the poor and young who die.”
I’m uncertain why I wrote the sentence at the time, but the journal accompanied me on every mission for the rest of my tour. Every mission, that sentence pressed against my leg in the pocket where I carried it. Some men carry bibles. I carried my journal. Then I tucked it away in a box when I returned home, and it sat gathering dust for 12 years.
I found the journal recently while looking for camouflage face paint to wear in a silly family photo. The front was still stained with grease. The interior contained old notes about insurgents, phone numbers of friends, and weapons serial numbers. Yet, written on the back, the infamous words remained. I brushed my fingers across the sentence and flipped through the journal’s dog-eared pages.
When I came home from Iraq, I was in the midst of a divorce, and John McCain and Barack Obama were running for president. I spent most of those first six months in an alcohol-induced depression. I’d gone to war twice, fighting in both major conflicts — Afghanistan and Iraq — and the burden had cost me my health and marriage.
That was all fine and good. I had signed up, after all. But the pieces didn’t seem to fit the way they used to when I was a jingoistic new grunt with a family history of military service. My grandfather fought the Nazis, and our lineage goes as far back as a general under Napoleon Bonaparte. “It runs in the blood,” as those of us with a long military lineage like to say. Yet despite my unwavering patriotism — which I still have — a growing disgruntlement with American politicians seeped into every mental crevice.
While a politician’s background may be from a poor or middle-class upbringing, society can become a means to an end for a career advancement or a voting block.
I could relate to John McCain as a veteran. But as a politician? There was the issue of moral character I couldn’t reconcile. He’d grown rich as a Senator and married into the Anheuser-Busch family by cheating on his spouse — who became disabled in an accident — and then subsequently divorced her. Perhaps my divorce played a role in why I didn’t vote for him, but I didn’t vote for Obama either. I viewed both as pariahs in the political industrial complex that churned out elitist men and women, yet sent young people to death on foreign soil. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wealth, but how it affects a person is another thing, and that was my issue with McCain. When the world starts kissing your ass, you forget where you came from. While a politician’s background may be from a poor or middle-class upbringing, society can become a means to an end for career advancement or a voting block. These politicians spend less time with their fellow man — or if they do, we become talking points in their campaigns as opposed to real people.
When my conservative family asked who I’d be voting for in the 2008 election and I responded “neither,” the shock was palpable. The wars had finally done me in. I couldn’t tell them why I couldn’t vote for McCain. All I knew was something was amiss in government politics, so I kept my mouth closed, lest I appear “unpatriotic.” A veteran not voting for McCain? The hell is wrong with you, soldier?
Little did I know that in the subsequent years, politicians would grow richer, greedier, and more powerful. I internalized my views because I didn’t have the language to define what was happening to American politics.
That would change.
When Donald Trump campaigned on “draining the swamp” so he could fix the federal government, I about vomited from laughter. It seemed absurd that a reality show billionaire wanted to head to Washington to kick out the rich and connected. Prior to the landmark 2016 election, polls showed 77% of registered voters were concerned with corruption in the government, so “draining the swamp” resonated with voters. But as history likes to remind us, lip service is often just that. Trump quickly appointed members of Goldman Sachs to his administration and his Cabinet became the wealthiest in U.S. history, with a combined income of $12 billion. Why get elected as the most powerful man in the world and ignore your rich friends to help the common man?
Democrats were quick to point out the hypocrisy, conveniently forgetting their own wealth and the back-patting they’d received from special interest groups. From Silicon Valley startups like Facebook to health insurance companies like United HealthCare, both sides of the political spectrum reaped the benefits of a growing divide between the middle class and the elites.
Now, with the 2020 election looming, candidates are still trying to present themselves as in touch with their constituents. But a simple look at just how much many of today’s candidates are worth makes it hard to believe they’ll be any different. Elizabeth Warren, for example, received a $525,000 advance for her book A Fighting Chance, and a $300,000 advance for This Fight Is Our Fight (which ironically claims to fight for the middle class) and has an estimated max net worth of $11,075,000. Kamala Harris has an estimated net worth of $6,054,999. Bernie Sanders has an estimated worth of $1,837,701. Beto O’Rourke was twice as rich as Ted Cruz prior to running for Senate. He’s worth $16,356,001.
The only person running on the middle class platform who’s substantially less rich is Mayor Pete Buttigieg, but even that’s likely to change soon, and quickly. According to his latest tax return, he had an estimated worth of $166,998, but Buttigieg received a $75,000 advance for his book, which is currently a bestseller. In his filing, he disclosed the advance and what he’d receive in future profits (ranging from 15% to 7.5% of sales). Using a program called Publisher Rocket that analyzes book sales on Amazon, I looked up Buttigieg’s estimated book profits. Here are the results:
Given his presidential run and popularity, the chances that Buttigieg’s book remains a bestseller are high. Even if he only receives 7.5% of book sales, in a year he’d make $341,566. While there’s nothing wrong with him making money off his book, necessarily, I bring this up to illustrate how quickly politicians can go from relating to their constituents to dramatically outearning them.
During a recent boys trip, I remarked to my friend Mike*, who works for a government agency, that I wished someone had brought Amazon’s voice-activated A.I. — Alexa — to curate music for the weekend. His long sigh told me he knew something I didn’t, so I asked for an explanation hoping to glean spy craft secrets.
When approaching crime scenes, Mike explained, federal agents are instructed not to say anything upon entering a home because the target home may have a voice-activated A.I. that’s listening (and recording). Of course, Mike explained, the public has known all along that these devices are listening, but we continue to offer our biometrics and personal information like lemmings to slaughter. Facebook sells our information on a platter to candidates wanting to buy their way into our feeds. In fact, Facebook is so vital to our election cycle, candidates are spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars on Facebook ads alone. While we may not believe it, Orwell’s dystopian prophecy has come home to roost.
We shout at companies like Facebook and Amazon that something has to change and read books like 1984, scared that it is becoming a reality.
For a billion-dollar company to influence policy then, isn’t a stretch. Tech companies own the private data and browsing histories of both citizens and politicians, and most of us wouldn’t want our search history released to the public. After the Cambridge Analytica debacle, Facebook didn’t even stop gathering data. Most of today’s influential tech companies could care less whether you align with their worldview, influence, or politics because they control the story and what you see.
In one of his famous works from the 1800s, Democracy in America, French diplomat and political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville explains a process similar to the one we’re seeing today. In de Tocqueville’s words, here is how democracy becomes tyranny:
Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.
De Tocqueville’s statement is prophetic. Today, because Big Brother is always watching, we warp footage however we deem fit — as in January’s face-off between Covington students and a Native elder at the Lincoln Memorial — to tell a false narrative while powerful tech giants reap the benefits. We shout at companies like Facebook and Amazon that something has to change and read books like 1984, scared that it is becoming reality.
We would do well to listen to Orwell’s warning, given that thousands of years before his novel, a disillusioned soldier from Athens reminded his students what happens when wealth and power are the rule of governments.
At the height of the Peloponnesian War, a 37-year-old hoplite distinguished himself in battle, even earning praise from an Athenian general. The soldier’s name was Socrates.
Historians credit Socrates as being one of the founders of Western and moral philosophy, but what most people don’t know is that he wrote nothing. His pupil, Plato — who also served as a soldier — collected all his musings. Both philosophers are widely known for the way they challenged system of governments, injustice, and the city-state. Influenced by Socrates, Plato wrote The Republic in 380 B.C. to explore themes we still consider relevant in modern democratic institutions.
In one of his more famous musings from the book, Plato asks what would happen if someone picked the captain of their ship based on their accumulated wealth, instead of a poor man who would make a better captain. He concludes it would doom the voyage, and thus the same is true of ruling a city. His concept later formed the ideals of what’s known as a plutocracy — a society governed by the wealthy. Later, Plato’s understudy, Aristotle, expanded on that idea and pioneered the term oligarchy — in which power rests with a small group of elites linked via wealth, family, education, corporations, or religious/political affiliation.
As a veteran and American, this is the conundrum I feel many of us now face: love of country but disappointment in its government.
In America, we like to pretend key freedoms are ours to control, but the illusion wears off once you wake up — like Neo discovering the Matrix. We may have started out as a democracy, but the allure of power and wealth has corrupted even the most honorable intentions of our democratic union. That’s why, in 1911, German sociologist Robert Michels penned a theory known as the “Iron Law of Oligarchy,” which stated that no matter how nobly a democracy begins, it will eventually devolve into oligarchy. To some, this may seem absurd, but consider the following: In 2014, Princeton University political scientist Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University released a research study showing that the preferences of a majority of U.S. citizens conflict with those in power. Their findings state:
In the United States… the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
Years ago, I would have told you the whole point of democracy is to enact the will of the people. I would have said democracy is the best hope we have for our nation. Yet, once you peek behind the curtain, it’s hard to see anything except the strings controlling us.
I guess that’s why I wrote that simple sentence on the back of an olive green journal in the middle of a war. In golf, you move a tiny ball toward a pin by smacking it with a club. Perhaps Stahvel saw he was nothing more than a white ball getting smacked by rich men and women aiming toward their aspirations. Perhaps it’s why 64% of us came home from the war disillusioned and wondering if our service was worth it. We were nothing more than those golf balls, smacked repeatedly by those holding the club.
As a veteran and American, this is the conundrum I feel many of us now face: love of our country but disappointment in its government. So, what to do? As I’ve spoken about my fear of our government being reduced to a “civil oligarchy,” people have asked me, “What’s the solution?” When asked, I think of the Roman senator and philosopher, Boethius.
Boethius stated that history is a wheel. Sometimes you ride high, and other times you’re crushed underneath, but the cycle continues. If his words are true, then we can see what happens when the common man is crushed under the wheel — revolt is inevitable. Athens saw the removal of the Thirty Tyrants and the French had their revolution. Even Winston Smith revolts against the Party in Orwell’s 1984. So when people ask what’s next, I remember the wheel and I think about Stahvel. Perhaps this period of American democracy is a spoke in the wheel of our history. If that’s the case, those in power should take note. The future is far darker for them than it is for us — because eventually, the guillotines come out.
Some days, I wonder if Stahvel found peace. I wonder if he’s beating the pants off senators at his local golf course. Maybe he’s even hustling them, slow playing his skill and winning large betting pools. At some point, though, I know they’ll ask about his life and career. Perhaps he’ll stay silent, but I like to envision him telling the gory details about how he had to kill women and children, only to have the congressman shake his hand and thank him for his service. I wonder if he thinks of me and whether I’ve found my peace, too. I would tell him I have. I’d tell him that a small journal in the middle of a war forced me to confront facts and feelings I would have rather buried. I’d tell him that as he’s honed his skill with a club, I’ve sharpened mine with a pen, in the hopes of people processing the state of our democracy the same way we have.
