It seemed like it was darker than usual, but then I guess it should've seemed that way.  We drove past the gate, where a man who was probably younger than myself was dressed in camoflauge and armed.  He inspected the sticker on the windshield, saluted, and waved us through.  We drove through the night into what seemed like another world; the strangeness of being on a military base in the middle of the night made it seem like the kid at the gate marked passage into another kingdom under the reign of some other power, some other place where the rules are different and life's possibilities are altered.  We drove for just a few minutes, maybe only a mile or two, but it seemed like we were worlds away from regularity, from the rest of the world, from the people who were sleeping comfortably as "civilians." The night seemed darker than usual, and the lights dimmer.  We passed the chapel where my good friend--no, my brother--and his wife were married.  The irony of returning to that place hit me.  That day the sun had shined and everything seemed just so, just as it was intended, "right" in every sense of the term, as I stood at the front of the Church next to him and watched her walk down the aisle.  The divine perfection of that day seemed all the brighter compared to the darkness of this night.  This time, instead of white, she was wearing her own camoflauge, riding in the back seat in the dark with an anxiety different from the kind one has just before walking down the aisle to be married to your high school sweetheart.  No, this time, in that parking lot behind the church I helped two women I care about unload pounds of military gear, in the dark, surrounded by 18 year old Marines who seemed used to this drill, meeting in the middle of the night to leave home for three weeks of live artillery training, taking a bus to a facility where they would be issued a 9mm pistol or an M-16.  I don't know what affected me more--the two women who wanted no part of this darkness, or the young men who were numb to it.
   None of us knew how to act or what to say, whether to acknowledge the strangeness of the darkness and let our sadness show or protect one another by pretending that all of this really wasn't as unnnatural as it seemed and that peace of mind could somehow be preserved.  The complexity of figuring out how to act just turned into an awkward interaction that fit the mood of the night perfectly.  It was dark, but I will not soon forget the images, the same way one remembers scenes from a dream.  The look on the faces of those two women was one of fear.  The kind of fear that makes the one who witnesses it well up with anger.  Around the parking lot, there was laughter and lit cigarettes and Kevlar.  There were the serious faces of young men who seemed (sadly) affirmed by the darkness, by the Kevlar and the gear and the covert nature of it all.  We said our stumbling goodbyes and left.
   It seemed like we left quickly.  We drove back past the chapel, down the dimly lit road, past the young men at the gate, and back into town.  We crossed back over that threshhold that made it feel like we had entered into another world, but the world I saw wasn't the same one we left.  We drove through town as it slept.  It was as quiet as it had been when we drove through it on our way to the gate, but this time the sleepyness seemed eery.  The image of what was happening behind the gate made me want to wake everyone up. 
   But they slept.  They slept, and we drove through flashing stop lights until we were back on the country roads where my friend lives.  The darkness was even more pronounced.  We talked heatedly about war, about Iraq, Jesus, the Bible, the military, the draft, the President, foreign policy, "the power of pride", the election.  We drove down those dark country roads where people slept comfortably, warmly, without thinking at all of Kevlar or artillery training or the ones who had to think of those things.  We drove past houses where people slept deeply, without the images of fearful women or young men who've been trained to kill in their heads.  I thought of how they would wake up and turn on their morning news, feeling proud of America as the defender of freedom and inspired by the President's latest speech on the war on terror.  I thought of how they would wake up and drive around with American flags stuck to their bumpers, without so much as a clue of what that scene behind the gate actually looked like.  It had been hidden from view, behind the gate, under the cover of darkness.  We drove and we talked about America as the modern Rome, the prideful empire that becomes convinced of its invincibility and intoxicated with power and money, reeling like a drunk, just before it falls. 
   As we drove, I felt certain that this country would make a change, that we would prove young enough as a nation to remember what it feels like to be under the reign of a country that cares nothing for those it dominates and repent for the last four years.  I hoped that we would hold the man who necessitated the particular scene I witnessed behind that gate accountable, that we would revoke his authority to send young men and women into places where their lives were at risk because of the way he has abused that power.  I thought that maybe Christians would hold him accountable for using the name of God to justify the slaughter of men, women, and children in the name of some perverse concept of "democracy" or "freedom."  I thought that the followers of Jesus would go to the polls and tell him that hubris, pride, and arrogance were not the marks of a person faithful to the example of Jesus.  I held out hope that Christians would see the use of force as contradictory to the teachings of Jesus, and hence just as much a "moral" issue as two homosexuals who wish to pledge their lives to one another.  I hoped that those with the "Support Our Troops" stickers would define that slogan by refusing to ask them to a fight a war that cannot be justified, or that Christians would refuse to ask them to be soldiers at all.  I hoped.
   We drove along in the darkness, past dark house after dark house, until it was pierced by a bright light.  It came from a spotlight in the yard of one of those sleepy houses, whose residents slept through my excursion past the gate.  They had not seen the Kevlar or the young men who were trained to kill or the people I care for on their way to be issued a pistol.  No, they slept through it.  The light they'd placed in their yard shone on a huge sign mounted on the side of the house. 
The sign read "Bush-Cheney '04."  And America slept.