Faithful readers will already know that I’m a liberal. But just to make it clear, I am a liberal with a neon pink capital “L” that you can see from space. I am a civil-libertarian, an authority-suspecting, e-waste recycling, workers-rights-supporting, gun-controlling, universal healthnik, who thinks it’s the government’s job to regulate corporate polluters and hedge funds, but not my womb. I think that gay people should be able to marry, that water-boarding is torture and ANWR should remain pristine. I am ashamed of the appallingly destructive, jingoistic and deeply stupid policies of the current imperial presidency and I yearn for some future secular world where — through the wisdom of universal compassion — war will be obsolete.

But these are complicated times and I am a complicated child of the world. I know things are rarely all good or all bad, and that the consequences of my own lucky existence radiate out from me, creating a complexity that I can affect, but can never control. (Were those my tax dollars that paid for the “consultants” at Abu Ghraib?) I know that the perfected pacifist society I dream of won’t be coming around in this lifetime. But, this is the lifetime that I have been dealt; I entered the field of time in a world where my species has divided itself into mega-tribes bristling with giga-death weapons. An arrangement in which everyone participates because — rail against it as we will — there is no alternative. No way out of civilization; no way off the globalized globe. There is no avoiding the contradictions of this life. It is impossible not to know that, in this and every moment, every human evil and every transcendent good exists simultaneously. There’s nothing for it, but to meet it all with as much love as I can muster and be grateful that I got such a lucky draw.

But I really didn’t have all that on my mind when, as a reporter in the graphics department at the Orange County Register during the first Gulf War, my job became a crash course in military technology and Jane’s Defence was regular reading as the editors ordered up their death-machine-of-the-day graphics. Knowing about the machines, their power and capabilities, was just my job, and I got to know them pretty well — from books.

So, when I was in my backyard one spring morning in the mid-nineties and one of those big machines roared low overhead — I think on its way to a flyover at the Long Beach Grand Prix — I knew it was an A-10 Thunderbolt, a Warthog, that was rattling my insides and filling my eyes with tears. They were involuntary tears of exhilaration, because the A-10 makes the air and ground alive with the energy of its passing. There I was then, standing in my yard, looking up at my now-empty patch of sky, goose-pimpled and crying like I had been visited by something supernatural, bigger than nature. I sat down on the back porch and felt I had a new understanding of why Saddam’s Republican Guard surrendered in droves. This shit was scarier than Saddam.

Anyway, that’s when I understood that no book, no video, no daydream can live up to living through contact with these aircraft in action. And that’s why, in January, when Val — who is the real aviation enthusiast in the family — said he’d like to go see the free air show in May at March Reserve Air Force Base, I was on board.

I made reservations at the local Best Western, marked the dates on the calendar and practically forgot about it. Then last month we started seeing promos on PBS for Carrier, a ten-hour documentary film about a 2005 six-month deployment on the USS Nimitz. Since they fly F/A-18s and many other aircraft off the Nimitz, we thought that would be a great roll-up to the airshow, so Carrier dominated prime time on the video wall the week before the show. I figured it would make good background while we plinked away on our laptops, finishing the work on the CaliforniaAuthors redesign.

It turned out to be an especially engaging documentary — with lots of beautifully-shot and well-edited images of all kinds of remarkable technology — but it wasn’t a film about machines. It was about people — mostly very young people with heartbreaking beginnings — and how they deal with the life changes, confinement and balls-out hard-labor suffering that comes with military service. (Any job on the ship would break me in 10 minutes.) The film was enlightening and very touching and the music was good. We found ourselves taking care not to miss an episode. In the end, it was good to focus on the human struggle of the people of the military and the documentary was the perfect primer for our airshow military interface weekend.

Of course, the documentary was also infuriating to me. In the worker-rights area alone: some of these kids are making less than they would lifting the fry-basket at McDonalds. They can serve a six-year hitch and still not come out with a full ride to college. It’s a shameful and ignorant policy.

Goddamnit. I feel an activism sidebar coming on. New cause for me: Senator Jim Webb’s New GI Bill that offers our vets a full college tuition. An idea which the Bush Administration, the DOD and John McCain oppose [You people SUCK!]. Earlier this month the bill passed the House and the Senate with broad bi-partisan support. Of course, Bush has promised to veto. Call the Presidential comment line now to urge support for the new GI Bill. 202-456-1111. Learn more about the new GI Bill here.

So how did a girl like me end up at a fuel-swilling military muscle fest? Because this girl has given up on a high-key conceptualization of the world — not much in life is all black or all white — and because the machines are mind-blowing and aviation is thrilling, and because I think it is a good time to pay attention to the people sent out to fight this administration’s wars. And, because I’d never pass up a mini-roadtrip with my dogfighting sweetheart!

Stay tuned: Get the airshow play by play and a nice big picture gallery in an upcoming post!