in his limousine agents would have jumped on him and push him to the floor and save his life no question whatsoever. with all the conspiracy theories and the talk of screwing up in the ant those who made it possible and abraham lincoln is the same thing he would choose not to have any security right before the assassination he had one d.c. police officer with him that night the one officer decided to have the drink at the local tavern. and of course, he was shot and killed.

so many things they have to face is one of the most important agencies people ask but it's the understand i tell thee on story i have a track record with the fbi and the ncaa and other sensitive areas and i would tell it like it is and the fbi has been doing a wonderful job since an 11 but on the other hand, to expose william sessions to engage of personal abuse is that had no security purpose to take personal trips on

the fbi plane even letting his wife alice into the fbi headquarters and that was called a pass with the dismissal as the fbi director. so they and their stand is that as well. >> it seems awfully simplistic but i did a book on palm beach i call it my midlife crisis where i sip my champagne. and the secret society their people said nobody here listens to anybody.

that is why i have been able to tell the stories in these books. >> talk about the secret service working with a psychic with george bush? >> i did. the fact it actually listened to a psychic and there are more amazing stories in the book. any of their questions? thank-you so much for coming. i appreciated your questions [inaudible [applause]

to suffer brain damage. what does it mean our society goes through those intuitive physical to ways of childhood to tackle and run and threw troops

assimilated combat a collision sport is a leading signifier of higher learning and the undisputed champ of athletic industrial complex. but it was not normal. so what was it? that is the prospectus of the book. >> thanks. i will bounce off that high area by telling a joke. this requires you to use up our word of man and woman couple passionate redskins fans going to every game for 30 years one day the new england patriots were in town and he shows of without his wife he sits downstairs for a guy who sat next to

them for 30 years said where's your wife? he said i regret to save my life has passed away. after a long moment of silence he looks at the empty seats and said was there anybody in your family or friends or relatives who wanted the ticket? he said they all went to her funeral. [laughter] my book is also about football reform that mind evolves football and professional colleges and high school level and i suppose the most important contention the lower down the chain the bar print they become nobody wins the nfl player to be injured but they're only 2,000 the they are adults to assume the of risk in their paid very well so then at the college level 60,000 players it is not the they are not paid i don't

think that is the ideal solution but only 55 percent graduate. you could never have won had to percent of those got bachelor's degree that would be fair but there is far too much of the sysop victory in not education except high-school there you have 3.5 million almost all boys subleased 3 million it can be a great experience i plated high-school one of my sons played in college boys learn teamwork, so disciplined but they take all the neurological risks in return for nothing at all if you look at a group of high school varsity players want at of 1,000 law actually play it in the nfl

and one of the 50 will even get a recruiting boost. . .ight on c-span2's booktv. booktv covers 14 author events at the southern festival of

books and in the next six hours we will bring you six of those events featuring 110 authors on race and inequality in america, the history of the south and war. of first is the author of no good men among the living:america, the taliban and the worse for through afghan allies. the book was named a finalist at the national book award for nonfiction. but..

and as reported on the middle east and south asia as well as other complications. the new america foundation fellow will speak to us about his first book, "no good men among the living". there will be time for questions and about ten to 20 minutes. and anand gopal will be signing books directly following. >> thank you. can you hear me? so, my book, the subtitle of the book is the war through afghan nice. what i want to explain to you today is a little bit about how i got to the point of wanting to write a book through the eyes of afghans and what that means. but before i start that i want to tell you a story of

the first time that a number of the tell a ban. this was back in 2008. at the time i was sort of traveling around the countryside and a motorcycle and i got in contact with a commander, someone who is fighting against the u.s. military, an insurgent commander. and was very interested to try to understand what motivates these people. and if you remember, everybody famously had a draconian regime in the 1990's which outlawed women's education, which kept women in the homes, which was, you know, they had people walking around with whips seeing how long your beard was. it was interesting trying to understand what would possibly motivate somebody to join such a ridiculous seeming regime. and so i may contact with them. he and his unit were based at the top of a mountain and rural afghanistan.

i went out to this mountain. took a day to get to the top . i went through with a trail, a small village at the very top. and sure enough sitting in one of the houses were groups of fighters, about 1213 fighters. and so i went inside and sat down. sitting cross legged chemical is a cause a relapse. it took up my notebook says started interviewing them. the commander specifically and asking them questions like, you know, wire you fighting against the u.s.? what kind of society do you want? what is your assessment of the 1990's regime, when it's all bad or in power. he gave me boilerplate answers for all of it, but at some point he stopped me. he tell me, you know, you are actually the first foreigner that i have ever met. of course, the first american ever met. can i ask you some questions yap. sure. so we started asking me

questions like -- and this is 2008. president obama had just as -- 2009, sorry if he just announced a troops surged. why is your president wanting to surge troops? so, i tried to explain to him about, you know, u.s. political, geopolitical concerns, domesticpo then he asked why duscher commentary come to afghanistan in the first place? he knew very little about 9/11 to light so i tried to explain to them about 9/11 and what that was about the war on terror and then he started asking me questions about cultural life in the united states. i heard that in the u.s. women walk around and nobody controls them. i go that's not exactly correct. and i try to explain explain to him the differences in culture between the u.s. and afghanistan. at some point he asked me to have you ever seen the film the titanic and i said yes i have

seen a movie. he asked me, how come your country doesn't make news like that anymore and it turned out he was a big fan and many members of the taliban, in the 1990s the taliban regime had outlawed the titanic but it was very popular among members of the taliban and they treated in people with get the popular haircuts. that was the first inkling that i got that the category they had in my mind came out of afghanistan in the taliban of the various political actors there they get complicated when you talk to people and hear stories on the ground. that was really, that is really the underlying theme of my book which is that the categories that we have come to think of as defining the war on terror which is there are terrorists, there are good guys and there are bad guys. it makes a lot of sense sitting over here but when you are on the ground these categories are remarkably fluid and in fact

they don't often make since when we try to think about them that way. so i learned that story. it took me any many years to come to that understanding. i came to afghanistan in 2008. i had switched careers. but i lived across the street from the twin towers and on 9/11 i saw the attacks and i knew people were killed in the attacks. since that time was always interested and fascinated about, buyer policy in the middle east and south asia and from afar and i was dissatisfied with my little understanding of what was happening. in 2008 i decided to switch careers and i moved to afghanistan as a freelancer at a time if he went to afghanistan usually within couple which is a relatively common city compared to the rest of the country and it's relatively safe as well so

the war wasn't taking place inside of kabul. the war was taking place along the east border with pakistan for the most part. my time is up journalists in kabul mostly going to press conferences and writing 500 word stories about what's happening in the countryside. very quickly i got frustrated by the lack of access to wealth is actually happening. i had covered the war but i wasn't able to cover the war so that some point i decided to take a different tack and i grew out my beard. i bought a motorcycle and i hit the road and went down to the south where the wars being fought fought. i took advantage of afghan hospitality which is very extraordinary. i was able to live in various villages with village heads usually three or four days at a time. in the process of that i met many people, hundreds of people

and heard many stories in the stories that i heard challenged the preconceived notions that i had about the war was about. essentially the problem in afghanistan or the question that i try to answer was the switch is that the taliban regime is one of the worst most radical drugrunning regimes in recent memory and they were defeated very easily after 9/11. it took almost two months of their campaigns to cause the taliban to crumble. most afghans that i spoke to welcomed the taliban -- they wanted the u.s. to save them from the taliban. yet five or six years later some of the same afghans started supporting the taliban and the taliban grew to a very powerful insurgency which it is to this day which is still fighting u.s.-backed troops meeting the afghan army and there are few soldiers in afghanistan. the question is how did that

happen? what was the transformation will cause that to happen? that's the question i try to answer in the book and i do that by trying to get the afghan perspective so i collected hundreds of interviews and hundreds of life stories many of which included in the book but three in particular that i focused on. one is the story of a warlord or a politician who is also a warlord who is aligned with the united states military. these are very powerful men. john mohamed hahn, the u.s. used to call mj mk for short. his life is very interesting because he was a school janitor back in the 1970s and the soviet union invaded afghanistan and once that happened it ushered in a cataclysmic upheaval of the society and a reverberation of that felt today because a lot of the islamist

radicalism we see in the world we sort of come from the experience of the soviet invasion of afghanistan in the 1980s. once the soviets invaded the cia and other intelligence agency flooded the country with guns and money and in the process helped create classic warlords. jmk the character my book was one of those people. he was somebody that rose from being a school janitor to becoming a very powerful warlord who operated in southern afghanistan. once the soviets left the various warlords we arms turn their guns on each other in ushered in a very bloody silver war in which jmk was one of the participants. the taliban arose as a reaction to the civil war and pushed aside all these warlords and in many cases arrested them. they arrested jmk. they threw him in jail and tortured him and when i asked

him to describe the worst torture he suffered he said the worst torture i had was nothing physical. it was the fact that the taliban would not let me pray in my jail cell. it was psychological and physical torture. jmk was scheduled to die to be executed by the taliban government in december of 2011 and the book picks up the story from the moment in which he scheduled to be executed. he is taken up to the execution yard but he is saved in the last moment. i don't want to tell you how he is saved but he is saved and he is able to leave the prison and in the next few years he becomes a major u.s. ally and it becomes extraordinarily wealthy as a result of the alliance with us. so the book, a third of the book is about his story and how he rose to riches and power through his alliance with the u.s. military. that's the first character that

i focus on. the second is a housewife. she grew up in kabul in the 1970s and 1980s and you know if you look at the photographs of kabul today, there are still a lot of destruction there. a lot of it has been revolt -- rebuilt but nothing like it looked in the sets -- 60s and 70's. i had this idea of afghanistan as being a devastated country but in fact before 1979 invasion of the soviet union cities like kabul were extremely cosmopolitan, well-developed. women were going to school. women were going to universities. she majored in economics and graduated and took a job as a teacher. in the mid-90s the civil war broke out. this was a civil war brewing -- between the warlords we had

armed and that caused untold amounts of devil station in kabul were thousands of people were killed and she was nearly killed in that. she and her husband and her young sons fled the city to the countryside to the deep south and when she got there in the book picks up the story from when she flees and when she got to the deep south she found the cultural mores who are radically different from what she had grown up being used to in kabul. so she came to her religion in which culturally women weren't allowed outside of the house. women are poor and working and were allowed to go to school. she was more or less a prisoner of her own home for 10 years. this was before the taliban. this was during the civil war. i asked her how did life change when the taliban came to charge and she said they didn't change. i said how was life change when

the taliban were removed? she said it didn't matter was still locked in the house. for three different. the taliban rule in the post-american order in all three periods. she was more or less locked inside of her house. she's an extraordinarily capable woman and she found ways to get out of the house and she found ways to work in secret. she opened up the secret girls school, and underground girls school for girls in the village at great risk to herself. she taught them reading, writing and arithmetic and spelling and other things. so the book describes her difficulties in setting up these underground schools and her difficulties in essentially being a city woman, an urban woman without experience in the conservative countryside. in 2000 for her husband was killed by members of the u.s. backed afghan government because of corruption. she was left as a single one with four sons and a very

precarious position to be in the countryside because usually you are forcibly married to the brother of your deceased husband or to somebody else. she needed to escape her village and she wanted to find a way back onto kabul. a large part of the story is up for trying to find her way back to kabul. the third character is somebody who i met in kabul and he's a taliban commander. cable because in the 1990s he was in charge of disarming the newly conquered populations in afghanistan so he used to walk around with a big whip and if you had weapons in your house and mind you afghanistan everybody had weapons in their house. it was just a normal thing to have. if you had weapons in their house he would with you. he was a pretty important front-line commander. 2001 comes around on the taliban

is overthrown. he quits the taliban at that point and he tries to go into civilian life in a tries to get a job at a cell phone operator. he opened the shop but something brings him back to the taliban. by 2005, 2006 he rejoins the taliban at this point the taliban as an insurgency fighting against the u.s.. he becomes a major anti-americ anti-american. the story of how he comes back to the taliban is really a story of the war in afghanistan and that is sort of the thesis of the book, why did these people come back against the u.s.? to explain that i want to take you back to 2004 and explain what circumstances were on the ground at the time. the u.s. invaded, it wasn't really an invasion, it was more of an aerial campaign in october

of 2001 and within six weeks they have pretty much bombed all of the taliban military's infrastructure. keep in mind this is not a country that had a lot of infrastructure. by december it had crumbled. what's very surprising to me as i was researching all of this history was that by december 2001 the taliban were defeated and they essentially surrendered wholesale. they tried in droves to commit suicide. they repudiated the tulip -- taliban. this is not just a rank-and-file leadership. they tried to pledge allegiance to the u.s.-backed government headed by common karzai. now i know from history that it shouldn't be that surprising because in a country that's been at war are now 35 years almost to the main prerogative is to survive. these people are frequently switching sides.

for example in the soviet union withdrew from afghanistan in 1989 a lot of those people who had call themselves communists who were supporting the soviet union rebranded themselves as islamist mujahideen and join the other side. it was out of survival that they did so. in the same way it wasn't as though the taliban embrace the western project that they recognize that to be able to survive they had to pledge allegiance to the new authority. they quit the taliban in repudiated the taliban and joined the afghan government under mohamed karzai. i have for example a transcript of a press conference given by one of the major taliban leaders at the time in 2001 basically asking people from madrasahs not to give donations to the taliban because the taliban were no more. one after the next the taliban

commanders were handing over their weapons to the afghan government directly to the u.s. forces. some of them began working with the u.s. forces to try to help the situation. so you had a situation in the circumstance and early 2002 in which there were no more taliban. the taliban effectively ceased as a military entity. at the same time al qaeda which was the other main reason al qaeda had fled the country. most of them have gone to pakistan and some of them had gone to iran. there was no more al qaeda left so there was no taliban and al qaeda. however there were tens of thousands of u.s. troops on the ground with a mandate to fight a war on terror. these were mostly special forces soldiers, the cia and others who were there with a mandate to fight a war on terror and they didn't have an enemy to fight. this is a contradiction. the way the contradiction was

resolved was actually the way in which the war reconstituted itself. it was resolved through the alliances of the us-made with the various local actors called the warlords essentially. so at the time almost all intelligence that the u.s. was getting was sourced from local warlords, people like jmk who is one of the characters in my book. so the cia or special forces operators would ask jmk okay who are the taliban in your district and he would tell them. most of them were in the taliban or the taliban were working with the u.s. government so what ended up happening is really the people who were personal rivals of the warlords became falsely labeled as taliban. i want to give you a couple of examples of this to show how this worked in practice. one example is about a person

named sher off to dean. now he is almost 90 probably but when i met him he was in his late 80s and i actually met him because he lived across the street from where i lived in kandahar. he was a baker who would wake up every day it 4:00 a.m. to knead the dough and make afghan flatbread and that's what he did. he had been a u.s.-backed mujahideen commander in the 1980s but after the soviets left he gave up his weapons and one morning militia members of the afghan government showed up at the bakery and said are you sure for dean? you are a terrorist, come with us. he said what's happening? he had his gun -- a gun to his or the whole time. they handed them over to u.s. forces in the kandahar airfield.

this was 2000 to those so this was, at the time. there he was tortured by u.s. soldiers. he had metal hooks inserted into his mouth and he was electrocuted but he insisted on his innocence. so he was released eventually back to the afghan militiamen. the militiamen taken to a private jail in kandahar city and they hung him upside down by his feet for 20 to 22 hours a day. they would come in various parts of the day and with him with cables. the person i was hanging next to him was a prominent tribal eld elder, not a taliban member who is also being whipped and eventually died of his ones. after a week or so of this he realized why this was happening. he realized it was because the militia came in and told him we will let you go. we will let you go to give us x amount of dollars.

he had to borrow money and his family had to raise funds and he was released. the problem though is that once he paid and he was marked for life as someone who could be exploited for this money a couple of months later he was arrested again and handed over to u.s. troops and tortured again and transferred back to the prison. he was hung upside down once more. he was whipped and beaten and he had to pay again. this happened three or four or five times. he told me i used to put away money for my torture and imprisonment the way you might put away money for buying a new car. he was eventually left alone after 2005 when the intelligence commander who worked closely with the cia was killed in a suicide bombing by the taliban. another example is somebody else whom i know very well. he is from the northeastern part

of the country. in the afghan language it means lawmaker parliamentarian. he was someone who'd been elected elected to parliament in a previous incarnation of the local government. he was a member of the alliance which was a group of warlords and commanders and rebels who were resisting the taliban. when the u.s. invaded in 2001 we supported the northern alliance and he was one of the people that were supporting it. he was an anti-taliban fighter. many of his family members were killed by the taliban and he hated the taliban very deeply however once the u.s. and british forces set up bases in kuwait in our province which is where he was from they were handing out contracts to bring gravel to put on the bed at the base to help surround the base

to have militiamen guarding the base. there were a lot of contracts being handed out by the various foreign entities. what ended up happening there was a lot of competition amongst local elites to try to get these contracts. he actually got the contract to eradicate opium poppies from the british. there were other warlords trying to get contracts as well. what ended up happening was an incentivize system in which people could falsely accuse others of being false members of taliban so they could be a limited from it -- eliminated from the scene and get the contracts. that is what happened to him. in 2002 he gave a well-publicized speech in loya jirga which is the big council to elect hamid karzai interim president. he gave a speech in support of hamid karzai and in support of the u.s. saying it's great to

interact with the community that is supporting us and we need to support them to make sure that the taliban never return. shortly after that when he was in his home province was arrested. he and a lot of his lieutenants were arrested and sent to guantánamo. the reason he was arrested was because one of the rebel commanders in the area had a son who spoke english. that sun had ties with the forces and the rival warlords said this person was a taliban. he spent six years in guantánamo as well as many of his lieutenants. today if you go to that area where he is from the anti-american as pro-taliban. it wasn't before. it's because of instances like this. a third example and i think probably in my mind it's the most galling example is there was a young arab man who fled an

abusive home in the 1990s. he had an abusive stepfather and he sought to flee his home and he had heard if you go to afghanistan when afghanistan was controlled by the taliban if you go to afghanistan and you find your way to the western embassy you can pretend you're an afghan and declare asylum and he be taken to the west. so he went to afghanistan in 1999 or so with the intention of doing this however he was quickly arrested by the taliban. who are you and what are you doing here? they said we are going to turn it over to al qaeda. they turned them over to al qaeda and an al qaeda's custody he was tortured severely. they videotaped the torture. eventually he confessed to being an agent of the cia and israel.

obviously was a forced confession and then he was handed back over to taliban and imprison. he was only 16 or 17 and he was imprisoned. fast-forward to 2001. the taliban was overthrown. you have six or seven other people, arabs who are in taliban custody for who the taliban believed were spies. the taliban are gone and the locals didn't know what to do so they went to the u.s. forces. they handed them over to u.s. forces. the u.s. had all the guys sent to wanton amal. he was sent to afghanistan -- and in 2002 the u.s. found the videotape of him being tortured by al qaeda and they found his forced confession.

this was played by john ashcraft to reporters with the audio off as an example of the u.s. making progress on the war on terror. it wasn't until later that people recognize it. with these things happening, the book is full of them but this was taking place again and again and again. there are two consequences to this. one was that the warlords that we became ultra-powerful ultra-wealthy and essentially use the u.s. to eliminate rivals and consolidate their position. the second consequence is that you now have essentially two different afghanistan's. you have the haves and the have-nots. the house were those afghan communities that had commanders and more goods that had good ties to the military. the have-nots did not have those links are ties. if you look at today where the insurgency is in the strongest of those latter communities that

did not have good links are good ties with the u.s. military. so this pattern became more or less entrenched by 2004 in 2005. and i mentioned that the taliban had also rendered. all this was happening and they were watching this happening. even despite this they tried in many cases to stay on afghan government side because they weren't very strong. i will give an example. a taliban commander in the 1990s surrendered in 2002 and a well-publicized ceremony with reporters. he handed over his weapons and foot soldiers handed over the weapons and signed an agreement with the local afghan government saying if i agree to abstain from political life you agree to not arrest me and i will stay at home and pretend my mosque.

so that's what happened however a couple of months later afghan militiamen showed up at his house and arrested him and took into an underground prison that i mentioned before held them upside upside down and whipped him and beat him and tortured him. this continued for some weeks and i kept saying what we know you have more weapons. he kept saying i have no more weapons. eventually he was forced to sell the family's livestock to the black market and handed over to the militiamen. again once you do that you are marked as somebody who can pay. he was arrested again a few months later hung upside down the same charade. they raise money. this happened three or four times and he finally got wise to the fact that he would never be left alone. so he fled to pakistan. when he went to pakistan there were many other taliban members like him and they were talking about what to do about this.

through this process the taliban reconstituted itself. once they reconstituted themselves they had a willing audience in those communities that didn't have access to the u.s. military and the warlordism. that is where the taliban insurgency grew at first. by then you had a full-blown insurgency. once the taliban return to afghanistan they became as oppressive as the warlords they replace. it was very difficult to get rid of them and so what ended up happening is you had afghans today who were caught between the sides. either you were living in one area where there are good ties the afghan government and u.s. military and you are being treated poorly by the taliban or are being summarily executed or on the other side you are living in a community of the taliban

and you are being accused of a being a terrorist. this was always going on so civilians found himself increasingly squeezed between the sides. i have given away too much of the book. that's how the book ends is looking at hela is someone who is a civilian one of the characters in the book. hela is a civilian who is trying to navigate between these forces between the taliban and the warlords. what you find is people have to make difficult choices between you have to ally with various sites at various times about the reality of the war today. you have people who may support the taliban to offer a positive vision of protection from a rapacious warlords aware backing.

they support those warlords as a way of protecting themselves against the taliban. today when i last counted there are close to 250,000 men under arms and afghanistan. we the u.s. government are paying for them. that includes u.s. government the police and the whole rave militias. arrayed against them nobody knows how many, maybe tens of thousands of taliban supported by pakistan and neither side is really strong enough to keep the other. there are people on the u.s. side that are better armed. they're not going to be up to go into every tiny village and upward the taliban. on the other hand the taliban even though they have tens of thousands of people in support from pakistan they won't be able to go and march into kabul or herat to kick out the government. so what you have is a war of

attrition that looks like it will continue essentially into perpetuity for essentially. i know that the bleak note but that is where the bookends is looking at that prospect. the u.s. is going to have bases in afghanistan for many years. this is the longest war in american history and it looks like it will continue to go on for years and years into the future. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. we now have about 15 minutes for questions and i remind you we will need to end the session around 10:55 to 11 x. group into. i would like to remind everyone that we have two microphones. if you have a question please make your way to either one of those two microphones. that would be great. thank you.

>> yes, where they're not american, members of the american military who sell things as you did and if there were why were they unable to change the policies that you describe, policies? >> i think there are two reasons for that. one is that just like many members of the american military probably recognize this one was far too late. it only came years after. the second reason is the way the u.s. military is structured there is a tension between short-term interest in long-term interests. so people who are serving on the ground and not just the military but also the state department as well, there is an impetus to

have short-term gains which means you will live with this warlord here because he will appeal to clear this area or build a school or a well or something like that and you'd do your tour and maybe get a promotion after that and you go back home. the next person deals with the consequences of the fact that the person that built the school systematically uprooted half of the other tried to do it. and so the long-term picture is something that i think washington is not very good at, and that it's been a major problem and continues to be a problem. >> some of us here in this country are confused as to why the former leader karzai seems so bitter about american participation and given the fact that we seem to have supported him over many years. could you explain the basis for that?

>> that's a really good question. i think on the one hand i think he's very critical because he's part of, part of the system that he did decries, for example that corruption and warlordism and all these things and also he was put into power by the u.s.. he wouldn't be there at the u.s. didn't put them military.

and he had a private militia, thousands of people who rented the land on which the u.s. military built a base. he is extraordinarily wealthy and he's also a malign influence on the province because of the reasons i explained, falsely accusing people. people in the afghan government recognized that he is others recognize he was some malign force at that point he was so powerful that they were slidell that anybody could do. eventually they removed him and had to move him to another province in which it was a very lucrative province to be governor because it had a border and he would take duties for border trade. so there is a sense in which karzai is embittered by the fact that he was left to be an extremely weak president and

still expected to succeed. i think that's a valid. at the same time he also played the same game that he was accusing the u.s. of doing so there's a degree of hypocrisy in that. >> how would you describe the self-interest of pakistan and if their intention is to control and rule in afghanistan why not go but -- let them do so? >> i think broadly speaking pakistan interest in in afghanistan is the same as u.s.. it's to have a client regime. pakistan, think pakistan wants a regime in place which is not pro-india or not friendly to india and is preferably pashtun

but not pashtun nationalist and keeping in mind there are hundreds of millions of pashtuns on the border. in the 60s and 70's there was pashtun nationalism had abdicated all the pashtuns called passionate pashtun assam. some of the underlying fears that drove pakistani policy in afghanistan and the question is why not let them do that? today's afghan proxy taliban, we don't want the afghan to rule from the moral sense. i think we could say we don't want the taliban to rule afghanistan and there are so many other communities that would be excluded from the political process if they taliban world which is the same problem today which is why the taliban is strong. there are so many communities that have been excluded from the american border. we don't want to reproduce that.

there has been a war for so long so i think for that reason we don't want to allow pakistan to -- really to negotiate a settlement between the various sides. given there are so many hands in the cookie jar is going to be difficult for this to happen but it's something to aspire to. >> at the beginning of your talk you said that the taliban when they were initially defeated put down their arms, surrendered, were prepared to declare allegiance to the u.s. because it has become a tradition over the years because of the many conquests. are there other cultural traditions in place today that help people like hela navigate this horrible reality they are faced with, with trying to

choose sides that will help them for while? >> yeah. i think switching sides becomes a cultural tradition because the country has been at war for 35 years. if you think about it i am 34 so it's gone on longer than i've been alive. there are many millions of afghans who lived in a world that only knows war. so this is how cultures form and cultural motifs, but this kind of mail you. actually i do think this tendency to switch sides or to support both sides is almost eight cultural tradition away. take the hela. hela as someone who worked secretly for the united nations in 2003 and 2004. she secretly had a job with the

u.n. helping register women to vote. two years later she was secretly supporting the taliban. you can read about why she does that in the book and i asked h her, was very jarring to me when i learned this. it became almost second nature to her. she has four children and she had to do if she had to do to survive. there were other cultural institutions which also -- deprivation or more. for example there's an institution through tribal councils and religious councils that exist in afghanistan. moore has been made of these local mechanisms i think to help resolve local complex. right now most of the time when there's a local conflict whether it be -- let's say you and i have accomplished over land. there is no land use and we both

had this piece of land. we would resolve it by shooting each other or by my having an address i would say you are a member of the taliban were fewer member of the taliban i would say he is a spy with the u.s.. that is how these things tend to be resolved. there is a long history of other types of dispute rove -- resolution to the tribal council which more effort should be gone in to help to support. >> i'm confused about the role and the effect of the u.s. military. from what i heard you say when they first came in 2001 after 9/11 that led to the taliban and al qaeda leaving the country but by their continued presence and their heirs or activities or whatever happens, that led to them coming back.

and so i'm wondering what do the people of afghanistan, what would they want for the u.s. military? to stay or to go and his -- what is then the effect of lowering the number of troops there? has it been better or worse for the situation? >> thanks. it's complicated because afghanistan is a very divided society. first of all that's important to recognize the war in afghanistan is only fought in half the country. roughly speaking the south and the east and pakistan to the north is also violence but half the country is where the wars being fought. back in april i went and took a drive to the south to the were some and questioning people and at the time the question was

should afghan government signed a bilateral security agreement with the u.s. which would legalize an extended u.s. presence. 90% of the people i spoke to opposed any such agreement because the logic was that they may not like the taliban but the logic was that's one less sides that shooting here. people think about their families. on the other hand if you go into the areas where there's a war which is in northern afghanistan in kabul it's the opposite. people want the u.s. to stay because they view the u.s. as a buffer against the war encroaching on their territory. so i asked them and people would say the government should sign this agreement. in both cases though the logic was immediately about, wasn't ideological.

people in the north live through tremendous suffering in the 1990s under the taliban and before that suffering under the civil war and they don't want that to return to you people in the south are suffering now they'll do anything they want to make that stuff. you don't get that captured because unfortunately most journalists tend to speak to people who are in the cities or in the north because that's where it's safer to operate. >> this relates to this question. is there a solution and what in an effort to be -- what is a wise solution the u.s. can take steps? >> you know i'm reminded of the israeli novelist.

he was talking about the israeli conflict but i think it applies more so to afghanistan. he talked about the two traditions of tragedy in literature. one is the shakespearean tragedy in one is the jacobian tragedy. in the shakespearean tragedy at the end of the day everybody is dead. if you remember romeo and juliet everybody is dead. and check out everybody's miserable but they are still alive. if we did find a way to get a jacobian tragedy to end and afghanistan what would that take? i think two things are important. number one is that there has to be a serious effort to negotiate a settlement with all sides. i think a prisoner exchange from guantánamo was an excellent step in the right direction in that regard but i say that while

knowing that there are so many different hands in the cookie jar and so many inches that may be a negotiated settlement would never happen. even if it won't ever happen aspiring to it and a policy towards it can yield positive benefits i think. i think that's important. number two we as the u.s. need to change fundamentally our relationship with afghanistan. it is the case today that the afghan government is unable to raise taxes. the budget comes entirely from poor natives. in other words the communities popping up the afghan government. if we stop paying for the government it would collapse tomorrow. this is a question of sustainability and the question of how can we get the afghan government were afghan society to have an independent economy so that one day they can

disengage. unfortunately in this goes back to short-term and long-term thinking that i was pointing to before. unfortunately because of the short-term thinking that reigned supreme the question of sustainability hasn't come up at all. like i said before all the money spent on the afghan government to build the judiciary, the parliament to build the capacity for a rule of law money is also going to warlords and strongmen. the u.s. taxpayer dollars are still going to warlords and strongmen around the country and that's bad in and of itself but it's also bad because it ensures the continued weakness of the afghan government. so i think addressing that is another aspect of something that the u.s. should do. >> allows question him the left. >> you spoke about growing a beard out and getting a motorcycle and meeting with the taliban warlord. can you speak a little more

about that and were you ever afraid for your life at any point? >> well you know in 2008 in 2009 at the time the taliban had a pretty coherent command-and-control structure. what i actually did was i got permission from the taliban leadership. the taliban are notorious for kidnapping journalists. you will be kidnapped and probably end up on a video somewhere so what i did was i connected to the leadership in the wake of that was very fortuitous because it turned out there were people in the afghan, i'm sorry in the main prison in kabul and i used to sneak into the person posing as a relative of the prisoners. i would speak in once a we can hang out with these guys. for months and months i was

hanging out and talking with each of them and i would win their trust to the point where they would be able to connect me to people in the field. only after i got that i went into the field and i spent a month living with the taliban in 2008. today that's probably not even possible. a lot of the people at i'm at are all dead now. most of them have been killed in targeted strikes and drones so that is contributed to the fragmentation of the taliban insurgency. today if i showed up with a letter from some taliban leader saying i'm a journalist and i'm not a spy it probably wouldn't matter. they would probably still kidnap me. i wouldn't do it today but back then it was easier to do. >> thank you again to anand and the audience here today. [applause] i will remind you that anand

will be signing books in the plaza for the next 40 minutes if you'd like to continue that can't -- conversation. there's a flyer up here with more information. thanks so much. [inaudible conversations] >> up next from the southern festival of books is times columnist charles blow discussing his memoir "fire shut up in my bones." this is about an hour. >> i think we are going to go ahead and get started. i just want to welcome everybody to the session with charles blow. before we get started a quick reminder please silence your cell phone semiwould like to remind everybody that all the books presented at the festival are for sale on the plaza and a portion of the proceeds go to

support the festival. you can also make donations which we would very much appreciate. that's how you show your love. most of you know charles blow from his regular op-ed column at "the new york times." he has a wide range of social and political issues. he previously served as the paper's design director for news and he was also the art director for "national geographic" magazine. he is here today to discuss his memoir "fire shut up in my bones" which is about a very rich story about his childhood and rural louisiana but the focus of the book is on an episode of sexual abuse or two episodes of sexual abuse that happened in his childhood and the repercussions of that. please welcome charles blow. [applause] what we are going to do is we

are going to have a little conversation and periodically chiaro so read passages from the book and we will open up the floor for questions for a few minutes. i do want to remind you that we are going to break up here a few minutes before noon and go upstairs where chiaro shall be signing books. if you want to get your book signed or say hi that's a place to do it. okay, as i said the focus of this book is on your experience of sexual abuse as a child and the way that led to a question of your own sexuality and of course you had all that trauma to deal with. it's a very rich story about a rural louisiana childhood and being a young man as a university and member of a black fraternity. i wanted to give everybody a context for understanding the episodes and how you dealt with it.

if you could talk a little bit about this little town where you grew up. >> first thanks for coming. there are really great authors so i think they are conspiring against me. so thank you for being here. so yeah, it was a little town and it was probably when i was born we had 1000 i'm sure we have fewer than that now. it is in north louisiana in the middle of the state along i 20. it was a segregated town and still is to some degree a segregated town. most of the white population is on either side of main street

which was actually on the eastern side of town. most blacks in town lived on the western side of town and i guess if you lived on the placas street if you run the last street west of town. and everything was segregated. louisiana -- brown v. board of education. they were forced to integrate schools but that is one a lot of communities, the academies popped up and academies were basically a place where white people could send their kids and they wouldn't have to be in schools with black kids so all the way kids other than a few of the poorest kids left. they were only i think what i could count when i was young were about five white kids in our school.

and so i didn't know there were white kids in town because we never saw them, ever. part of that was because their academies were so far away that if they left early in the morning to get there they got back to town very late in the evening because they have sports or something after school so they would have to wait for the late bus. we literally never saw these kids so i didn't think they existed. .. regated community was very

apparent. and the way they describe it, there are actually two cemeteries and there's a chain-link fence between them. so that none of these dead people get the wrong idea and cross line. but the way they describe it, two cemeteries with two cemetery associations, as far as i can figure out that's basically where they cut the grass. but that is how you can justify it and say, okay it's not a problem, we just have different people that cut the grass. and so it is there. but in a way you are right, i am insulated from overt racial warfare as it plays out for many people in america. one individual was asking about

why we talk more about this and part of it was because there was a period of about two or three years where i went to an integrated school which was a horrible experience for me. and after that i came back to this predominantly african-american school and it's a school that has an incredibly long set of histories and roots. it started as the first black college called coleman college and it was founded to educate sons and daughters of free slaves. so you have his professors at these college and this is what i grew up seeing. it is a juxtaposition of black poverty to wipe affluence and i saw sophistication and they

taught latin and that was kind of the heritage that i inherited. so those teachers never let you forget that you're part of this tradition. and so my -- every room that i was in, there was a black person within that room. this idea never even occurred to me until i was older and i had to be in a more integrated environment. the by that time i always doomed at even if you weren't, you could be. and so i ended up going through a black college was close to my house, it was just like 20 miles down the street and it was the same kind of experience. so you didn't have these struggles were you run for student body president and you don't win anything, within vote

for you because you're black. no, we didn't vote for you because we don't like you and that is the only explanation there was. and so i didn't have those experiences. so i came out of that with none o pslogi >> >> your mother reinforced that because when you were small she went to the plant. >> yes. she was elected to the school board. and then she was reelected. but the determination in her

to make something of her life. it is a very small town. but then i want to ask my mom why you became a teacher. she said i just love kids come my the teaching. she was a great teacher. i remember kids calling her mom that would irritate me to no end. this is not your mother. but there were only two things the girl could be. a receptionist and/or a housewife.

but especially black girls to the receptionist? so the only option that she could see to become a professional to not be too subjected to either one was a teacher. and that is in -- very important the idea of the misogyny of society that generations of the most brilliant and innovative teachers because they did not have as many options. if you were with physics or mathematics of that generation you did not become a scientist. see you have these in the classrooms.

but to not force people into their repercussions. >> host: and your mother mother, there was challenges. to talk about the situation in your home under the most difficult circumstances. talk a little bit about that. >> guest: first i cannot quite figured exactly but behalf tolerance to help her family. period very young was married to my father and

five boys over eight years. every time she got pregnant this was the time when i never but had health insurance and before obamacare. maybe you checked into a hospital a review didn't and i looked at health care the same way. might even with my grandmother that they would come nine months later. but you can do it.

so my mom was able to be back. >> its came able. schubert said a chicken processing plant. but she did not have the keys. said she would have to get a ride to the next town. but there is a small amount

of money. so for the entire time that i could never remember my mother would work during the day and defend it going to school at night. >> host: that was care per tried to avoid that with your dad? civic but my mom and i think

there is one fight was one too many. surely after that fight we were out.u moved further along that section even though she started as a teacher's aide. the teaching just wasn't paying very well in the early 70s. and, you know. her with all these kids alone, she was also taking care of my great uncle and it was very difficult. >> there's an episode that you talk about in the book. >> i can read that.

>> that happened before the episode when you were sexually abused. i'm wondering as a little boy or not kind of a family, were you frightened by the violence? or did you think this is how things are meant. >> it is frightening and you lose self-confidence. and, i mean, you don't know what else the world is and her family kind of becomes your world. school is the second part of that world. but yes, it did feel very treacherous and a bit more than i could process and possibly deal with. >> so this was the context in which you are about seven or so of her older cousin came to stay for the summer? >> yes, a couple weeks in the summer. >> you are living with your mom and brothers and great uncle. >> that's right.

>> so how old is he? >> he's not as old as my oldest brother who is eight years older than me. i don't know the exact days. i always assumed he was six or seven years older. a young teenager. >> if you could just talk about what happened? >> okay. we moved from the first neighborhood, which was kind of idyllic in my mind is a really small child. and i'm not only in the first neighborhood but street, and the world is a couple houses down. but i am not only the youngest boy in my family but the youngest boy in the entire neighborhood. so i'm not not just my mother's baby but everyone's baby. so they called me charles baby, that is my 9% nickname.

and the older ladies still to this day will calm your. [laughter] and so i didn't go to preschool. i spent my days with my great uncle and we would just go house to house to all the elderly people in the neighborhood and it felt like this incredible village and every time someone would make some cookies or cake, they'd send me over and it stuck me full of sugar and then sending back on wired. and it was just lovely to me. and so then when we left the neighborhood and moved out of the house that my mom and i were together act, we only moved -- probably about four city blocks before little kids come you can't go anywhere by yourself. so it was if i had moved to

canada. and i was no longer charles, no one invited me into the house have cookies and cake. i was plopped down by myself and my mom was already working hard and going to school. and now everything was on her shoulders and she was working even harder. and so she -- she's trying to pay attention to all that and she would say, have your back, get into bed, she is exhausted and she can't even see that i have been more lonely than i had ever been. and my brother is, they are not even old enough to understand. it's harder on older children's and younger one and they are trying to find their way in the world. and so i become incredibly

lonely and i'm already a relatively quiet kid. so jester comes one summer in the middle of this enveloping loneliness and he makes clear that he wants to hang out with me and play with me and then as a child you think oh, one of the big kids want to play with me. so you think, okay. and we played and we laughed and talked and i shared a room with my oldest brother and he says, you guys are just constantly rambling. you can have my spot in the can have my spot in the venue guys can talk all night. so that is what we did. one of those nights i woke up in the middle of the -- and abusive episode. in the middle of an abusive episode and it was incredibly dramatic and fusing thing because you are a pre-sexual

being. you don't even know how to comprehend what is happening and it's like, what did i do to make this happen and that i somehow invite this? how do i respond in what ways they to make it not happen? how do i stop it two none of that for a 7-year-old was clear and more did the words come. >> after this happened, he sort of believe you meant. >> absolutely. the next day he said let's do that again and i said no, i don't want to. and finally the simple words came and they are simple words, but he wasn't pleased and i think that -- he never spoke a kind word to me ever again. and he became a bully and a

homophobic taunting, which as an adult i believe was designed to keep me from ever telling and shift the burden of responsibility from him to me as something by your very nature you have invited me to do this and i would not have otherwise done it, it is you that is strange and different. an outcast and so also to inking my credibility if i ever said anything. and so being a kid that is not quite sophisticated enough to understand things, it worked and i never told anyone until i was an adult. >> did you feel some responsibility for what has happened? >> i think the kid in me wondered if maybe there was something about me that had

changed something in him and had made this this way. >> yes, because the disparity described in the aftermath, wondering if you can think back to your 7-year-old mind. where do you feel it bathysphere came from? you obviously didn't fully understand the nature, or did you? >> i didn't understand the abuse, but i also believe that i probably could have rebounded from the abuse and it wasn't penetrative or anything like that. i've read cases of abuse that i am horrified by. and i know that that was not the level of mine. but the abuse is not -- abuse is not really about specific calorie but the emotional and trail and a psychic violence and

so in that way there is not that much differentiation. i do believe because it was an ongoing and it didn't continue that i thought that i could have dealt with that. but what i could not deal with is the bullying. you know, the abuse that happened in one little time -- but the bullying happened all the time. it was inescapable and i could not find sanctuary. it was in the daytime. -- that completely ate way to my confidence in my ability to sort of process, and the trauma to me seemed like it was never going to end. and i think that that -- as a

society we have to understand that that is what bullying feels like two kids. it's not episodic or one moment in time. it feels like you are being suffocated. >> he must've felt like an outcast. >> durability to trust people who want to befriend you is forever damaged. every time someone says oh, hey, let's hang out, your mind goes what is this about. and you have to learn to pick up on the kind of residue of of the intent in people. and you're doing that as a child

and a child is not equipped to do that. but that is where your mind is out. are they are alter your motives to this? >> as you talk about it, the thought is echoed, or it did echo some of your fathers behavior towards you. >> there was some, but i never felt mallas with what my father did. the crime and the cruelty of it was a remarkable ability to not really care. and that he never meant to hurt because he didn't know how to love. and so i never thought of him

with any sort of anger and i've never seen him angry in my entire life, even when they fought, he was trying to not get hurt. she was irate. and so i never thought of him the way that i thought of this in the past. >> you just had nowhere to take your feelings. >> that's right. and the one person that i always thought would have understood the most was my grandmother's fourth husband that i have grown up with. but my grandmother did not like the single life and though she kept the man. but the last one was truly the most angelic human being that i had ever encountered and it wasn't even something that she was doing the kind of a spiritual thing that he brought

into the room that call in every room. and i write in the book that he was like the river always running, always wanting to be somewhere like it was and exactly where was always meant to be. and he was to meet what the ocean once. and i thought it was so sad that he died early because of lung cancer and that was the one man who i could actually talk to and say, what just happened. and then he was gone. >> i think that i will describe

this up with only one paragraph. jed was a change smoker with a strong last and strong eyes and it was the eyes that struck you. brown, maple syrup sweet and a hint of gray around the edges. and sunrise yellow where the light should be. deep enough to get lost in, bottomless like martin's pond. like the beginning of a good priority and have a laugh. they were the kind of eyes that drew up the light and the kind that melted worries in the warm stove. the kind that for dave before discard the throat on the way out. it would take a man with eyes like that to move to the middle of nowhere and ate outside. and then this is the part where

this is quoting from -- the only woman of her past of her and demand that i didn't recognize. both sharpe sitting on a bench in front of a painted backdrop. he was sitting there tall and strong and she was laughing with her legs crossed and her head resting delicately on his shoulder. and there was a power in his pose, but there was more in hers. a feminine power in the kind that light the room and buckles the knee. the kind that makes men do things that they know that they shouldn't. sneak in through open windows and lida loved ones, give more than they had. i had often stared at that picture trying to connect that woman, dangerously learn what

the one that i knew now is that mama. i couldn't do it. she was different now and he had made her different because he was more powerful than she was. he threw his power from a different source. not from hollowness but from wholeness. it was a grand thing they came from knowing and accepting and loving the self that made the knowing and accepting and loving of everything else possible. it didn't crush but accommodated. he hadn't taken away her power but had given her a peaceful place to transform it into calm down and to move out of the woman that she had been into the woman that she could be. she was like a river always running, never still, wanting to be somewhere other thanere >>

>> he had not taken away her power but it gave her a peaceful place to harness and transform it to come down and grow up to grow into the woman she could be. she was like a river always running. never still. wanting to be somewhere other than where it was to finally reach the ocean, a fast and deep and exactly where it was always meant to be. [applause] >> host: the book is filled with passages like that. beautiful stuff. but all that is the memory by the time this happens and

if you years after there was so long period that you were a very sad child with no place to take it and considered killing yourself. people don't think of a eight year-old being suicidal but you were with no one to share it with that then the great of cold that you did to with, there was an episode with him that was very similar. >> guest: exactly. it is one of those things where i would hang out in his room because he would just tell stories and had pipes and pipe cleaners and he would cleanout one pipe and smoke and other and tell great stories what it was like when he was a little boy. i was enraptured.

so then just to roll over and go to sleep this was the safest place for me to be. again i woke up to an episode that felt like it was about to be another abusive episode. and as i write in the book, i knew exactly what that was because the flesh remembers. before anything could happen i just got up and walked out and never went back into that room again. as i say whereas my cousins abuse had broken my spirit, this broke my heart. and reinforced the idea that there must be something about me.

because i never heard of this happening to any other kid. so how was it possible that twice to meet? >> host: sova this led to a whole constellation of doubts, not being able to close to anyone but you also have questions of your own sensuality but your incident with your great uncle is when you were 10 then you go into puberty. and it seems like constantly in the background. >> first of all, boys and puberty sex is constantly in the background anyway. but i realized very early on

that something is happening at all have a language for which is an addition to being attracted to girls i could be attracted to some boys or men but it's not the way people conceive that it is an actual human being and i am attracted but it almost is like the apparition. it is an idea that is not polycentric not the way of central -- sexual attraction it was almost as if my brain was instructing people to compensate. so those images in my head

were never bodies but bases who seem nice and to i didn't even know what category to put that if it is not into sizing sexually intimacy but just people who were kind and not interested in her to meet. >> host: as the years went on bisexual is a term that you apply it to yourself. >> host: but those years that process is with the other piece is your life as something that was lacking that was a father figure. >> guest: but how would kid processes and that clinical psychiatrist to allow those spaces children

who are victims of abuse of specially of the same gender will often bring together the idea of identity and abuse and attraction because it is your first introduction to anything. but with maturation and understanding, you get to a point you to realize that identity or attraction you're either predisposed or predetermined to like we would like any way that is why the abuse even though the same gender could not be suppressed like heterosexual impulses because i was

predisposed anyway i could not turn down. the abuser and the abuse did not have that level of power over you into separate that i probably would have been somewhere along the spectrum of the middle and flew with to some degree depending on circumstances could feel attraction to people of this same gender. it may not be equal and never has felt equal to meet but it is their. but coming to understand these episodes of abuse did

not dictate identity and also coming to learn that it was real parts of the human experience and is in a way abnormal but different it may not be the majority but it is a difference to understand there is a language to describe this was very helpful and constructive to learn to love and live with myself. >> host: you were still struggling with that going off to college can you talk about those college years specifically? you were president of york fraternity if you went to a hazel -- a brutal hazing process.

i knew it could be rough but that was very rough. but it seemed to not even the issue to question your sexuality but you very much had it meet still to bond with other men? >> guest: i think that is the nature of masculinity in the broadest sense the book is really about the exploration of what it means to be in mint and how broad or how dangerously narrow redraw that concept of what it means to be a man in the collective consciousness but in fact, how incredibly broad it is and i had the good fortune to have all of these different sorts of men in my life that i can bring

to life in this book. we think of masculinity as a peak everyone tries to scramble up the hill i think it is an ocean and abroad to encompass a lot of different kinds of ways to be. but i think this struggle that i described to be a note in the song so that only a few people hit its said every time the boy is failed to be a real man and man up they feel like a failure because no one can hold that. and rob's of the basic sense of humanity because as a human being you are fragile

and sometimes you do fail and none of that reduces you reinforces the fact you are human being. when real loud foyers to be beings they will leverage from that betterment during the fraternity episode going from one extreme to another with that fraternal hazing parties that i constantly have to catch myself this is not meet or how want to be or how well received myself to come back to a place of where i believe and what i believe is right. >> host: he reached a crisis point when you were figuring out the model of masculinity said it

presented is not what you wanted and also with your tortured emotional relationship what happened to you do want to talk about that night? >> guest: the book opens with that the returns that the semester before somehow this caa -- the cia was interested and i must have been interviewed with them but there were interested. so it got very serious the last round of interviews daybreak me to virginia with the physical test and psychological evaluations part of that is a lie detector test.

i am breezing through this no way i don't get the internship i don't think nothing of it. i am not going to live. have you ever used drugs which i hadn't but i was in high school might two best friends shared a locker because it was during lunch it was closest to the of lunchroom the widow of our banks in the same locker to get there first but they also threw a lot of wheat into that locker. that is sure thing. not my thing. do whatever you got to do i was playing basketball. so i was guilty about that and i felt guilty and in the

fraternity-- sometimes you're in their room where everybody is smoking you could barely see your hand in front of your face and every time there's been one of these rooms i am thinking i know i'm getting a contact i. so that immediately popped into my head and the machine goes each then he asked the sec said -- a second question have you ever had sex with them and which i had not but how would you describe that? he was not the man at the time? he was the kid? it was not penetrated so is that sex?

it wasn't consentual so what do i say? but you cannot say had a right answer so i can hear the machines start to scratch and i say no because of that checklists and no hasted we the right answer and it goes crazy. so all the things i never told anyone i start to tell to this guy. and they let me take the test again. this is what he does for a living but he does agree to let me take it again we get to the same question and i now say yes instead of no and the machine still says that either side i thought there is no answer to the question. i wanted to be a politician and i thought i never can

because the government thinks i am a liar. now fast-forward i know that they all live. [laughter] but back then i thought you had to be an honest man to be a politician. [laughter] so what i wanted to do my entire career is now once again ruined by this man so i go through depressive episode my mom calls my apartment, i'm sorry i cannot believe that is happening in. [laughter] , my mom calls and says someone wants to speak to you. he gets on the phone and says i have not heard this voice for years everything

explodes because i thank you have destroyed my life twice. i grabbed the gun from under the seat that my mom gave me to take to school justing case and i am just saying case what? i get the letter c.? and i.m. racing down the interstate the plan is simple i was just walked into the house. i and just said. i get to the exit9. of it. and i turned off the interstate,

and i went back home. i called a friend, and i said, girl, i just got on the phone and i said, you know what? just start talking. i don't care what you say, just start talking. [laughter] and she talked for hours. i don't know what she was saying, but it was -- i needed someone to just fill the space. and i had to get off and just think about, you know, how am i to consider myself and how do i rebound. and part of it was you have the power to simply release it. it is not, you do not have to carry it. i know that some people who are victims of child sexual abuse, they actually need confrontation. they need to sit across a table, and i need you to acknowledge that you have hurt me, and i need to hear your voice, i need to hear you apologize for it. that's not what i needed. i needed to release it.

and walk away from it. and that was a choice that i made. >> absolutely, i was just going to say, do they need a mic back there? does it matter? no? >> first of all, i want to compliment you for your work. >> thank you. >> at the times. i've read you a long time, and i really appreciate your thoughtfulness, and i appreciate the fact that you don't run away from some issues that are very important in our country. you could do that very easily. i'm sure you get letters that say how dare you respond this way. we can't. we cannot thank you enough for taking that position -- is thank you. >> i want you to know that. >> thank you. [applause] >> my question deals with the issue of forgiveness, and you just touched on it. could you comment -- and you said, you referred to it in your

column last sunday and in the book. can you comment on how you came to forgive and, in fact, have you come to the point of forgiving? >> right. and i think, you know, it kind of depends on how we're defining forgiveness. the way i'm using it is that is to release, is as a release. it's not to erase which is what i think some people think of it as erasing what has happened, but it's to release it. i firmly believe that love and hate are such enormous and expensive emotions that they cannot exist in the same body. i had to release my hatred of him in order for me to love myself. and as long as i held onto the idea that i hated him for what he had done, i could not fully

love myself. and that is, that is the kind of forgiveness -- it doesn't absolve. it simply releases. >> probably best, yeah, so everybody hears you. >> we're going to get some exercise in here today. [laughter] >> this book changed my life. thank you. >> thank you for saying that. >> so much. very similar stories, very similar experiences, and i happened on it over a podcast. and i actually listened to it before i read it, which you read -- >> yes. i am the nary to have of the book -- narrator of the book, by the way. >> it is phenomenal. >> thank you. >> but i want to thank you because i spent years of money

in therapy, and just in one book you've changed my life. >> thank you, i appreciate that. >> it and it meant so much. there are none that i know of, african-american males, who have written like this and who have told these beautiful stories of these beautiful people. i grew up in a small community, too, and i'm so mad that you wrote a book about people that i know. [laughter] especially like my aunt o december saw? -- odessa? yeah, i know her. and i just want to thank you for that, ask you will never know what this means to me. >> thank you. i appreciate that. >> you will never know. my question is, is that, you know, those of us that know the four fraternities as historically black universities, colleges, what kind of pushback have you gotten back from that? >> you know, my friends have me in what we call a cone of silence. i don't want to hear anything negative that's happening, don't

tell me, i don't want to know it. so i don't know. and the truth is, i think i don't particularly care because the level of barbaric hazing that we were involved in is indefensible. and any person, particularly grown men which would be my age is the people who would be responding, people who were there when i was there, we're in our mid 40s, some of these people are 50 years old, if you are condoning that with what should be a level of maturity and wisdom that comes with your 40s and 50s, then that that's a sad statement about you. >> any more questions? sure, go ahead. >> hi. i think there are many people

who identify as bisexual or experience their sexuality as fluid who will find your words refreshing, exciting. because for all the progress we've made, a lot of the mainstream language around sexuality is still very boxed. and unshifting. i wonder, do you -- pretty simple question, maybe -- do you experience your words as being political given that they are still in some ways at the front end of the progress towards a broader and more encompassing understanding of sexuality? >> well, i mean, hopefully i understand the question. i didn't write as >>

>> do you experience your words are political still at the front end of the progress towards a broader and more encompassing understanding of sexuality? >> guest: hopefully i a understand the question. i did not write as an african. the impulse is completely literary. and not political. however, that centcom identity is political. sex is political. of his political. and those who do the work of advocacy can use this instructive manual in some way all of better.

and it is important to me those to say thank you for giving me the language to describe myself. that is really important sova get the data with numbers of both children to have described themselves as blue good zero or bisexual or same sex encounter or the number of adults in their adult life to have that same sex encounter that number is almost twice as large large, ledger and gay or lesbian to combined. i am not saying they're all bisexual but the human experiences that people try to find themselves that was

not for me and move on with your life but some people it is separate feature that is perfectly okay you need to have a language to help you to describe that and models of courage how you can do that and continue to live a life that is productive that makes the mark of the overall that is simply not about intimacy but the noble in denver's to make it a better place and if we can give people that language and models for the ability to say that only do i have a

right to articulate that but a moral responsibility to love myself in that day to be brave enough to say it and it does not reduce me in any way to say that. >> host: i am afraid we have to call time. [applause] [inaudible conversations] ars ofe american dream." it's specified on one '57 chevy and the history that came behind that car. mr. swift has been writing for 30+ years, 22 of those years for the virginian pilot. he was a >>

nominee. since 2012 he's a residential fellow for the virginia foundation of the humanities at the university of virginia at charlottesville, and "auto biography" is his fifth book. >> thank you. please, get ahold of yourselves. and also a reminder, if you have an ego that needs to be brought into check, all you need to do is to become a book author, because, you know, one day you'll pack a room for reasons that elude you, you'll just wind up with a huge crowd, and the next day you get a rainy saturday morning, and a few intrepid souls turn out. thank you so much for being those few intrepid souls. it's -- i'll try to make this worth your while. this is the story of a single 1957 chevy station wagon that i've traced back through all 14 people who owned it from the day it rolled out of the assembly plant in the baltimore and, actually, beyond that to the

fisher body plant in cleveland where it was first welded together into a tough steel box. and in the course of telling the stories of these 14 other wise unconnected people, this odd little fraternity that's all linked to this one car, i attempt to tell the story of postwar america. it's kind of a fable of all of us really because the automobile's the one thing more than any other possession that we collectively have that binds us as a country. i mean, we have a relationship with cars that's unlike any, anything else. we don't give our coffee makers nicknames, generally speaking. so what i'm going to do is i'm going to read from the first chapter of "auto biography," and hope that it provokes in you questions that you will ask me. maybe we can get a little bit of a discussion going on the back end of this. it'll take about 20 minutes to read the section that i'm going to read. i will tell you that in its

original form this is a, this is a chapter filled with what my dad would call rough language, and so much so that i, in deference to the, anyone who might be watching on tv with small kids in the room, i'm going to replace some of the, some of the roughest of that language with euphemisms or, you know, f-ing, for instance, is not the way the people many this chapter really -- in this chapter really speak. and i'm going to cut one paragraph altogether that's just so rowdy there's no way i can fix it to make it palatable for general consumption. so bear that in mind. when i say "jerk," another and far more colorful world is probably actually being deployed in the original version. 6-1, 240, biceps big as most

men's legs. thick neck. goatee. hair trimmed tight on the sides into a brim-like inch on top. big, calloused mitts roughened by wrench turning and several hundred applications of blunt force trauma of which dozens resulted in his arrest. . .a belly nourished by beer, whiskey, rumple minitz and buckets of both haut cuisine and buffalo wings. but he leads with his chest, shoulders thrown rearward daring the world to take a swing at him. a few scars considering. under the his right arm is the ghost of s