It’s been a long time since I wrote something very personal at The Slog. These days, those who would destroy everything that’s good in our world don’t factor the idea of we the People having personal lives – that is, feelings and skeletons and foibles and fears that are self-regarding and thus none of their business. Personal as this post is therefore, its ramifications and lessons are macro in their nature.

The Pentagon Papers is a film from the Spielberg stable starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. It was released four years ago and is the story of how (chiefly) the Washington Post with help from the New York Times and its Secret State whistleblower Dan Ellsberg revealed just how hopelessly bankrupt and mendacious the Washington policy on continued prosecution of the Vietnam War was.

I was in the US at the time – albeit briefly – and as a…