Just because a book is outdated doesn't mean it's irrelevant, if it's good enough. Yes, Rolling Blackouts recounts a tour of the Middle East that took place immediately before the Arab Spring and well before the current wars in Iran and Palestine. Yet Sarah Glidden conveys contradictions and dissonance that still unsettle the US and shake much of the world.
This graphic novel depicts a months-long voyage of a handful of journalists plus herself and an Iraq War veteran across Turkey, Syria, and Iraq that begins in 2010. The journalists are gathering information and especially stories that will make Americans really understand the effect the US invasion of Iraq has had on regular people. They bemoan the indifference many Americans exhibit towards the consequences of their military's actions in the region, at one point shutting down the argument that average Americans are too preoccupied with their own worries to think of other countries by quipping that especially middle-class Americans have plenty of bandwidth to think about what their government is going to others - which I totally agree with. Embodying this frustration and complicating the mission is the inclusion of the lead journalist's childhood friend, the middle-class son of antiwar protestors who both thinks the US shouldn't have invaded Iraq and refuses to regret enlisting for that very invasion, or even connect his childhood traumas to his decision to join up.
I think the book gets a couple of things really right. Most of all perhaps, the text drives home that the Middle East wasn't roiling exclusively poor and extremist Arabs through endless war before the US invasion. Different interviewees represent competing groups and have complicated motivations. More than anything they're largely middle-class and interested in what's best for their families, a similarity to most Americans that they just don't grasp and didn't then.
Secondly, I think it handles the question of danger in a humanizing and directed way. Government agencies, including both al-Bashar's spies and the U.S. ICE, are intimidating and scary. People, whether Kurd or Arab, whether they love the US or hate it, whether they agree with their government or not, are generally reasonable and even hospitable. Many of the characters have witnessed horrible violence, and a few even committed it, but no one is the psycho extremist terrorist Fox News would have is believing represents the majority there. The protagonists face the threat of state danger, but like the residents and refugees they meet, they make the best choices they can in the circumstances and carry on.
Finally, it's just not too heavy-handed. The journalist really struggles to get her veteran friend to square up his cognitive dissonance, but there's no cringe reckoning with his guilt that changes his politics and makes his heart grow three sizes. Meeting people who were hurt by the war doesn't instantaneously enlighten him, to her frustration, and reading this comic won't suddenly convert an Iran hawk into an antizionist dove. Instead, it gently but uncomfortably probes uncomfortable lacunas in American consciousness, humanizing and individuating the Other, applying pressure to our willful ignorance, and pushing the American narrative into the background to spotlight other distinct stories. It defines and shows the importance of good journalism while also throwing its limitations and contradictions into stark relief. There are no heroes or happy endings, just brave looking and unresolved contemplating.
With its straightforward narrative and unobtrusive layout, this book is a simple reading list addition for most any reader hoping to engage with their relationship to the war, the Middle East, the US, colonialism, etc. I especially recommend it to liberal-leaning relatives of armed service members. The illustrations depict such subtle human emotions with so little linework that it's hard to adequately appreciate them. Get your hands on the tome and devour it in a sitting.
