Sailng To Oblivium: June 30, 2017

The mathematical concept of “limits” destroyed my future as a physicist. Another concept of limits may destroy our country: decency limits.

The question today, June 30, 2017, is: shall we have controls on our behavior toward our fellow travelors along the road of life?

In mathematics, a limit is the value that a function or sequence "approaches" as the input or index approaches some value. Limits are essential to calculus (and mathematical analysis in general) and are used to define continuity, derivatives, and integrals.

I never could fully grasp it, so I abandoned the thought of nuclear physics.

Oh, I have abandoned many dreams in life, but I’ve reached a few, and I’ve always tried to be decent about it. I do admit, occasionally, to using a military service hat to scare people blocking an aisle at a supermarket while talking on their cell phone. ("Oh my god. It's one of them. I've got to run!")

As a minor expert in my field, I do sometimes respond to the same question being asked me in a myriad of different ways with, “Sir (or Ma’am) I haven’t learned anything in the last five minutes that would allow me to give you a different answer.”

For some reason, that answer tends really to piss people off, so I use it rarely, and I certainly don’t use it with my wife. Anymore.

So you see, there are what I call “decency limits,” or points in human interaction beyond which a thoughtful, confident, and considerate person will not proceed. Many, if not most, of us abide by this rule. We do it because, among other things, the Galilean told us to “love one another.” Some of us would employ a similar thought from Gautama Buddha, “True love is born from understanding.”

And, back in the day, we listened to the words of people like John Steinbeck, “Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.” And I think it was Alice Walker who said, “What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.”

Whatever the inspiration, it is, I believe, a positive sign for the future of the species that most of us place decency limits on our behavior, and we establish points of personal rancor and antagonism beyond which we will not go.

The question today then, is, why doesn’t the President of the United States?

Just what the hell did we expect?

 There isn’t much to say. No time for cheap laughs, just two mentally disturbed men meeting in the crossroads of history.

One accomplished an “in your face” feat designed to taunt and insult Arkansans who believe in the Constitution of the United States of America, as revised. It wasn’t undertaken because of love of the Galilean. If you want to study the work of a man who loves the Galilean, come to Little Rock, Arkansas and follow the Reverend Hezekiah Steward of “The Watershed” around for a few days.

As a quick aside, the first time I ever saw Reverend Stewart, he was strolling around Little Rock’s legendary Riverfest Festival. He had a basket strapped to his shoulder and was mingling among the crowd asking dollars for the poor. He still follows that goal, and one of the great pleasures of my life is when I am able to find him and do my share. He inspires love, compassion, and generosity. I believe the Galilean would be pleased.

Back to the other two I'm talking about today, one uses his “religious” antics to divide us and to make us hate one another because of our personal spiritual beliefs. It is sad that he has reached a position of some minor political power. He inspires distrust, antagonism, and greed. Shame on us for not electing better people to office.

The other mentally disturbed man in question used the power of his automobile and his unfortunate disability to destroy the crowning achievement of the other, a religious marker of a single religion placed in a public place. Sad. I hope the destoyer inspires concern, understanding, and public support for the ill. Shame on us for not taking better care of the least of those among us.

Let us try, then, in this brief life, to be more like the Reverend Stewart and to support medical help for the other two.

Meanwhile, the Galilean and I are trying our best not to bust out laughing.

True

Sailing To Oblivium: June 28, 2017

“A plague o' both your houses!” It’s Wednesday, June 28, 2017 and that’s how I feel. When Romeo tries to break up a fight between Tybalt and Mercutio in Act 3, Scene One, of Shakespeare’s famous play, he winds up getting Mercutio stabbed and uttering the famous curse on both parties.

I haven’t tried to break up any fight between political parties, but on some days, I feel the need to cast a curse on both: the one who came to power by urging people to hate the former president and the one who wants to regain power by urging people to hate the new president.

These carryings on have just made us all hate one another. That’s what bothers me today.

On those days I remember the Tony Soprano’s famous misattribution, “Why can’t we do like Dr. Rodney King said and all just get along?”

The problem I see with all this squabbling is that it allows the political termites to chew away our moral foundations without being noticed, or challenged.

For example, have you heard about the latest plans for “regime change” in the middle east? Probably not, it is hidden away behind our concerns over who uses what bathroom, where religious symbols can go, and whether there is any spot in this great land where carrying a firearm would not be appropriate.

But, back to regime change in the Middle East. That’s worked out real well in the past, now hasn’t it? When the Draft Board comes for the children, let’s remember all the fights we had over things we will no longer remember.

I’ll be okay tomorrow, but today I’m a little put out with both sides.

Sailing To Oblivium

Had a shocking revelation recently. Something happened nearly 50 years ago that still gives me shivers. And I didn’t even know about it at the time.

I’m finishing up Vietnam at War: The History: 1946-1975 by Phillip B. Davidson. Took my time as I tend to have several books going at once. I know. I know. One should not dilute his focus, but most of you have known since you met me that I me weak-minded, or you should have suspected it by now.

The book is well researched, but a bit of a revisionist history, or at least what I like to call a “pretty to think so” version of history. The author was a direct subordinate to General Westmoreland, so one can understand his analytical leanings.

Anyway, turns out that during the siege of the Marine base near the village of Khe Sahn, between 21 January and 9 July 1968, during the Vietnam War, the American leaders actually considered, according to Davidson, the limited use of nuclear weapons against the NVA.

The limited use of nuclear weapons. Let us all pause and reflect on that, as the ushers prepare the collection plates.

Being prey to prejudices as some of us are, unfortunately, there may be cold-hearted cynics who would say, “It would have only involved gooks and Marines. So what?”

I will ignore such base sentiments. I never really had anything against Oriental people, and the Marines tended to get my ass out of jams every once in a while. I would only add that, as this affair at Khe Sahn was going on, I was about 140 miles away, less by air. That’s about the distance from Little Rock, AR to Texarkana.

Geez. Nuclear war? With me only a hop, skip, and jump away?

Actually, some of the same folks had considered that option’s being used by the United States to get the French out of their jam at Dien Bien Phu.

It both cases, cooler heads prevailed.

Cooler heads. Now that begs the question: where are they now?” With each day that passes, it becomes more obvious to anyone who has ever read a book on history, that we have a mentally unstable, mercurial, shallow-thinking president with the ability to goad horrifying forces into an epochal catastrophe through idle postings and silly statements. Anyone who has ever seen a hornets’ nest disturbed will understand. Couple this with what seems to be a nihilistic majority of national and state legislators, and you’ll understand how I would have felt had I known the “Insanity Brigade” had been active in 1968.

Cooler heads. I sense that the “Tea Party” types consider such a title a sign of weakness of character. And there are some religious folks amongst us who would welcome the holocaust a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. And the ultra-rich? Who the hell knows? When those who have it all say that isn’t enough, you know they are not playing with a full deck. Let us beware.

Finally, one reads where America’s prestige is tumbling downward in Europe. This concerns me, but I’m sure it simply feeds the isolationist anger of the nihilists. What will happen? Who knows? I’m making list of things I want to do right away, though, before someone does something really crappy.

And with the destructive power of modern weapons, 140 miles ain’t doodly-squat. So give your loved ones a special hug as you say goodbye to them this morning.

Sailing To Oblivium: June , 2017

"Agree with thine adversary quickly." I think the Galilean said that. Wait one. Yes, Matthew 5:25.

Let’s, then, make this “Agree With Others Day.” I’ll start us off.

Let’s see, I believe, as do my friends of other political leanings, in government overreach. When I am forced only to purchase fuel transfer cans that are totally inoperable by any human hands (you need at least three, with two of them on one arm), government has overreached. I would only ask my friends to grant the same conclusion of government overreach when we leave the workshop and get to the bedroom or wedding chapel.

I believe government spends money unwisely. That one is easy when we see all the new highways being built that will only serve to create more traffic.

Now, let’s get to the controversial. I agree that we have, and will have, the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and that we all need to accept that. Now, I have this tendency to compare guns with penises. That is to say that a certain percentage of Americans will own one, a penis that is and I think that percentage is right at 50. And, in all fairness, a certain percentage of Americans will choose, by right, to own guns.

Having said that, I stop short of wanting owners of either to run around in public waving the darn things at me.

We see what damage they can do when placed in the hands of the young, foolish, and irresponsible.

We see what damage they can do when used beyond recreation, comfort, or protecting the future of the species.

We see what damage they can do when their uncontrolled use causes friends to quarrel.

So, let’s keep them safe where they belong: out of sight and out of mind. Our planet will thank us.

Just Thinking

Sailing To Oblivium: June 25, 2017

We expect cruelty in this country. After all, slavery was written into our Constitution. We also expect goodness. We fought a Civil War over it, one of our most tragic but most noble moments.

We hope for the best but we don’t always plan for the worst. This past week has seen the results of this. Meanness is oozing from our national psyche like noxious gas from a garbage dump. Oh, we’ve seen cruelty since the Civil War. The long and horrible era of the Jim Crow South. The destruction of ways of life of the original inhabitants of our country. The Joseph McCarthy era. The subjugation of women. We’ve seen much. And many of us have had to endure so much more than I, a white male of European descent.

The meanness and cruelty of a health care act—specifically designed to punish the poor and elderly while benefitting the rich—prepared in secret and brazenly tossed out for expedited passage still makes us cringe, though.

Even though we might not be religious ourselves, we could once take comfort in faiths that taught love, compassion, and social justice. Those old voices are being drowned out now, though, by voices that teach hate, anger, and greed.

What can we do? Allow me an idea.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, beset by worries and falling prey to despair, I comfort myself by forcing pleasant images as pictures into my mind to cover over and erase the bad. I think I’ll do that now, even in my waking hours. I can, if I choose, maintain the images of

- President Abraham Lincoln urging us to listen to “the better angels of our nature.”

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt assuring us “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

- President Harry S. Truman telling us “I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.”

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower telling us “This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”

- President John F. Kennedy telling us to “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.”

- President Lyndon B. Johnson, ending the first State of the Union message after the assassination of President Kennedy, promising us that “We shall overcome.”

And many others, any of which could erase the thoughts of early morning soundbites, delivered via social media, by a frightfully insecure, immoral, and divisive man.

We have had moments of cruelty in this country and we have had moments of sublime glory. We have had bad leaders in this country and we have had great ones. We have had bad days and we have had good ones. If we all join hands together, we can have great ones again. We will truly and surely overcome.

Sailing To Oblivium: June 24, 2017

Think the forces of darkness are unstoppable? On this day in 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia. Hubris destroys. For Napoleon, it caused disaster and the loss of 400,000 men of his Grande Armee. More importantly, it ended the myth of his invincibility.

For Americans, in a little over a week from now, we’ll note the 154^th anniversary of “unbeatable” Robert E. Lee’s ordering three divisions to assault Cemetery Ridge outside the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Confederate divisions of Pettigrew, Pickett, and Trimble, probably “tired of winning” by then, were slaughtered by the Union forces of General George Gordon Meade, in what some call “the high-water mark of the Confederacy.

Ironically, two days ago in 1941, Adolph Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the Invasion of Russia. Allowing hubris to shield him from the historical example of France’s invasion of that country, he sent new armies to face the seemingly endless expanses, murderous winters, and a country determined to survive at any cost. By some estimates, his army suffered nearly a million casualties. The goal of world domination by the Third Reich ended with that defeat. Although doomed, Hitler’s hubris would continue to destroy for four more years, and would end with his country’s near annihilation.

Let’s not forget April 22, 1954. That’s the day that the “unstoppable” Senator Joseph McCarthy allowed his ego to take on stronger foes in the form of the United States Army and its legal representative Joseph N. Welch. The televised affair unmasked McCarthy as a liar, an egomaniac, a bully, and a purveyor of hate and the politics of personal destruction. He never recovered from the exposure, experiencing censure from the Senate and a lonely death from alcoholism.

For those who like to connect dots, the hearings involved, to a large degree, the shenanigans of a 

young, ambitious, vicious, and morally challenged attorney on Senator McCarthy’s team: Roy M. Cohn. If that name sounds familiar, it should. Before his death of aids in 1988, he was a mentor to the current president of the United States.

Isn’t it interesting how the fabrics of History can be stitched together by the common threads of concepts like hubris? There is idle chatter these days of a “New American Civil War.” Of course that is silly. It is also unnecessary to restore moral balance in our country. We just need the right person to ask, as Joseph Welch once did, "Have you no sense of decency sir?"

Sailing To Oblivium: June 23, 2017

In life, we can be caring and good. We can be mean and greedy. I’m not sure we can be all at once and preserve our humanity.

I thought about this much of yesterday. I also thought about the words attributed to the Galilean at the end of the 25^th Chapter of  the Gospel of Matthew in the Christian New Testament. Whether you think it was spoken by a god in human form, a real person, or a historical character of fiction, it is an amazing piece of literature. It may be the most embarrassing passage in history to those who seek to hide their baseness behind a cloak of religion.

In the Galilean's own words, as he spoke of the final judgement by his god:

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,

43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (NIV)

Plainly spoken if you ask me. Rough translation? “Don’t use me as the basis for your cruelty and greed.”

Sailing To Oblivium: June 22, 2017

It’s easy to let despondency win these days. Have we reached the “tipping point” in the moral collapse of America? There are signs, sure enough.

- There seems to be no end of corporate money dedicated to ending America as we know it.

- Too many people, many of them otherwise decent human beings, seem totally unable to forgive America for having elected a man of color as president.

- We have a president who, free from evaluation by any traditional measure of moral or ethical standards, suffers no harm from the most egregious words and acts imaginable.
- The heads of federal agencies are, for the most part, headed by individuals dedicated to the destruction of their agency.
- We may have the worst Cabinet in the history of the country, according to some observers.

- We have a horrifying percentage of “one-issue” voters—whether the issue be tax cuts, guns, abortion, or race—who would vote for Charles Manson released from prison and granted the right to run for office, if he promised to support them on their one issue.

- We increasingly place corporate profits over the survival of the planet.

- We are one heart attack away from a Supreme Court that would remove any individual right in favor of corporate wealth.

- We have so-called religious leaders in America who, unlike the Pope in Italy, have joined the forces of hatred and divisiveness, and are leading their followers to the precipice.

- We have dropped a notch from irrelevance to ridicule in the eydes of the eveloped world.

- The United States Senate secretly drafted, with enough votes for a rushed passage in all likelihood, a bill that would affect every person in America. (Stop for a moment and let that one sink in).

- We hear rumors of worse things to come, that the Koch Brothers, for example, are nearing enough political strength at the state level to initiate a constitutional convention at the federal.

So how am I able to retain any level of optimism?

One: This is America. We lived through Jim Crow, the Great Depression, the nightmare of 1968, Nixon, Iran-Contra, and the Great Recession. We can live through this if only we retain our balance.

Two: No matter how high a summer thunderhead rises, it always collapses from its own weight. So may the forces of greed and malice.

And Three: There is something my sainted mother used to tell me. She’d say, “Son, the darkest part of night is just before dawn.”

And Mother was always right.

Sailing To Oblivium: June 21, 2017

My  personan experience suggests that mixing religion and politics doesn’t work. When I use the Sermon on the Mount as a guide, my candidates lose.

When I consult the 25th Chapter of the Gospel of  Matthew for support, my candidates lose.

When I rely on Matthew 7:12 or Luke 6:31, my candidates lose.

I’ve learned to keep away from the Seventh Chapter, Verse 1, of Matthew as well. Judging others seems to be a sure-fire winner for politicians in our country these days. Not only politicians benefit from it, the so-called evangelist Franklin Graham has used the art of judging others to become a national icon.

Let’s face it. My candidates always lose when the Galilean helps me choose.

I could go to the vengeful, jealous, and ultra-harsh god of the Hebrew Bible and do better, I suppose. In fact, I suspect that some people read about the treatment of the Midianites as recounted in the Book of NumbersChapter 31 (only the virginal girls were spared after the war—given to the Israelite soldiers) and say “Mister we could use a man like Holy Moses again.” It works. Their candidates keep winning.

Maybe I would just do better to base my political decisions on platforms, plans, perspicacity, and past performance. I see far too many of my friends making all their political decisions on one issue that they feel is governed by religious belief. Pardon me if can’t help believing that a one-issue voter is a dangerous American. Prey to charlatans who promise to side with them on that one issue, they fail to see that, while “the trains may be running on time,” so to speak, people are being sent to their destruction, sometimes on those very same trains.

In the long run, I’ll stay friends with the Galilean, but vote, as I see it, for the practitioners of good government over the promisers of perfection.

Where will our chosen path lead?

Sailing to Oblivion: June 20, 2017

Odd thing is, there is not a city council in this country that could pass a law the way our United States Senate is doing. Why? One wonders.

Why would we hold local politicians to a higher standard than national ones? Local ones may make decisions that affect us more directly, “where the rubber meets the road,” and all that. But they lack the power, as individual bodies of government, to destroy the economy, the world, or our planet. The ones in Washington can accomplish all those things, and now seem hell-bent on doing just that, and doing it in secret. Why? One wonders. As a social-media post asked recently, “Why is everything not enough?”

Further, my experience with city governments, and it is an exhaustive one, demonstrates that the leaders most often seem to be trying to build something, solve a problem, or make ends meet. They, in the vast majority of cases, attempt to look after us.

But we watch them, the women and men who run our cities, just the same. We make the operate in the sunlight. We make their methods transparent. We make their records public and available to the press. We hold them accountable. We do, in a surprising number of cases, kick them out it they don't do right. More often than not, they behave accordingly.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our senators did the same? Perhaps they would if we started selecting them by performance and not by party.

That is the question I ponder after reading the news of June 6, 2017.

Just wondering.

Sailing To Oblivium: June 19, 2017

My late father-in-law always claimed it started after World War Two. I think the first tangible sign was when we started letting boys wear baseball hats to the supper table. Now we let grown men wear cowboy hats during memorial services.

It is this lack of civility and the abandonment of even the barest hint of social propriety that has washed over our nation like a noxious flood. It leads to women wearing the white dress of virginity to their fifth wedding. It leads to individuals wearing shorts to funerals. It leads to such acts of tackiness as putting dark meat in a chicken salad. Where have our standards of decency gone? Is classlessness the new etiquette?

We see it manifested to extremes now as individuals block supermarket lanes while talking on their cell phones, sometimes discussing, in a loud voice, intimate details that would embarrass a confessional priest. Oh, and our politicians. Let's not forget them. Just today, E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote an interesting piece about the loss of civility in the national political arena.

Civility is not merely disappearing in our lives. It bespeaks, to many at least, a sign of weakness that, somehow, makes the practitioner of it a limp-wristed pansy. A beloved and highly popular TV character’s favorite phrase is, “Never apologize. It’s a sign of Weakness.” Wow. That one will get you far in life.

That’s actually a line lifted from a John Wayne movie She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, from 1949. It was more or less a stupid line then as well as now. A better one would be “Never explain. Your friends don’t need it and your enemies wouldn’t believe it anyway.” That’s a line from a long-forgotten episode of the TV series Four Star Playhouse, delivered by the late David Niven.

I bring up films and TV shows because that is where we seem to get our behavioral guidance these days, not from Grandma’s knee but from professional wrestling shows. Too many people don’t stop, it seems, to consider one thing. As David Letterman pointed out once, these incidents at pro wrestling matches in which one of the wrestlers is removed, bloody and unconscious, from Madison Square Garden, and rushed, via stretcher, to the emergency room, are not, for some reason, reported in the next day’s New York Times. One has to wonder why.

It seems that things no longer have to be real in order to be true and effective. Maybe that is intended. Maybe it serves some insidious purpose to downgrade reality in the minds of our people. It did occur to me once that the main difference between a video game and real war is a sucking chest wound.

Sailing to Oblivium: June 18, 2017

They weren’t the kind of men who normally heaped praise and adulation on another. What was going on? I took a seat on the near edge of the circle.

Then it came clear. Here was a bunch of senior men, woodworkers all, taking turns praising the owner of our local lumber store. One by one they were going around stating their greatest blessing for getting to buy lumber from him. You can’t imagine.

When they came to me, I hadn’t had time to think. “Tell us,” one man said, “what is your greatest blessing in getting to deal with this great man.”

“I don’t recall,” I said. They all laughed.

It is comforting to know that we still find humor during these strange times in America.

What isn’t comforting to know is that while we are laughing, another institution that helped make our country great is being dismantled in a systematic effort to strip us of individual protections, rights, and comfort.

What isn’t comforting to know is that while we are laughing, children are going to bed hungry, innocent people are getting shot on our streets, our oceans are becoming barren, and veterans, their widows, and their orphans are being stripped of the promise of succor promised by Abraham Lincoln in 1865. All that time, presidential power is being wasted on the re-kindling of a nearly 60-year-old cold war against country whose leader who died a year ago and whose people take no harmful actions against our country.

What isn’t comforting to know that almost an entire presidential administration is under investigation for wrongdoing and that, if toppled, we will see a new president who doesn’t believe in the most basic building blocks of science.

What isn’t comforting to know is that a foreign country, our sworn enemy for more than 50 years, likely affected the results of our county’s most recent presidential election.

What isn’t comforting to know is that the prestige of America in most parts of the world is melting as fast as the polar icecaps.

What isn’t comforting to know is the level of anger and sadness that is covering our cities, landscapes, and neighborhoods.

Speaking of Lincoln, it is written that he used humor to ease the cosmic pains of the terrible struggles he led the country through. Maybe it is “altogether fitting and proper” that we do as well.

That’s what the news of June 18, 2017 brings to mind.

President Lincoln with his generals after Antietam,
America's bloodiest single day. They say he relied
on humor to ease his pain. Can we?

Sailing To Oblivion: June 17, 2017

We teach it in public administration classes. “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” We see it a lot lately.

Whether it’s the sexual assault trial of Bill Cosby, the comedian and actor, or the investigation of our presidential administration, there is a temptation to view events from our particular sitting spot. It is the sort of thing that can send social media into an uncontrollable frenzy. It can even lead to mayhem and violence. It is what I think of as I experience what appears to be another tack into the sea of disbelief, as we sail to Oblivion on June 17, 2017.

Where we stand depends on where we sit. That would be “Miles Law,” named after the Truman-era bureaucrat who coined the phrase.

We saw it as a symptom of our patriarchal society recently. While Trey Gowdy and his minions had freedom to unleash whatever fury they chose on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, somehow the tender sensibilities of current Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to be protected from the tough questioning of Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California.

One can only imagine the sort of slobbering venom that hate media would have produced had Secretary Clinton said, “you make me nervous.” Men do tend to get a free ride in our society, many times because strong women do exactly that—make them nervous. Like Ginger Rogers, who matched every dance move of Fred Astaire, only backwards and in high heels, we men expect our sisters, in this travail of life, to accomplish more, with less acknowledgement, while maintaining a soft and compliant smile. Like plantation owners in the old movies felt about their slaves, we are sure that, in their hearts, they love us.

No wonder they—the strong women of America—regard us men as complete idiots. They don’t have to run around yelling “lock him up, lock him up.” They know that, given enough time, he’ll lock himself up.” Or that’s surely how it looks from where they sit. So many times, the truth lies not in the smile but in what is hidden behind the smile. Miles Law is in operation. It’s just that we have no inkling of where they are mentally sitting.

Meanwhile, from where the men reside, that hegemonic position espoused since the writing of the Holy Bible, it seems only natural to be treated as superior, protected from harsh judgement, given a leg up in our endeavor and always given the benefit of the doubt. It’s the way the Universe was formed. It’s the way things are. Justice carries men along like a mighty river carrying a boat. It is only natural

Or is it? There is another actor in this drama: time. And one can’t think of the inexorable role of this particular actor without recalling the famous ending of Fern Hill, perhaps the most famous Dylan Thomas poem,

“Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”

You want me to be quiet where?

Sailing Inrto Oblivion: June 16, 2017

Shakespeare said it, “… for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” We see it already in this week’s tragedy. Various political viewpoints are already beginning to view it through the prism of their own belief structures. I see it simply as a further step into collective madness. When will it stop?

We see it through the scope of history as well. On January 30, 1068, Viet Cong and NVA forces launched a massive attack on cities throughout South Vietnam. I was just outside of one of those and can testify that it wasn’t a pleasant time.

By all accounts, American and South Vietnamese forces were victorious. The Viet Cong never recovered from their losses and it took a long time for the NVA to regroup. For the otherwise hapless South Vietnam forces, it was their finest hour. They fought like demons alongside us. I saw piles of dead bodies, purportedly Viet Cong, piled like tree branches along key intersections, warnings I suppose.

It didn’t matter. The press, tired of the reports from our generals that all was going according to plan, was incensed that an attack of this scope could occur under the very noses of those generals. Their voices, thereafter, ranged from wariness to opposition.

The American people, quite frankly, war-weary already, began to realize that too many of their young men would die in that far-off place. It was time to bring them home.

Even the ones fighting wondered what was happening.

In North Vietnam, they treated it as a setback and regrouped. The VC melted into the jungles and dug in to wait.

In Washington, men just scratched their heads, and a president decided to call it quits.

Why was I involved in this mess? I don't recall having ever believed the reasons they me.

Each actor in the event viewed the results differently. There is even the lingering belief by some Americans that we could have “won” that war. In the words of Ernest Hemingway, “Isn’t it pretty to think so.”

How sad. As hard as we might believe in the successes, it didn’t matter. Had we stayed another 20 years, the VC and NVA would still have been fighting us, just as the Taliban will be fighting us in Afghanistan 20 years from now.

It just doesn’t matter what we believe. The facts don’t care. They flow beneath our loyalties, prejudices, and predispositions like a weary river, “headed somewhere safe to sea.” No, the facts don’t care what we think. Nor, anymore, do the victims.           

That time of our living greatly? It sure as hell wasn’t 1968.

The photograph that proved violence
is not always effective, That it can prove
to be counter-productive, in fact.

Sailing to Oblivion: June 15, 2017

Americans tend to believe there is a simple solution for any problem. Your child can’t master a musical instrument? He just needs a bigger, or better, one. Traffic is snarled? The Mayor needs to widen the streets. Crime? Simple: more prisons. More money, bigger homes, better cell phones, more troops, more guns. It never stops.

Such simplistic determinations used to be the fodder for the coffee shop crowd. No more. Social media has seen to that. Our belief circles get smaller, and our interaction with other humans gets more limited. Our leaders communicate in intemperate "sound bites." Even some so-called “faith leaders” preach spite and bitterness. We get angrier and angrier.

Then it explodes. It did yesterday in my country. Can there be any setting more deserving of safety and tranquility than a group of our country’s elected officials practicing for an event specifically designed to promote fellowship and unity? Along with schools, meeting places, and public events, such events demand the moral imperatives of peace and harmony.

It saddens us and we seek answers, simple answers. They don’t exist. I’m afraid there will have to be a total rethinking of our role as brothers and sisters of a common universe before the situation will calm itself.

I think back about 1968, Hardly a year in which Americans can claim greatness. I was “out of country” as they say. Each day, there seemed to be a new and more horrific story than the one the day before. The impacts of these even permeated the places where I was serving my country. Comrades in uniform distrusted one another. We had to watch in both directions for danger. One longed to go home, but wondered if home would be any safer than where we were.

Many times, it wasn’t.

America lived through it. Believing it can again, I’ll do my part, which, after all, is the only thing that each of us can do.

Sailing To Oblivium: June 14, 2017

Nice day yesterday, but not the “feel good” day of the year. First, a flashback of one of the worst experiences of my life (see yesterday’s entry).

Then, the job I hate most at the farm: cleaning the gutters of the shop building. That means ten trips up and down a 12-foot ladder per side. Have I mentioned lately that I’m not young anymore?

Later, I listened to some Senate testimony on the way in to Little Rock. I surely envied the testifier’s ability to get away with “I don’t recall.” Back in my expert witnessing days, the lawyers in Arkansas wouldn’t let you get away with that. Their take was, “if you don’t have a memory, why are they paying you to testify?” Oh well, life goes on.

Next, I made my last meeting as a condo board member on a day someone must have filched all the Paxil and Metamucil from the building. Some of those folks could have straightened out the mess in the Middle East.

Speaking of which, I then escaped across the street to the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History. We show documentary films there once a month—films about the military. This one was about Section 60 of Arlington Cemetery, where the fallen of Iraq and Afghanistan are interred. It is known by some as “The saddest acre in America.” One person disagreed and called it “The proudest acre in America.” So far, we are free to choose which we prefer. I guess, in the words of Lyndon Johnson, I could teach it both ways. The film certainly did.

It featured scenes, without commentary, of families and individuals grieving, each in their own way. One family was that Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in 2004 in a suicide attack near Baqubah, Iraq. Yes, he’s the one whose honor and memory Donald Trump besmirched and defiled. Later, I recalled a post by someone expressing hope that there is a hell, and it’s just as Dante described it. Oh dear.

What do after such a trying day? Of course, relax with a Four Roses and three cubes and read a bit of "The Path to War" by Michael Neiberg. It documents a unique thesis of how events drew America into World War One, and is a highly recommended read. I kept thinking that no matter the causes of war, the end results are the same, the most tragic of which is the existence of places like Section 60.    

Went to bed with Faulkner ringing in my ears, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

Sailing To Oblivium: June 13, 2017

“[They] were careless people.” F. Scott Fitzgerald said it long ago in a novel. Now we see it writ large in the newspapers. Is there no person in America with such an unblemished record and such a hard-won and sterling reputation that those in power now won’t carelessly seek a destruction of character?

It seems, from the news, that Robert S. Mueller is about to find out. To borrow another literary allusion, a family of modern-day Manhattan Snopses is going after a man, who by all accounts, is one of finest individuals to ever serve this country as a public servant. We can only wonder what will be the fallout.

The thing that frightens one about carelessness is that, like the rain, it falls on the just and on the unjust. As always, the news has triggered memories in me, some of which I don’t care to recall, but which float to the top of my mind, like trash in a fetid pool of water, when triggered by the current news.

This one flashed me back to late 1967. I was in Da Nang, South Vietnam, starting my first full day of duty with the Naval Security Forces at a former French military base. The United States occupied the base seamlessly when it took over the war from those defeated French, by most accounts a careless decision in itself. Now we had to keep it secure.

My new unit was on watch, duty that involved staring, weapon in hand, into the jungle, or at a village for six hours at a stretch. That morning, they sent me with a roving guard to learn the layout of the base and the essentials of the duty. Our first job was to accompany local Vietnamese to the base “sick bay” for medical treatment. There was only one that day, a woman of indeterminate age clutching a baby wrapped in white clothing. She held it as if she feared someone might take if from her.

It was my first personal encounter with a person from that sad place. “What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

“Not her. The baby.”

“What?”

“A stray rocket hit her house in the village.”

“A stray rocket? Was it VC?”

“Nobody knows. What difference does it make?”

 “Is it her baby?”

“Yeah, it’s hers,”

The woman, appearing to justify being on the base, relaxed her grip on the baby and lowered it, supporting it with one arm near her stomach. As I watched, she gently unwrapped the cloth that covered the child and motioned for me to look.

The child’s face consisted of a continuous red scab, except for a large blister that still covered one cheek. Stitches began near one ear and continued beneath its clothing. Both hands extended from the body and were wrapped tightly. It was apparent that one was shorter than the other. A patch of white gauze, lifted away from the face by cotton swabs covered one eye while the other stared ahead without moving, almost accusingly. Scabs covered the lower lip. Blood stains showed through most of the bandages. The woman shook her head and smiled, so as to tell me that she belonged there, and that I shouldn’t make her leave.

I still can’t shake that image, no matter how hard I try.

Yesterday, the president’s daughter whined to the TV cameras about the “level of viciousness” she hadn’t expected in the political arena, as if, in a nauseating and careless example of privileged naiveite, she had the slightest understanding of viciousness. It made me think of someone surprised that opponents would respond to a rocket barrage with return rockets.

Being incapable of understanding the dangers of carelessness is a true disability. We can’t mock it in a physical way, but it is, nonetheless, debilitating in the long run. Wealth and beauty will only get one so far in this earthly journey.

As for me, I still wait for that exact year we are to use as a base model for our promised year of living greatly. I do know one thing.

It sure as hell wasn’t 1967.

A good place to learn the truth of viciousness?

Sailing to Oblivium: June 12, 2017

They say it never thunders in San Francisco. It did that morning. It rumbled from the west past an old Chinese man and me. It moved on as if carried by the fog, and the man yawned. I leaned against a building, lit a cigarette, and thought about the unfairness of life.

We were standing on the Southeast corner of Haight and Masonic streets just before daylight. I don’t know where the other fellow was headed, but I was headed to the Contra-County bus terminal on Mission Street to catch a bus to the Bay Area Induction Center in Oakland. That’s where they determined if you were fit enough for the military draft. It wasn’t the happiest day of my life.

It was in the late summer of 1966. Anyone who has visited the City by the Bay understands Mark Twain’s saying that “The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer I spent in San Francisco.” I pulled a sheepskin lined jacket tighter and waited. On a normal day, I would be at this spot two hours later, waiting for the bus to take me to work at a Babcock and Wilcox office in the mission district just across, incidentally, from the terminal where I was now headed. I wasn’t going to work today, though.

These were interesting times in “The City.” In a few hours, hippies would fill the streets, centering on a now-famous intersection a block from where we waited. Later, in the afternoon, Ken Kessey and his band of “Merry Pranksters” would join the crowd around his bus, still parked in the Panhandle Park, across the street from my apartment.

By that afternoon I would know my fate. I had no doubts. Despite suffering from a terminal case of underachievement, I was healthy enough to be sent to die in the jungles of Vietnam. The underachievement part didn’t bother General Westmorland, Lyndon Johnson, or Robert McNamara. My body was warm and I could breathe on my own. That’s all that mattered.

Despite my laconic nature, I had worked my way through a college degree. The last semester I had worked two part-time jobs and carried 18 hours with grades high enough to have me re-classified as fit for cannon fodder. With my degree in hand, and my life ahead of me, I could look forward to a variety of choices: Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, or Coast Guard.

I passed, of course, but I managed to stay in the city a couple of months longer. Then I was off for the seminal adventure of my life, one I wouldn’t do again for a million dollars, nor would I take a million dollars to have not done it. I’m sure there are other old farts around who feel the same way.

One who didn’t enjoy the adventure now serves as our president. To paraphrase the late Hunter S. Thompson, the 45th President of the United States never bought the ticket and he never took the ride. You didn’t have to if you had the right connections, and he had connections that have taken him all the way to the White House. I now read where he says he will make the country “great again” but he doesn’t elaborate, except to assure us that it will be … well … great.

As for me, I’m still looking for the time period that this greatness will replicate. I mean, I’d like the exact year and all that.  As of June 12, 2017, all the news has done the last week is remind me of that foggy morning on Haight Street, so many years ago. Nobody has suggested an exact date for this glorious time—this year of living greatly. I do know one thing, though.

It sure as hell wasn’t 1966.

At the beach in San Francisco. Just waiting.

Sailing to Oblivium: July 11, 2017

I had my job because my daddy thought I should work, and he knew a guy. The other fellow had his because he needed to feed his family. I was a white teenager. He was a black man.

We worked at a service station. I earned $20.00 per week, so I don’t imagine he made more than that, less in all likelihood. It was 1960, so that much money went further that it would today, but not very far at all. It would be the equivalent of around $165 a week now, maybe four dollars an hour in today’s dollars, the Koch Brothers’ dream.

The place was managed by a typical Arkansas redneck: a racist, crude, uneducated, foul-mouthed, mean-spirited jerk, assisted by a buddy who was worse. Ever seen the movie Deliverance? Then you get the picture. Anyway, there were periods of inactivity, so the two had plenty of time to think up devilment. One scheme, the one that seemed to give them the most pleasure, was how to, as they put it, “get rid of that n****r.”

His crime? It was a perceived lack of respect, though they didn’t figure the boss would accept that as an excuse for firing. So, they developed an alternate plan. The poor fellow had a set time for the noon break. He didn’t have a car, and no place close by served “his kind.” Each day he hurried to his home on the east side of Pine Bluff, had his “dinner,” and rushed back. Sometimes it took him a minute or two longer than he was allocated. Why not bring his lunch? Well, this was 1960 and our customers couldn’t be exposed to the sight of a “a colored man eating his dinner” just like he was somebody. He just walked home and back.

Get the picture? Yes, one fateful day the rednecks timed him, and when he came back nearly five minutes late, they fired him.

If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget seeing that man turn and start walking back home. And yes, silence was no more than cowardly complicity on my part, not my first and not my last. Maybe I'll be braver when they come after my friends.

This week, it seems that everywhere I look, I see some post about “making America great again.” It has gotten me to thinking. Can anyone tell me the exact date we are supposed to use as a baseline, the time to which we must return?

It sure as hell wasn’t 1960.

Just wondering.

Sailing to Oblivion: June 10, 2017

It’s like this professor: I didn’t intend to make a “D” on that paper. It’s just that I’m new at this. I should get a “A.”

It didn’t work. Nor did it when I received my first traffic ticket. And I was new at it then, driving that is. Needless to say, it didn’t work in my marriage either. I found that, “You knew I was an idiot when you married me” works better.

I can only assume that had Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Paul Ryan had been my professor or the police officer, the defense of “new at this” would have carried more weight. After all, he did use it this week to excuse some fairly troubling instances of incompetence by the President of the United States. As Mr. Spock would say, “fascinating.”

Allow me to submit a proposal that I thought of when I read about this.

First, some background would help. There is a legal defense of sorts that used to be taught in the law schools of my state. It may still be, I haven’t heard lately, and I don’t go there, Law School that is, except occasionally to speak on how urban planners respond to the law.

Anyway, the defense is named after a prominent attorney and state legislator from Hope, Arkansas in a case years ago. Accused of some malfeasance or other rising to the level of potential illegality, he formed a uique line of reasoning. The logic employed was remarkable. It ran something along the lines of

“I’m accused of doing something that, on analysis, is very stupid. Am I stupid? No. I graduated from college and law school, and passed the bar exam. I’m savvy enough to be elected to our state legislature, perhaps no great, but certainly no mean, feat. I have a successful law practice. So, I’m not stupid. When one considers that what I’m accused of would be a stupid act, and one sees that I am obviously not stupid then, ipso facto, (a legal term meaning: darn tootin’) the chances of my guilt are zero.”

I seem to remember that it worked but I’m not sure.

So now we have what I propose to label the “Donald Trump Defense.” It would run, in contra-conception to one mentioned above, along the lines of

“I’m accused of doing wrong. I’m new at this. Being new at something, there is no way a person can be held to the standard of what is right or wrong. Therefore, libet dicere (rough translation: bite me) my innocence is assured beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

A few words of caution bear noting. As I mentioned earlier, wise men will avoid this defense with spouses. Also, members of progressive political parties should eschew its use as they labor under the legal assumptions of intelligentes estis and  competentsus est assurdant. (legal terms meaning: don’t try this crap with us).

There exist many examples where the efficacy of the “Donald Trump Defense" would not prove appropriate, getting caught parked in Mike Tyson’s spot for example. And, in the event of accidently initiating a nuclear war, don’t bother considering its use. We’ll then be operating under another legal principle, id est moot, (a legal term meaning alle ist kaput).

Oops.

Sailing To Oblivion: June 9, 2017

Sometimes late at night, I worry about a long-standing transgression, though I’m sure the statute of limitations has expired. I did a bad thing. Yesterday’s events brought it to mind.

Actually, I had an accomplice way back then. My wife participated in the act. We stand equally guilty.

Best I can remember, it was in late summer of 1973. The crime? We both skipped work one day to stay home and watch a full day of the Senate Watergate hearings on television. Former Richard Nixon aide John Ehrlichman was testifying. The terms riveting and spell binding don’t even begin to describe the effect. The future of our country stood on one of those dangerous precipices of history and teetered toward the abyss. Readers can decide for themselves if the moment justified our untoward behavior.

The high point of the day was when the late Senator Daniel Ken "Dan" Inouye, one of the committee members forgot that his microphone was live after Ehrlichman finished his testimony. As people began stirring, Senator Inouye, a decorated World War Two veteran of the famed Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, leaned back and said, “What a liar,” an accurate but unintended denouement.

 

Mocking a Purple Heart?
How low have we sunk?

As an aside, having lost an arm in combat, Senator Inouye is a perfect example of the kind of hero that modern conservative PACs would demean and denigrate for his service, a clear sign of our sailing into dark waters. Even those who have serve our country "to the max" are no longer safe from character assassination for that service. Just ask Max Cleland or John Kerry.

This brings us to yesterday. It was, as they say, “déjà vu all over again.” When we watched John Ehrichman testify those many years ago, the country was divided into those who thought Richard Nixon was lying and those who thought his accusers and detractors were. Subsequent events provided the answer.

After the testimony of James B. Comey yesterday, an event which my wife and I once again skipped work (this time the sort that old retired people think they must do) to watch, the nation is once again divided as to the “truth issue.”

As surely as the sun rose this morning, future events will unfold the truth and the truth will shine upon America as the sun is shining on the trees outside my window at this very moment.

One can only imagine what kind of America it will shine upon, when that day comes.

Cautionary tale:
Fom the White House to prison
is a remarkably short trip.

Sailing to Oblivion: June 8, 2017

“At first, they don’t ask you to do anything illegal. It’s just complicated and the average person wouldn’t understand. The press would twist it. Best keep it under wraps.”

We were jogging, a close friend, who happened to be a legal scholar, and I. We had been transfixed by the Watergate hearings and each of us had just finished reading John Dean’s book Blind Ambition, the story of how he ended up in prison for four months on account of his role in the Richard M. Nixon administration.

My running mate was explaining how someone, even a brilliant young attorney, could become enmeshed in an ethical quagmire such as the one that surrounded the Nixon White House.

“Next, they say,” my mentor continued, “you’ve stuck with us so far, and we need your help now. It’s not illegal, so don’t worry. We just wouldn’t want the press to find out about it.”

My ears perked up and I paid closer attention.

“Next, they tell you that they appreciate the help you’ve given them so far, you’ve been a good team player and all. They’d like you to do something that’s not illegal. They just want to avoid any messy litigation that could result in bad press while it’s being resolved. Better keep it amongst ourselves.”

We stopped for him to tie a shoe and I enjoyed the brief opportunity to see the morning sun beginning to illuminate the eastern façade of our state capitol, a stirring sight. We started up again and I urged him first to slow a bit and then continue with his cautionary advice.

“By then,” he said. “you’ve entered into dark world of questionable legality. They remind you how valuable you’ve been and how they could beat any charges in court. They just need your valuable help one more time. These are some important and powerful politicians you're working with. You’ve gone this far so don’t let them down now.”

We began to climb the hill on Markham Street on which faced the schools for the deaf and blind, Arkansas landmarks. I struggled to breath, but managed to listen as he continued with, it seemed, no effort.

“Finally,” he said, “they tell you that you’re as deep into this as they are and you all need to stick together. It is time to ‘circle the wagons,’ so to speak.” He stopped talking and pointed for us to veer right and head up Kavanaugh Boulevard,

As we passed one charming house after another, he continued. “When the hammer finally falls, and it always does, you find out too late that you are the only one burdened with a paper trail and nobody now even knows your name.”

It was a brisk fall morning. The air was clean and fresh. I had my future ahead of me and I was ready. I was young, trim, tanned, successful, physically fit, and considered by some—at least by my wife—as not too hard on the eyes, the kind of young man who brings top dollar at a cell block auction.

The next week I walked off a job paying the equivalent of $115,000 per year in today’s dollars, much more in most states. As it turned out, I probably didn’t have to, but to this day, as we prepare to view the June 8, 2017 version of the so called “Watergate Hearings,” I’m reminded of John Dean, the uphill run on that fall morning, and the path I chose. I don’t regret a thing.

Sometimes the path to the
finish line isn't a straight one.

Sailing Into Oblivion: June 7, 2017

Grandchildren would be nice, but I’d hate like the dickens to try and explain to one what is going on in America now.

I confess. I haven’t a clue. Nothing in the study of American history could prepare one for an understanding of what our current national mood is.

In the past week, the President of the United States of America has insulted three of our staunchest post-World War Two allies—all internationally respected nations. In addition, he took sides in a squabble between two Middle Eastern countries, the disparaged one just happening to be a country in which the United States has a strategic naval base, the chosen one happening to be the one that furnished 15 of the 19  hijackers on 9-11. Oh, and nobody asked him to take sides. He just did.

Taking sides in a Middle-Eastern squabble reminds one of the apprehension that police officers talk about when responding to domestic disturbances. If one party doesn’t get you, they both will.

What I might have the most difficulty in explaining is the economic policy being espoused. It goes something like this.

- Although both corporate profits and corporatetax-avoidance skills are at all-time highs, corporations need tax cuts in order to survive and grow the economy.

- Although reduced revenue and increased expenditures create massive deficits and massive borrowing, the repayment of which starves economic growth, such deficits don’t matter somehow.

- Job sectors facing dwindling demand must be protected through federal largess. Thus, we can expect country grocery stores, such as the one my family, owned to again proliferate. Oh, and for those folks who once built guitar tuners that were made obsolete by a free phone app, help is on the way.

- It is vital to cut taxes on corporations although historically they have been as likely to use the additional money to reward shareholders, increase dividends, or purchase and plunder other corporations for their assets or over funded pension plans as they are to expand and grow the economy.

- Corporate profits, despite both the laws of gravity and mathematics, can expand at fixed percentages forever and ever.

Yes, and those summer afternoon thunderheads soaring into the sky don’t ever topple over from their weight. We just need to have trust.

One would certainly need a grandchild who believed in magic to understand all this.

Gravity will always win.