“[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.
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| A good place to learn the truth of viciousness? |
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