Tuesday, June 13, 2017

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?

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