DEFEAT FASCISM

It's hard not to think that this time is the most troubling our country has, or will, experience. It probably is, since it portends total destruction, but America has had her ups and downs.

There was 1861 when the split could have become permanent. There was 1929 when the economic system could have collapsed indefinitely. There was 1941 when the forces of fascism could have prevailed.

Then there was 1968.

 I've been watching the Netflix series on the Vietnam War in segments. As a friend remarked, it was a long time ago, but it seems like yesterday. I wasn't in America that year. She had sent me somewhere else. Of course, to paraphrase the poet Rupert Brooke, for the soldier (or sailor in my case), there will always be some corner of a foreign field that is forever home. But I wasn't here.

At any rate, I remember that my comrades and I had this sinking feeling, on hearing the reports, that our country had gone batshit crazy.

It appeared never more so for me than the night, during a lonely midwatch at a bunker atop a mountain by the South China Sea, when I picked up a day-old copy of Stars and Stripes someone had discarded and learned that that the Paris Peace Talks had ended in failure. The reason? The then president of the then Republic of South Vietnam had withdrawn from the talks.

At the time, I discarded the paper and watched a helicopter spewing rounds at a distant mountain. Every fifth round or so was a tracer, so the effect was as if someone were pouring hot rivets from a bucket in the sky. Who knows the impact of those rounds?

Years later I learned why the talks stalled. Richard Nixon, then a presidential candidate did it. He maintained a secret channel to the South Vietnamese through Anna Chennault, widow of Claire Lee Chennault, leader of the Flying Tigers in China during World War II. Mrs. Chennault had become a prominent Republican fund-raiser and Washington hostess. Through her, he convinced the South Vietnamese ambassador to withdraw from the talks until after the 1968 election for his—Nixon's—advantage.

I think back about the men, from various countries, who died within my sight that night and it becomes clear.

Donald Trump is not the first one.