WARS

 If you hear or see me say something disparaging about our military, please know that I am not referring to the brave women and men who serve in the various uniforms of our armed services. Nor do I intend any criticism of the remaining conscientious officers who have chosen to serve in a noble career and to do it nobly.

If I grouse about the military, I refer to the military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about. These are people, companies, and institutions who must have wars, or rumors of war, to finance their insatiable demand for riches and power. Satisfying it is not an option. It will not be satisfied, cannot be satisfied. Like Monty Python’s famous character, it will feast until riches spout from every orifice and then demand more. And we will feed it while the last child starves, the last veteran dies from wounds acquired while serving it, while the last neighborhood withers from the effects of drugs and wars, while the last institution of learning smolders in ashes, while our planet burns, and while the last family stumbles from a collapsing home into a barren world.

Herbert Hoover

 In August of 1914, the German army invaded Belgium on its way to attack France. Belgium was a prosperous county that traded for most of its foodstuffs. The German army stripped the country of what food and livestock it produced while murdering thousands of innocent civilians, a phenomenon known as “The Rape of Belgium.” The British navy closed the ports through which food arrived. A country of 7.5 million people faced starvation.

When no help came, Herbert Hoover, who was living in Europe, initiated a great effort called the Commission for Relief in Belgium.

Under Hoover’s leadership, the CRB became a logistical powerhouse. It coordinated international donations, chartered ships, and oversaw the distribution of food within Belgium through local committees. At its peak, the organization fed more than 10 million people daily, not only in Belgium but also in parts of northern France. Hoover emphasized efficiency, transparency, and strict neutrality, ensuring that aid reached civilians rather than military forces.

I’m studying the life of this complex man in what I call my “hair shirt hour.” I spend it learning about or reading things I should have done already but didn’t want to.

I’m curious and eager to see how this man could have been so compassionate at one point and so seemingly cruel at another. Wish me luck

EVIL

 Sometimes I feel like I'm beating a silent drum but, hey … a malignant dictator has been ruling my beloved country since, as he promised, the day he took office. He has continually trashed and degraded every promise of hope and tradition we have built in this country of such promise. He is a nasty, vile, and degenerate person who rules the country for which I gave up four years of my life.

That bothers me.

There are six elected officials, elected to national office, in my state who have chosen to become politically “joined at the hips” with this creature, enabling each of his antics with their silence. A majority of our state officials frolic behind him shouting hosannas.

This bothers me.

But, people I once knew as kind, generous, patriotic, and righteous souls laud his every act because he has attacked, or promises to attack, people they don't like or ideas they don’t agree with. Many of those ideas come straight from the mouth of the Galilean. Cult members support each destructive move as long as their enemies are in the line of fire. Good people now praise evil and worship the evil one.

That's what really bothers me.

RECONCILLIATION

 There was a period from roughly 1877 to the early 1910s that historians call the “reunion era” or sometimes “the Great Reconciliation.” Historians sometimes use “sectional reconciliation” or “the reunion of North and South.”

It carries no title nor official observance, but the effects remain.

Politicians pursued it to end the bitter feelings between the loyal states and the insurrectionist states of our Civil War. A stronger country emerged, so they argued, with this reconciliation.

It featured:

The public acknowledgement of both United States and Confederate state soldiers with joint memorials and reunions.

The naming of federal military bases after soldiers who had waged war against the United States for four long years. One of the most notorious was Fort Bragg, named after an insurrectionist officer generally viewed as a competent administrator but an ineffective field commander. He ordered the killing or maiming of thousands of Americans.

Personally, my family benefited as the government provided identical tombstones for two great-grandfathers, one a U.S. soldier and one a Confederate. They still stand in a lonely cemetery less the fifty feet apart.

The families of close friends didn’t fare as well. The reconciliation put the final nails into the coffin of Reconstruction and enabled the horrible effects of the Jim Crow era.

Last week we celebrated the surrender of the Confederacy. May we all hope for final victory.

RICHES

 Sometimes I worry that a dictator now rules my America. A scary aspect of this is that the dictator has only one goal in mind.

BRIDGES

 After returning from overseas service in the U.S. Navy Security Forces, I served aboard the USS Hunley for the remainder of my service. One day as I lollygagged at the ship's fantail, a shipmate named Bussey ran up to tell me about a new song he had heard. “It ain’t like nothing you’ve ever heard before.”

A short time later, I did hear it and for over half a century, each new hearing reminded me of beloved shipmates. I remained in agreement with Bussey’s original impression.

Things change. I continue to make each day a good one overall, but lately some dark clouds have passed over. I always try to find a ray of light in the darkest of clouds.

I found me one.

As I have watched one family member fade from this earthly presence, I’ve reconnected with others to my great joy. I’ve stayed in daily contact with them to the extent that this song will now, as long as I have presence of mind, to make me think of beloved kinfolks as well as beloved shipmates. I pledge to be a bridge, not an island.

Music can do that sort of thing for us.

Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water (Audio)

DRUGS

 Long before I read “The Fort Brag Cabal” by Seth Harp I had determined, through my experience, study, and observation that drugs, illegally obtained and used, represent a top, if not the top, problem facing America. The book didn’t reinforce this. It only created a primal fear that my country has been elicit in teaming with international drug warlords. They help our government fight anti-capitalist regimes and our government allows them to amass fortunes by creating havoc in American neighborhoods.

Now it seems that havoc is even more pronounced in certain of our military units.

Thinking people with whom I discuss things tend to believe that the case of a majority of American voters choosing to elect a total charlatan, grifter, and demon as president of our country is a unique phenomenon.

My primal fear this morning suggests that maybe that isn’t true. I worry that the metaphor for the election of this monster is closer to the peeling of an onion. As each layer is removed, it reveals a rottenness that began when the first slave stumbled in chains from a prison ship to work lands obtained by murdering the original inhabitants.

I wish nothing more strongly this morning more than that I be proven wrong.