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.

THE UNCIVIL WAR

Today marks the symbolic end, 161 years ago, of the Slaveowners’ Revolt that tore our country apart for four long years. It had cost the lives of some 750,000 soldiers on the two sides, roughly two percent of the population. That would equate to six million deaths today. It left cities in ruins and farms in ashes awaiting the return of the armless, the legless, and those suffering from “soldier’s heart” as they called it back then.

Though it officially ended slavery it did not end the vicious cruelty imposed upon those who arrived in our country in chains, a sin still visited upon their descendants.

Now we are engaged in a great, but differently fought, civil war to determine whether the imbedded promises of April 9, 1865 will prevail. How long, we wonder, must the battle for human decency last?

We can hope, but the monetary resources of a great international cabal face us as the murderous artillery faced American soldiers from Missionary Ridge and the cliffs of Omaha Beach. Their power flourishes within from the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. Even the purchase of a chicken sandwich or hobby tool bolsters their power. What we need more than ever is the will to prevail against monstrous odds.

We could use a man like Ulysses S. Grant again.

ENABLERS

 There have been evil people throughout history. There are evil people today. From the Nazi era, let us look at the case of Julius Streicher. From the “Holocaust Encyclopedia:”

“Trained as an elementary school teacher, Julius Streicher (1885–1946) was an early member of the Nazi Party. In 1923, he founded the virulently antisemitic and racist newspaper, Der Stürmer. Streicher was a leading organizer of Nazi Germany's first official nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933. Although Streicher had lost credibility in party circles by 1940, he continued to edit and distribute his antisemitic propaganda newspaper to hundreds of thousands of Germans.

For his influential role in inciting hatred and violence, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg indicted Streicher on count four, crimes against humanity. Streicher was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged on October 16, 1946.”

Streicher was not a Hitler, nor was he a Himmler or a Reinhard Heydrich. He never ordered the murder of innocents, nor did he belong to a police unit that carried out the orders.

He was what we call today an enabler and a propagandist.

We find his type in the thousands today in America from Franklin Graham to Sean Hannity to Tucker Carlson and the hardcore members of the so-called evangelical movement.

But what about the ones who simply listen and stay silent? Will those who finally clean up our mess force them to parade by the dead bodies like General Eisenhower did the neighbors of Dachau?

WOODEN SHOES

 Lately I have travelled a good bit in my state. I've seen things.

I've seen cities that were not blessed by the vagaries of history drowning in despair. I've seen blessed cities drowning in traffic congestion and their own refuse.

I've seen individuals suffering from debilitating illnesses abandoned by an uncaring government.

I've seen sign of an impending drought of maybe biblical proportions descending into some of the richest farmland on earth. I've seen interstate highways that will become parking lots in five years.

As water may become our most precious commodity within a few years, we are allocating it to large data centers, not to humans.

At our state level, the top priorities are the construction of a monstrous prison to house who knows whom yet and the destruction of the public school system.

At our national level, the top priority is world domination through military invasion. Yes, it has been tried before.

My ancestors had a saying: "Wooden shoes to wooden shoes in three generations."

Over my lifetime, the generations since the promise of post-WWII America have marched by like gray horses moving into a morning midst. It is becoming increasingly painful to watch.

UNDERSTANDING

 My limited study of evolution convinces me that Homo sapiens have a genetic urge to understand. Both religion and science grew from the earliest efforts to control, in the first case and learn in the second. How does this apply to the current state of America?

It doesn’t seem conclusive to me simply to say Donald Trump is crazy mean and getting worse. I’ve scraped my mind and can’t imagine an historic member of the United States House of Representative or Senate who would not speak out against the current shenanigans. Now there are 217 in the first case and 53 in the second. Their silence drowns out the cries of the hungry, sick, and misbegotten. Why?

Our ancients discovered early on that neither sympathetic (imitative) nor contagious magic resolved emergences due to the weather. Later, science helped by uncovering the causes and developing protections.

It makes more sense to understand that our current crisis evolves not from the mind of a madman but the orchestrations of an international cabal of oligarchs who seek a world more from the minds of Orwell and Huxley than those of Locke or Mill. Their operational strategy follows Capone more than Lincoln. They understand very well how to impose silence and guarantee obsequiousness.

Doesn’t that make more sense?

GETHSEMANE

 Last week I travelled through the forgotten part of our state, the Arkansas Delta. I passed through a community named, of all things, Gethsemane. Folks there pronounced it “Gessymane,” as in, “He’s from over ‘bout Gessymane.”

Years ago while travelling through I would see homes scattered around and even two grocery stores. One would see neighbors visiting, children playing, and machinery serving family farms. Over the years the stores disappeared, then the homes and people, and then the farm equipment as corporate farming reduced the work force and equipment required to feed the world. Eventually, all that was left was a road sign noting “Gethsemane.” On this trip through, the sign had disappeared.

The Garden of Gethsemane holds deep significance in the Christian religion as the place where Jesus Christ experienced profound emotional and spiritual struggle.

It is important in the Christian religion as it represents anguish, sorrow, resolve, human weakness, but spiritual resolve.

For Christians, Gethsemane serves as a powerful symbol of prayer, obedience, and perseverance in times of trial.

It dawned on me as I travelled that lonely stretch of highway, that my America has lost, sadly, the physical reality of Gessymane and now seems bent on abandoning the spiritual value of Gethsemane.