DEFEAT FASCISM

 There used to be a time when disasters brought Americans together. In my lifetime, some have done so. I remember well the assassination of John Kennedy and how, for a time, we all mourned as a country, not as parties or sects. One of the most enduring memories is not of a talk show host mouthing insults but of young John Jr. saluting his father's coffin.

 Then there was the bombing of the federal building it Oklahoma City. As the dust settled over the carnage, President Bill Clinton offered soothing words that convinced us that we would prevail though the gates of Hell had opened to offer us a peak.

For years, disasters damaged us but created harmony. When one part of the country suffered, we all felt pain.

Then there was 9-11. For days we joined hands and resolved that we were one. Then, as the smoke cleared, someone saw an opportunity for partisanship. It took us to a strange place. It eventually led us to a war that unsettled a large part of the Middle East and we still search for ways to overcome the effects.

The awful experience of the Covid pandemic showed us that the forces of evil will utilize a natural catastrophe to divide good people. Americans died needlessly because of the divisiveness but a political party gained traction which now threatens to destroy the America that once mourned together. It's a damned shame. What would the Galilean say?

The Sad Threads of Life

Yesterday, many Americans mentally relived the horrors of September 11, 2001, some more directly than others. It’s a game we humans play, called, “Where were you when … ? As, perhaps, our greatest American commented about another remembrance, “It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.” It would pose a sacrilege should we forget, or allow others to forget, the devastating legacy of 9-11.

Me? I took some quiet time to reflect. I looked up other events that shaped our country on this date in different years. Did you know, for example, that on September 11, 1965, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) began to arrive in South Vietnam, bringing U.S. troop strength there to more than 125,000. Before the year was out, one of its units, the U.S. Army 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment (yeah, Custer’s unit) defeated a much larger NVA force and America took over the war. The country would never again be the same.

 By the time of my paid vacation there in 1968, the number of US troops in that unfortunate country was an admitted (our military commander there had a slight problem with honesty) 549,500. The year was the most expensive in the Vietnam War with the American spending $77.4 billion ($557 billion in today’s dollars) on the war.

Yes, 1968 was a bad year. Trust me.

Of those United States troops, the war in Vietnam killed 16,592 that year alone, and wounded 87,388 more.

The war killed 27,915 South Vietnamese troops and wounded 172,512 more.

Although figures remain unreliable, the North Vietnamese records state that the war killed 44,842 and wounded, perhaps, another 66,464.

Why bring this up now? I simply believe that we must, if we are to survive as a species, understand how facts are related. Did, somehow, our nearly 20-year misadventure in that sad country, a nation that had never harmed or threatened us in any way—in fact had allied with us in defeating the Japanese— bear on the thinking of the 911 murderers?

And, sad as it must be to contemplate, how germane, on September 11, 2001, was the fact that the American CIA and the United Kingdom's MI6 orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh, the 35th prime minister of Iran in 1953? Is it true what they say about Iranians respecting America, before that event, our country for its record on human rights?

How important will it be in our future that the warmonger who helped push America into the invasion of Iraq in 2003, leading to further destabilization of the Middle East, was removed from national office day before yesterday, but remains at large?

I mention all this because of the fact that all day yesterday, I heard or read about all sorts of things Americans were doing to commemorate the tragedy of that sacred day in 2001. Mostly, they were performing acts that they enjoyed doing in the first place, riding motorcycles, climbing steps in a stadium, singing, etc. I condemn them not. We must mourn, each of us, in our own way.

It’s odd though, isn’t it, that I heard not a soul say that, in honor of the victims of such a tragedy, and the lost or damaged lives of those who tried to save them, “I pledge to turn off social media, Fox ‘news,’ and my cell phone while I read a book of history and think about why such tragedies occur?”

Lilacs in a garbage dump ...

A comment I heard from a post featuring Stephen Fry hung around my neck all day yesterday. He commented that, despite the rightful abhorrence of slavery, and certainly not for a millisecond condoning any aspect of it, there arose from it the [African-American] spirituals that have warmed our hearts and lifted our spirits for centuries.

It made me think of other atrocities and the tiniest rays of light that grew, despite massive efforts at repression, from those atrocities.

From the Jewish Holocaust, came some of the most heroic art as well as some of the most inspiring words ever penned by humans such as Elie Wiesel and Viktor Frankl.

From the Great Depression and Dustbowl tragedies in America, we received the words of John Steinbeck and the music of Woody Guthrie.

From the insanity of 9-11, we have the legends of heroic public employees who gave their lives to try and save other Americans whom they didn’t even know.

From the multiple-mendacities and criminal acts of the Vietnam War debacle, we treasure the words of Tim O’Brien and the heroism of a POW named John McCain. (Yes, John McCain, the memory of whose heroic sacrifice towers above the antics of his most recent critic like Mount Everest over a dung hill.

From World War One, we have some great poetic lines, such as those of Rupert Brooke,

“If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England's, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.”

And, of course, World War Two, for Americans, produced the greatest coming-home party ever witnessed, led by such songs as It’s been a long, long time, featuring what it probably the best guitar work (Les Paul) ever recorded on a popular song in America. (IMHO)

And, the monster Joseph McCarthy did, after all, produce the American hero Joseph Welch who laid him low and maybe saved America as we know it.

For me, it caused me to think about once when I toured a municipal garbage dump with a mayor. As we walked around the stench and filth of the facility, we came upon a small patch of blooming lilacs, proudly waving over the discarded trash of the city.

 Do we condone atrocities because some snippets of beauty may have grown from them? Certainly not. Our world would have a much better place had they never occurred. It may only signal to us that, in our darkest moments, some gleams of sanity and beauty may lie “a’borning.”

And, boy, do we Americans need those tiny bits of sanity and beauty now.

Yeah, it took a female and a 

sailor to provide an icon 

to victory in war.

Sailing to Oblivium: September 11, 2017

Sad, but it takes a disaster, maybe even two or three, to make people proud of the people I’ve worked with for over 45 years. I’m talking about the people who work for the local, state, and federal governments. I don’t know if you have noticed, but they’ve been in the news lately. Oh, and they were in the news 16 years ago today when our most memorable national tragedy occurred. You may not have recognized them then, behind the dust and soot, but they were there.

These are the people who brave, daily, the antipathy of many Americans and talk-show hosts. They withstand the jokes, jibes, and slander hurled at them like bitter breaths of wind. These are the people about whom Ronald Reagan was talking when he said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”

Oh yes, these are the folks who stormed into the burning Twin Towers to rescue people. They were there to help, and it was terrifying.

They are the ones who, along with brave civilians, rescued victims of Hurricane Harvey from swirling floodwaters. They were there to help, and it was terrifying.

They are the ones who, albeit with more time to prepare, performed a marvelous job of forecasting, planning, and oversight in dealing with Hurricane Irma. They were there to help, and it was terrifying.

And on any given day, they perform less publicized heroics, from teaching our children, to making our neighborhoods and country safe. They don't live in gold-plated penthouses. They just keep those places safe before going home to mortgaged homes in modest neighborhoods.

It saddens me when I must endure the denigration of public servants by folks who scarcely go an hour without benefiting from their service. It’s terrible to say, but the only respite from the insults comes during, and for a short time after, a disaster. The so-called libertarians grow silent, conservatives admit how lucky we were that the forecasters and rescuers were there, and even Hate Radio takes a break … sometimes. Then they’re all at it again.

Rudyard Kipling noticed it in 1890 in the attitude the British had toward their soldiers, when he wrote, in his immortal poem Tommy: “For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute! But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;”

Since I work, and have worked, with these folks, I appreciate them every day and feel proud when I call them friends and colleagues. I don’t wait until the buildings are on fire, the waters are rising, or the winds are toppling buildings, to appreciate them.

The work they do is not the problem. The work they do is the solution. There should be a national day of appreciation for our public servants. Don’t count on it, though. The winds are already subsiding. Calm will come, and once again we’ll hear, “Chuck them out, the brutes.”

Lest we forget