Is It Just Me? October 23, 2017

Am I the only one who wishes the president’s press secretary would tone down her rhetoric? Or learn to read history?

Every time I read chief of staff Kelly’s statements from his “press conference” last week, I get a little more uneasy. “General John” came about as close to hinting at the justification for a military coup as a person could get, in my opinion. If you think it is beyond the reach of our country, read the intro to Robert Caro’s book on LBJ, Master of the Senate. His introductory section on the history of the Senate covers the explosive return of General Douglas MacArthur to the United States after being fired for rank subordination and nearly getting the U.S. into a land war with China.

It’s a scary account and possibly the closest we’ve come to a coup in the country’s history. A few cool heads in the United States Senate interceded and calmed the waters, as could have General John if he had chosen to. The general had a great opportunity to deliver to the country a healing message, a message of fellowship and harmony. Having served his country honorably, and having lost a son in an American battle, he carries much weight, and justifiably so. He could have used it compassionately and wisely. That would have gained him the blessing of being called a peacemaker as well as a soldier.

Instead, he divided us further and disparaged, with outright falsehoods, the service of an elected legislator of our country.

Our leaders, other than the occasional Joe McCarthy, didn’t use to do that. We disagreed but carried on our live without ad hominem attacks on anyone who disagreed. That has increasingly become the norm. The public arena has become more like a World Wrestling Federaltion affair than the Senate of Dale Bumpers and David Pryor. What must our young  people be thinking?

And now, we don’t need a political sycophant telling us that it is inappropriate to question a four-star general, or any other high-ranking official.

I guarantee you that I’m going to start paying closer attention. I trust you’ll join me. In the meantime, we can all wish for a press secretary who reads history and perhaps understands it.

Morning Thoughts: October 22, 2017

 It seems to me that each of us harbors competing impulses, let’s call them “the noble” and, toning it down some, the “unexemplary.”

Sometimes we carry them with us all through life, struggling daily as their battles rage within our hearts and minds. If we’re lucky, the—to borrow a phrase from Abe Lincoln—better angels of our nature prevail, or at least they prevail enough to get us through.

For some, the battle turns negative later in life, a phenomenon both sad and ugly to watch. History provides good examples. I once looked into the very room where Robert E. Lee, after enjoying a most exemplary military career well into late middle-age, made the decision to betray his country and participate in a murderous and barbaric effort to perpetuate slavery.

And damned good at it, he was.

Likewise, after a long and distinguished career in the military service of his country, General Douglas MacArthur seemingly lost his balance and forsook his duty to the president and people of the country, even to the point of threatening a nuclear war, or World War Three, by outright disobedience.

More modern generals have had their balance tilted by sexual desires, or a plain preference for cruelty.

Those few, the unfortunate few, who fall to the “Dark Side” after years of admirable duty, threaten to undermine the standing of their fellow officers and troops, deepening this American tragedy.

This week, a political puppet stated, in a national setting, that it is inappropriate for us mere mortals to question a four-star general, after that general himself had pretty much stated in coded terms, the very same thing, and employed falsehoods in the process.

That, my dear friends, (and pardon my “French”) is beaucoup conneries. There are more than 50,000 names on a wall in Washington D.C., many put there needlessly by the failures of a previously highly effective four-star general named William Westmoreland. Oh, that someone had questioned him, and others before him, with greater vigor.

It is only my personal opinion, and ad hominem attacks will not prevail against it, but I believe that our current president doesn’t understand the extent of the structural damage that occurs in promoting such a lapse of moral balance, a changing of allegiances Anakin Skywalker-style so to speak.

Professional wrestlers do it all the time, after all.

I’ll just close with the words of Sir Francis Bacon, perhaps a better moral guide than Hulk Hogan:

“He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.”

Let us all root for the better angels.