WAR

 As I’ve said, been studying the life of Herbert Hoover, a complicated person who was responsible for saving millions of lives around the world during its wars and disasters but bears the historical onus of neglecting his own people in our great crisis. In Kenneth Whyte’s massive biography, I ran across an interesting passage. It states how Hoover felt that WWI would forever change how societies dealt with each other.

“Total war [Hoover] realized engendered total hate.”

That’s an interesting observation. World wars tend to change the paradigm of history. Our politicians today spend the money that could be used to feed the hungry to buy bombs. In an oxymoronic dribble that only fools would cherish, they claim that war brings peace.

Does it? Or does our warlike compulsion resonate more like peeling away layers of an onion representing our society, revealing a more pungent evil with each stripping?

When one considers how so many so-called followers of the Galilean have abandoned his sermon of love and now embrace and worship our dictator’s rages of hate, we weep for Zion. It seems that in the history of Homo sapiens, we have learned much more about how to destroy than how to love.

In short, we have abandoned our better nature, layer by layer.

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.

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?

MERRY CHRISTMAS

 A little piece in which I predict the future:

Morning began with a thud as an empty beer bottle hit a Christmas tree in the next room.
“Hon?”
There was no answer.
“Maria, are you okay?”
No one answered and Joe rose. Entering the next room, he saw his wife slumped on the couch, staring at the straggly tree with no presents beneath it, just the beer bottle.
He sat beside her. “What’s the matter,” he said.
“Everything.”
“Everything?” He put an arm around her. “Everything all at once?”
She moved her eyes to his and said, “Why? Why do they have to move here?”
“They are my parents,” Joe said. “They have no place to go. Can’t you understand? What if they were your parents?”
“Mine are both dead,” she said. “Remember the last flu epidemic? Why can’t he get a job?”
“He tried,” Joe said. “It’s hard. No firm wants to hire a man in his late fifties. Particularly with a break in his leg that never healed. He got that at his last job, remember? He’s on the list.”
“What about her?”
“There’s only stenography jobs,” he said. “And they go to the young ones. The ones they call ‘the company ink.’”
“Couldn’t we just give them some money to find a place?”
“You forget,” he said. “Having a child with smallpox doesn’t do much good for savings accounts.”
“Tommy can get a job when he gets out, can’t he? The damned government must let him out eventually.”
“Sshh,” Joe said. He glanced around the room and covered the cell phone in his pocket. Then he spoke toward it. “Now you know the government is trying to help. The news says incomes will rise even higher this year.”
She shook her head. “What did Tommy say when you saw him?”
“Good news,” Joe said. “He is pretty sure his lawyer can get ‘Helping Immigrants’ lowered to ‘Improper Empathy.’ Now doesn’t that make you feel better?”
“And the ones he helped?”
Joe looked around again. This time he was more nervous than before. “Now don’t you worry about them. They are being well cared for. Things are going to get better for us all.” He kissed her forehead. “And… “
“And what?
“Merry Christmas.”

DEFEAT FASCISM

Journal of a Left-Wing Radical: Spent the evening watching a video about Blues Music in America. Of course it covered the enduring myth of the man who sold his soul to the devil in return for mastery of the guitar. This morning, my “hair shirt hour” featured reading Adam Smith on the development of currency. From Abraham's paying four hundred shekels of silver for the field of Machpelah to the modern evangelicals selling their decency for political power, we love the concept of bartering. This is true even though we’re not quite sure why Judas wanted his 30 pieces of silver. Sadly, we’re now bartering the life of our planet for a few generations of mobility and the fun it brings. And a cult is bartering the health of our children for the strained concept of “owning the libs.” When someone asks me why I accept being labeled a liberal, and thus “owned,” I’m reminded of the tale, a wonderful but likely apocryphal one, featuring Henry David Thoreau in jail for not paying his poll tax. According to the story, when friend Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau and asked why he was in jail, Thoreau is said to have responded, "Waldo, why are you not here?”

This draws one to the line from John Steinbeck’s "Sweet Thursday": “There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen".

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical:

Watching a video of historian H.W. Brands, from the U. of Texas talking about his book on Ulysses S. Grant. He shared an interesting question he poses to a group of 18-19 year-old students: “What would make you go to war?” He admitted to a plethora of answers, and it made me think. Why did I?

Know what? It was my Sainted Mother. Anyone who has observed life at all knows how Southern boys are about their mommas. I know it figured as high as the rigging on a topmast in my decision.

I remember standing before the Great Tidepool near Monterey, California after a long walk from my Navy Base on the grounds of what was once the old Del Monte Hotel. In one pocket of a Navy Peacoat, I carried a letter instructing me how to begin an escape to Canada. In the other I carried orders for training as a member of U.S. Naval Security Forces at Da Nang, Vietnam. This meant I would carry a weapon for a year with the option of killing other human beings if ordered to.

I needed to decide that day.

That’s where Sainted Mother came in. Daddy? He didn’t care. He never thought I should have gotten involved in the military anyway, as if I had a choice.

SM wasn’t for war, but she disliked cowardice more. I remembered her words, “You don’t want to be like [unnamed relative]. They took him into the Army and he bawled and squalled and wet the bed until they sent him home.”

In the long run, I could not accept the fact that I might not ever see a woman with that kind of American spirit again.

She won.

Why would you go to war? Might better decide today for we are near one. The Forces of Darkness are closing in upon us fast.

I’ve decided. America took the place of Sainted Mother. Join me.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical

Remember reading once (can’t verify the veracity)  that Archibald Alec Leach, a young performer, fashioned a persona for himself by mimicking a number of famous personages, one for voice, one for accent, one for bearing, and so forth. Whatever, it worked for the result known as Cary Grant.

I’ve been thinking. These increasingly seem to be the “end times” for the American Experiment. How would I like to be perceived as the final curtain falls? Let’s amalgamate the personages, real and fictional:

• -          The Andy Devine character of the “Happy Soldier” in the 1951 film version of “The Red Badge of Courage.”
• -          The unidentified character in the 1958 film “A Night To Remember” who, as the Titanic sinks, retires to the smoking room and calmly reads on a tilting deck.
• -          Joseph Campbell, the American scholar who once sought refuge at Woodstock, NY and read for five years.
• -          Bill Moyers, who produced the marvelous documentaries on Josehp Campbell and then on the song, “Amazing Grace.”
• -          The actor Keanu Reeves who appears, from all accounts, to be one hell of a great person.
• -          Liberace: A person highly skilled in his profession who never denied who he was and never took himself too seriously.
• -          Any journalist who saw early on that Donald J. Trump was a total fraud and grifter who had the magaligarch backing and degenerate moxie to destroy our country.
• -          Oh, best of all: Mr. Rogers, from one who will pass from this mortal coil wondering how the same country produced him and Cadet Bone Spurs.

Certified as Non-AI Generated and not ICE approved.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical: There came a blessed day in my life in which I thought I would never face fear again. Oh, I’m not talking about the temporary scare of a spring storm, a near automobile accident, or being lowered from a ship in a small boat into six-foot seas.

I’m talking about that gnawing, primal fear that forms when you have no control over your life and you are well aware that there are forces all about you that wish you dead. It’s that “any minute, any second” fear that some know more about than others and which most have never known. It is at its rawest and most fearful on a dark night between midnight and dawn.

Extended fear can seep deeply into places you desperately want to be sacred and untouched. It changes a person, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

I was right for over 50 years. There were storms and there were moments of deep concern, any number of temporary fears. There was even fear that she would say, “No.”

But there wasn’t the raw kind that steals your soul and makes you shrink from strange faces.

Until now.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 It appears that the planned trip to Gettysburg and Antietam stands in jeopardy because our government has ceased to function. It presents a personal loss but a minor one in the great scheme of things.

 Still, I reread this book in anticipation, this time with an eye focused on General George McClellan. There have been some attempts in recent years to defend his timidity and define it as justified caution. We’ll see. He faced obstacles, no doubt. The fact remains that his opponents faced the same obstacles.

To this untrained, uneducated, and unqualified mind, one of the apparent factors in this battle was speed. One army had it. One didn’t. Even though the discovery of the Confederate Special Order 191 gave “Little Napolean” the disposition of the insurrectionist forces, he delayed any major attack for 18 hours and then deployed his forces in piecemeal fashion.

At countless times during the battle, delays by the United States forces gave General Lee time to assemble his smaller army for maximum deployment. A.P. Hill’s Division rushed from Harper’s Ferry in hours. The typical federal unit would have taken days, arriving just in time to form burial details.

 The final result? Some call it a stalemate. Some credit the federal forces with repulsing an invasion into the northern states. Some point out that it was enough of a victory to convince Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation which pretty much eliminated the possibility of foreign involvement in our tragic war.

Today’s emphasis is about speed. We see it in the current invasion into all that was ever good and decent about America. One side is unleashing havoc upon the poor, the different, the least of those among us and the ones who believe in the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. The other side says we must wait, in the manner of General McClellan, until we decide what pronouns define us ere we set our defenses.

As in any battle, the side weaker in numbers and moral basis must move faster and with the most force.

Why is that so important now? Anyone who can read knew what might happen. Hell, it was published and available, much like Special Order 191. No one, however, seems to have believed it would happen so quickly.

It must. It gives the forces of darkness time to weaken the American resolve with what we might call their “political artillery.”

At the proper moment, then, with resolve in shamble, “I declare martial law and declare that elections are no longer useful” will sound simply like another day in the park.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical: Reaction to this latest abandonment of government illustrates the famous idiom known as "Miles Law," i.e. "Where you stand depends on where you sit." My words will change no minds.

One thing troubles me though. The oligarchs who finance the President of the United States of America have had him command that the elected officials of my state publish and transmit easily discernible lies concerning the origins of this abandonment of responsibility.

You say, "Oh, but politicians lie all the time. Yes, but they are seldom this transparent about it and often hide falsehoods under the cover of contextuality.

Politicians shall not lie. I'll have to ask my attorney friends if this has legal weight. They say police officers can lie if it suits a public purpose. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that a president can to it, and worse, any time it is convenient and there is a backup majority of both houses for protection.

But I'll tell you, these folks that claim to be Christians are going to have one hell of a time with it.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical

No contacts yesterday. The imaginary basement of HC's pizza parlor is empty once again.

Mostly I spent the day in rapt confusion. See … I'm not the least bit confused about Donald J. Trump. Anyone who pays attention at least 30 minutes a week knew, by the end of 2020, that he was an unprincipled, depraved, opportunistic, greedy and gloated grifter unfit for any role of responsibility.

Enough for his good points.

The thing that troubles me is that I could name without wrinkling a brow at least 20 about whom I once trusted to be kind, generous, loving people who now fully support the machinations of the MAGA Cabal.

Most of these people claim Christianity as their cultural and moral base. Oh, they are not the Galilean Christians of years gone by. Lumped largely as "evangelicals," they are what I call "ABC" cult members, as in "Anti-Beatitude Christians."

They belong, mostly, to that lemming-like cohort of devotees who will follow the MAGA leaders over any cliff proposed. They now claim allegiance to the doctrine whereby 10,000 children may starve or die from polio if it would prevent a single same-sex couple who love one another from enjoying the legal sanctity of marriage.

Inexplicable ain't the word for it. But I miss our friendship.

DEFEAT FASCSIM

 Journal of a Left-Wing Radical: No confirms yesterday.

That’s a full week in which we added no victims to HC’s imaginary pizza parlor basement. Oh well. We did win the “Battle of the obstinate tractor seat” on B's tractor. The damned thing wouldn't slide up and down and she couldn't push the clutch all the way in.

It was our third day in which to work on it to no avail

In this post-factual age, we could have used the MAGA Technique, named after the president who hates me. That would be simply to say, “It works,” and "voilà." Fox news would have proclaimed that it worked better than any tractor seat had ever worked in history. But we would have had to strap clogs to her feat. She said, “No.”

She didn’t actually say it that way, so we persisted until victory. All it took was a bit of extra profanity, a lot of WD 40, and some muscle power.

I plan to return to the path of treachery today. Gonna create some sawdust making Christmas presents. Look out you decent people. I’m coming for you.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Confessions of Left-Wing Radical: Couldn’t “treacheryize” much yesterday. Had a stump removed in the yard to keep the neighborhood looking nice.

Truth be told, I spent my extra time in introspection. Namely, I searched for an answer to the question, “How did I become the sort of person that the President of the United States of America hates.?” (Yes, he said so in public. In my “demented” way, I consider it one of the honors of my life.)

Why?

My playmates and I grew up under the auspices of the men who waded ashore at Tarawa, Anzio, and Normandy and the women who received the dreaded telegrams from those places. Tears of sorrow and happiness rolled down the cheeks of people cheering the heroes of that “good war.”

Their places became filled by younger uncles who survived the Frozen Chosin and the widows and fatherless children thereof.

So we grew up basking in the glow of American heroes. Every comic book, magazine, movie house, and radio show (later television) sang their praises. When our time came, our minds saw only the beckoning of glory.

Ours was, though, as the immortal John Prine put it, “a dirty little war.”

But we served. I, myself, left the service with shipmates who had stood by me, and me them, from the TET Offensive to storms at sea.

Problem was, many of those shipmates couldn’t have entered the ground floor of a movie theater with me in my hometown.

But America improved, grew, assimilated, and flourished. Then came the night—I think America’s greatest—when our country elected a person of color as its president.

We expected an outpouring of love. Instead, we suffered the most volcanic explosion of hatred and bitterness since April 12, 1861. The explosion covered our shores with a sulfuric layer of filth, lies, and outrage that smothered our progress like the clouds of iridium that killed the dinosaurs.

From the stench grew the cult led by the president who hates me. Rather than succumb to reciprocal hate, let me just say that I love the country I served, and despise everything that he, his supporters, and his financiers stand for.

Today, I don’t feel much like apologizing.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Been much talk lately about how such a frightening percentage of Americans accept buffoonery and debauchery from so many of our political leaders. I'm not too smart nor well educated but I have my thoughts. I think an appropriate analogy for the American psyche at present aligns with the old sci-fi films of the 1950s.

I think the evil is always there within us. It's tribal and genetic. Distrust and violence are embedded in our genes. Tendencies for warfare with strangers are natural.

We haven't subdued them through religion or philosophy. Rather, what we call morality is a result of social contracts, agreements, and barters. I won't kill you or steal from you if you won't kill or steal from me. Let our villages trade with each other, not raid each other. Let us see how peace and harmony works to our benefit. Let us develop a monetary system so we don't have to steal animals for survival. Let us talk, not fight. Peace results from rational thought.

So evil becomes subdued like the 1950s monsters, deep underground.

Then an explosion opens a path for evil to rise, a path to destruction. It isn't from a bomb, but from evil-minded politicians who use our distrust as a detonator. We become engulfed by the results of evil. We need a John Agar to develop a plan of survival that, "Just might work.

With apologies to Steven Pinker.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 A synopsis of the 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis:

"In 1936, American Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip enters the presidential election campaign on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and promising each citizen US$5,000 per year (equivalent to $113,000 in 2024). Portraying himself as a champion of "the forgotten man" and "traditional" American values, Windrip defeats incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination, and then beats his Republican opponent, Senator Walt Trowbridge, in the November election.

 Having previously foreshadowed some authoritarian measures to reorganize the government, Windrip outlaws dissent, incarcerates political enemies in concentration camps, and trains and arms a paramilitary force called the "Minute Men" (named after the Revolutionary War militias of the same name), who terrorize citizens and enforce the policies of a corporatist regime. One of Windrip's first acts as president is to eliminate the influence of Congress, which draws the ire of many citizens as well as the legislators themselves. The Minute Men respond to protests harshly, attacking demonstrators with bayonets. In addition to these actions, Windrip's administration, known as the Corpo government, curtails women's and minority rights, and eliminates individual states by subdividing the country into administrative sectors. The government of these sectors is managed by Corpo authorities, usually prominent businessmen or Minute Men officers. Those accused of crimes against the government appear before kangaroo courts presided over by military judges. A majority of Americans approve of these dictatorial measures, seeing them as painful but necessary steps to restore American power." - Wikipedia

DEFEAT FASCISM

A Song For The Victors 

One might consider a continuum of justice applied by the victorious to the vanquished. At one end we might find “occupy and govern.” This is a relatively benign situation in which, assuming there is order and tranquility, the defeated peoples go about their business. The Romans often used this, creating the so-called “Pax Romana." Napolean did at times. Even some of the Ottoman conquerors found it efficacious. Within this model, the victors may even contribute to the safety and reconstruction of a ravaged nation.

At the other extreme is the choice of “demolish and destroy.” The defeated are vermin who deserve no modicum of morality or shred of legal equality. The Spanish conquerors found little use for the native inhabitants of a country other than slavery and exploitation. The Nazi hierarchy had determined that Hungary would serve as a vassal state wherein its citizens existed only to serve German masters. Victors “own” the defeated under this concept.

Oddly, America offered a unique path, one hardly mentioned by history. After its Civil War ended, both sides simply went home.

It needs no saying which route America’s current victors have chosen at present. It will be interesting, though excruciatingly painful, to see how it works out.

The Russians have found on two occasions that it is hard to "own" large populations of dissatisfied people.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 A Song For The Victors

Some things make sense. Some things don’t. To a degree, i understand the genesis of what has happened to America. By this I mean that a majority has voted in a government designed to repudiate everything I feel my life has stood for.

Am I justifiably aggrieved? I don’t know. My life has been somewhat disjointed. But, and I believe this sincerely, it has exhibited seeds of goodness. I firmly believe in the views of the Galilean as presented on the Sermon on the Mount.

In short, I am on the losing side of this segment of American history.

As an amateur reader of history, I understand the attitude of the victors. I even appreciate their long-view approach to achieving their ends.

One can easily date the beginning of their war to August 14, 1935, some few days short of 90 years ago.

Yes, that’s a long time to hold a grudge. It is the day that the Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. It is fair to choose the act as mascot of the New Deal Legislation, the most hated output of laws in history to social and economic conservatives.” Key benefits included providing direct relief to the unemployed, stimulating economic recovery through public works projects, and establishing long-term social safety nets. These programs also aimed to regulate industries, strengthen labor rights, and provide relief to farmers.” (AI)

The battle to overturn these wasn’t always successful. Americans learned first to appreciate them, next to depend on them, and finally to accept them as a part of America’s greatness.

Brilliant political maneuvering reversed this view. A big step was mentally to disassociate the benefits as being a part of every American’s life and to lock it into the public sentiment of millions as simply tools of the lowest dregs of society, as defined by the ultra-conservative leaders of the opposition. Anyone with a view that government could be a positive force in their life was a sexual deviant, a criminal, an economic leach, or someone who didn’t belong in America in the first place.

It worked. It now forms the governing philosophy of a majority of our elected officials at the national and many state levels. Whether their government will be good or not remains to be seen. What is true is that Americans are about to get it good and hard, as H.L. Mencken once observed.

What is one thing that is hard to understand? They’ve won. They now rule. The battle now must shift to the underground. What is strange about it all is that those at the highest levels of command, each unknown like the mysterious “Mr. X” of old movie serials, have chosen such a dismal, decadent, depraved, and decency-challenged clown as their front man.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 So often when a particularly odious law drifts down upon our cities, it contains the admonition that, when trying to adjust to it, a city must employ the "least restrictive option." This occurs even when lives are not threatened but protected. These laws generally originate in far-right think tanks. That's where most of our proposed land use laws originate these days.

I guess the Protocall for ICE didn't emerge from one of those. Their actions call not for "strict scrutiny" but for no scrutiny, thought the lives of individuals and their families are greatly affected.

I think the first thing the panspermian aliens will do when they start putting it all back together is to resurrect the concept of hypocrisy.

THOUGHTS ARE FREE

 Just finished “The Ship That Wouldn't Die: The Saga of the USS Neosho- A World War II Story of Courage and Survival at Sea” by Don Keith. What a story of a brave ship, not a massive warship or aircraft carrier, but a workaday oiler attacked by two squadrons of aircraft but who kept herself afloat for four days until rescue arrived.

It is such a thrill to know my beloved U.S. Navy produced such ships and men. If you have never served, you have no idea how disheartening today’s America has become. I'm sure that that the shipmates, men and women, who serve her now want to carry on the tradition.

The top of the Chain of Command, however, is rotten, and I fear that the rot will begin to seep below decks. 

I have no control over our government. But I have the Oath, music, literature, memories, and a wonderful life to make me keep smiling. Oh yes, there is a life-partner whose father fought fascists through France, Belgium and Germany. We have his Combat Infantry Badge and Purple Heart, … and I have a DD 214.

Life is good because thoughts are free.

Salute a brave ship for today.

USS NEOSHO (AO 23)

DEFEAT FASCISM

 America and the world still suffers from the last time a dim-witted American president got us into an unnecessary war.

We can at least blame a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court for that one. The elected him.

This time thought, 77,302,580 Americans will do the "walk of shame."