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.

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.

1968

 A friend and I had lunch last week and the conversation turned to the year1968 when we served simultaneously, but hundreds of miles apart, during the same war. We were there for the year, I near Da Nang and he south of Saigon.

During May of that year some 2,415 of our brothers died.
2,415: That’s the most of any month during that sad war.
There were that many empty chairs at holiday gatherings next year from only one month’s insanity.
The year 1968 overall was the deadliest year for U.S. forces in Vietnam (16,899 deaths).
That’s just Americans. That’s just deaths. That’s 16,899 men who would never hold a child of theirs in their arms thereafter.
That’s just the year we were there.
We beat the odds, my friend and I. Sort of.
Do me a favor. If you find yourself getting sexually aroused when Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump talk about how hot-damned tough America is, find yourself a quiet spot, sit, take out a mirror, look at yourself, and say, “I am a complete asshole,” at least 2,415 times.
Because, trust me. You are.

RESIST FACISM

 MORNING THOUGHTS

One almost has to admire their cunning. Since Newt Gingrich showed them how, they have convinced enough Americans, including the young, that it is It is acceptable to:

Dishonor the dead,

Dishonor the veteran,

Dishonor the physically challenged,

Dishonor the female,

Dishonor persons of color, and

Disrespect the words of the Galilean on the Mount.

Can we even imagine an America fueled by youth indoctrinated so? It’s taken only 80 years to go from the band of brothers to the band of brigands.

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 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

Overdoing comparisons of modern movements with those of the past can be a dangerous tool. Both sides of binary political thought can use it. Neglecting such comparison, though, can be more dangerous.

I'm reading Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power by Timothy W. Ryback and wanted to share this quote with you.

"It has been said that the Weimar Republic died twice. It was murdered, and it committed suicide. There is little mystery to the murder. Hitler vowed to destroy democracy through the democratic process, and he did. An act of state suicide is more complicated, especially when it involves a democratic republic with a full complement of constitutional protections—civil liberties, due process, press freedom, public referendum. Which leaves one wondering whether any democracy could have withstood an assault on its structures and processes by a demagogue as fiercely determined as Hitler."

We must consider the comparisons.

The grandchildren of America deserve it. 

DEFEAT FASCISM: READ REBUKE RESIST

 Dark days are ahead for America’s military. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, by assaulting retired Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley (four stars) delivered a stern message to officer corps of the United States military: “I now control your careers, so decide today whom you will serve.”

It takes very little imagination to think of the next step. “Don’t think of resigning. I need you and should you desert me, I can’t be responsible for your family’s future. You do have a nice family, don’t you?”

Thus the future of our military is not set by study of Clausewitz, history, or the brilliant staff of the war colleges.

The guidance of our military is now based more on the TV series, The Sopranos.