Feelings

 Today I awoke with the news pundits expressing the total annihilation of the political party that my family supported for, oh, two generations. The third one back was from Illinois, and the local wisdom back then was to support the political party in office, or likely to be in office, due to job patronage considerations. Politische Partei nicht Mann. Oh, and not all of my family. Some now embrace nihilism for odd reasons. Anyhow …

 I’m in a strained position. I still earn some money on small jobs for organizations I love and for work I enjoy. My continued success is important. It keeps me doing paying work in urban planning which I love and for which I get paid instead of doing farm work which I abhor and for which I don’t get paid. I need to understand all viewpoints.

 My first reaction on reading this morning’s news was to begin imagining how I would feel when I heard the boxcar’s scraping metal doors opening. and a voice yelling, “Raus raus und anstellen.” Oops, sorry, “Out, out and line up.”

 Then I started thinking. While the dreadful direction in which our country is headed primarily rests upon the shoulders of one political party, I’ve landed in “a plague on both your houses” paradigm. If our country doesn’t get back nearer the center, we are doomed.

 For the left, it prevailed somewhat in the last election. Despite the usage of the worst choice of a political slogan in my lifetime, i.e. “defund the police,” it managed victories. How many millions voted for the other party because of that one statement is beyond imagining. Sadly, they are keeping it up.

 Now, for a political minefield. Whether we “progressives” wish to admit it or not, such an issue as that involving transgender persons frightens some people. Wait wait. Educated people such as you and I understand that it is a biological phenomenon and should be treated as such. We reason that as taxpayers, do we prefer acceptance and understanding, or are we willing to face the costs of mental care? That was the choice upon which the U.S. Military based its decision. That decision finally came out well, by the way.

 On the other hand, we must try to understand that for some of our brothers and sisters, the prospect of having a young daughter enter a restroom where the sex of others within it is flexible is not a prospect easily accommodated from an emotional viewpoint for many. Cursing and reviling them for their feelings is not productive.

Now that I’ve read all the hate mail, one recurring theme is, “You think you are so [insert adjective of choice] smart, and you think you are never wrong.”

Allow me to disabuse you of that notion. Back when the long-time minority political party of our state became the majority party, they first elected some of what I considered the worst miscreants imaginable to office. My soothing thought was, “Once they are in power and realize the complexity and potential good of government, they will elect better people.”

There. I was dead-assed wrong. Enjoy your gloat.

Published Previously

Please forgive me if I take a lengthy break today. I feel I must say something about Senator John McCain while he lives. After that, I will observe the ancient mandate, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.

 John McCain is the son of a Four-Star Admiral of the World War Two era. John Sr. was the leader of the Fast Carrier Attack Force that once battled a much larger enemy fleet heroically and famously in the Pacific Theater. He also stands, if one knows where to look, in the famous photograph of the signing of the surrender documents by the Japanese on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Navy Secretary James Forrestal said of him, “He was a fighting man all the way through.”

 The junior John received an appointment to Annapolis due to his father’s service and influence and completed the four years. His was a checkered performance and might have ended without a commission had he not been an admiral’s son.

 Being in good physical shape, he qualified as a Naval Aviator, flying off the USS Oriskany (CV-34) in the South China Sea.

 Here is where I want to express my feelings. On October 26, 1967 John McCain was flying a bombing mission, his 23^rd, over selected sites in Hanoi Vietnam. He was following orders issued by the military command of the United States of America. Whether he fully agreed with those orders is a matter that only he knows.

 I question them. This was an unprovoked and savage attack upon a nation that had done no harm to our country. Oh, there was a trumped-up (good word these days) charge that one of their boats had fired a round at one of our warships in the Gulf of Tonkin but I don’t think a single serious historian believes that happened as reported, or, if it did, justified the millions of deaths that followed.

 Certainly, the women and children who were victims of John McCain’s bombs had done nothing to deserve the horrible, blistering, firestorm that his bombs created.

 Whether one supports the war or not, John McCain, on that day was flying his A-4E Skyhawk directly into fire from an anti-aircraft battery. Incoming fire hit his aircraft and he had to bail, injuring himself severely in the process. Captured, he was paraded through the streets of Hanoi and humiliated by the victims of his bombing. The Vietnamese took him to a notorious prison, called “The Hanoi Hilton.” There he remained, untreated and tortured.

 A month later, I arrived in Da Nang, South Vietnam as a war-giver, certainly not at the scale and grandeur of a naval aviator, but as one who followed the orders of my country, the same as John McCain.

 On the second day in country, I received orders to escort a Vietnamese woman and her baby to the Sick Bay on base. Wanting to make sure I understood why she was there, she removed bandages from her child’s face and I saw nothing but raw blisters and scabs where a baby’s face should have been. One dark and bottomless eye, surrounded by raw flesh, looked at me in bewilderment. I still see it sometimes late at night.

 That’s what happens when the bombs fall on the innocents. That’s what made me hate war as anything more than an absolute last chance at survival.

 But … but … but: I followed orders for the next 12 months, doing some things I’d rather not talk about and others that still make me smile. I spent two more years in the service afterwards and then went into a professional civilian job, an adventure about which I am currently reporting. In 1972. I met a young girl with long reddish hair, a mind like a polished diamond, a smile that could melt steel, and a figure that could make a monk do a double-take.

 On August 17, 1972, we had a modest but marvelous wedding with friends and relatives in attendance. Then we left on our honeymoon.

 On that date, John McCain remained in the Hanoi Hilton, lacking medical care for his injured body and suffering repeated torture. My new wife and I were in Aspen Colorado enjoying life. Our families waited at home, anxious to hear about the adventure. John McCain’s family continued to hope for his release.

  I’m not sure where Donald Trump was on that date. I’m sure he was having fun with whatever trophy-wife he enjoyed at the time. He had avoided the whole military thing. His career, too, had been boosted by his father, not by his father’s service to our country, but by his father’s money.

 John McCain stayed in prison, loyal to the country on whose behalf he had landed there. On one occasion, he was offered release, the Vietnamese believing that positive publicity awaited the release of an admiral’s son. McCain refused the offer unless all his fellow prisoners went home as well.

 More time passed. In 1973, the inmates of the Hanoi Hilton were finally released. McCain later became a respected United States Senator and ran an honorable, but unsuccessful presidential campaign against Barack Obama.

 During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump, a draft-dodger himself, insulted the service of John McCain, saying that he (Trump) preferred military heroes that “didn’t get captured.” For this sin, and similar behavior, we elected him president of the United States of America.

This week, as John McCain is facing death from cancer, another of Donald Trump’s staff demeaned a statement from Senator McCain, saying that it didn’t matter because “he was dying anyway.” Donald Trump has not disowned it as of yet, nor, I imagine, will he. Oh well, when a worm challenges a mountain, the butterflies must flutter and laugh.

 Here’s what I think:

 - I don’t agree with what John McCain and millions of us were ordered to do.

- I believe we were of the post WWII generation that believed in duty to our country uber alles.

- I believe we served faithfully and thanklessly in a misguided war, perhaps making us “The Greatest Generation.”

- I believe that our country never forgave us for our service, as witnessed by the lack of a national uproar when people like Donald Trump, and his sort, besmirch the heroic service of brothers like John McCain and John Kerry.

- I believe Americans will pay a dreadful price for our misguided blindness.

 Today I’m ashamed. Tomorrow I’ll press on, having said my piece.

 This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember'd;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

 William Shakespeare – Henry V

Primal Fear

Fear is an odd thing. Webster defines it as “an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.” The genetic condition of fear must have been helpful to our ancestors who lived on the Savanah alongside predatory creatures. I remember it from dark nights in a foreign land.

American neurologist and physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon added, in the early 1900s, a condition known as “flight or fight response.” It describes a response to an acute threat to survival that is marked by physical changes, including nervous and endocrine changes. It may prepare a human or an animal to react or to retreat.” This one I remember well from an encounter on a winter’s night with a stranger who stopped me on a city street and placed a hand inside his coat. To my relief he produced a note with an address, and asked directions.

The most fascinating member of the family of fears, to me, is called “primal fear.’ This is the highest level of fear that most people do not experience, usually related to the feeling of impending doom. Anyone raised in a rural protestant church knows this as evidenced by the lifelong and unshakeable terror that their precious body may burn in an everlasting fire for eternity upon their death. I personally consider this as a form of child abuse but will save that thought for another day.

Today, it is the “Gotterdammerung” facing the country I love and have tried to serve faithfully during my adult life that darkens my hope. I see it now as a great ship headed directly into an iceberg as friendly passengers dance around me. It is my tragic and primal fear that we may lose America as we know it in two more days.

How did this happen? Better minds than mine wrestle this question daily. Unbelievably to me, the country may re-elect a man whom I believe, based on my upbringing, education, experience, and reflection, to be the most evil and degenerate president in American history.

The question is not how nearly one-half of Americans support what may occur. Over half of that percentage contains the group of Americans, almost a reliable percentage, who believed Elvis was alive 20 years after his death and that professional wrestling is conducted under strict rules. This segment contains the ones who would be dead today if it were not for the Affordable Care Act pushed through by an African-American president. (Not the term they use.) This segment is largely immune to reason or factual data.

Of the remaining 20 percent of Americans are the “single-issue voters” who would vote for Charles Manson, brought from the dead, for president if he promised to make abortion illegal, allow citizens to use bazookas to settle arguments, or banished anyone to whom nature had provided a different genetic makeup. They may be educated but have used their education merely to sharpen their weapons of bigotry.

We can shave off another ten percent of those who believe that unlimited wealth and no restrictions placed on how to obtain it will produce a perfect society. This society would be, one must suppose, much like, the American South of the 1850s. Some use their education to create false doctrines supporting this goal.

Then there is a layer of supporters who somehow believe their profession is best protected by a liar and false prophet. Some are educated and some are not. All reject any internal logic that doesn’t support their need for self-preservation. They are loyal to a man who thinks loyalty is a one-way trait.

That leaves the remaining sliver of supporters who augment the primal fear that haunts my sole and interrupts my sleep. These include many old friends who are educated, some highly so. They don’t carry any apparent burdens that would tarnish their thoughts. In a crowd they would appear normal. Individually, they appear fully capable of critical thinking, until the subject of politics emerges. What logic have they neglected?

Some may have even read William Shirer’s masterpiece The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Some, I know, have seen the film Schindler’s List.

A few may have read It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis.

A few have attended the Holocaust Museum in our nation’s capitol.

Some attend church and worship the man who told us to love another and not to judge.

Some have read The Grapes of Wrath. I know this for they attended college.

Almost all know the words to This Land is Your Land.

In short, and in conclusion, these friends matured under the same conditions as I but have developed diametrically opposed beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong. I may be guilty of illogic. They might be.

That’s what scares the living hell out of me.

The Future

 Friend texted: “Why worry? Future only holds that abortions are illegal, no health care, teachers start each school day with a Christian prayer, low-income minority neighborhoods can’t vote, women work for half pay, low minimum wage, and people who own stocks do great. Won’t affect you. It will be just like 1957. Men like you did fine then.” 

Me: “Two things trouble me so.” 

Him: “What?” 

Me: “That pesky U.S. Constitution and the worrisome 25^th Chapter of Matthew.”

The Great Hoisting

For years I’ve whistled by and haven’t stopped to consider the phrase “hoisted by one's own petard.” I knew it was from Shakespeare, Hamlet I thought. I somehow made the assumption that it was a bit naughty in origin, and maybe I didn’t want a complete examination. Then, for some reason, I got to thinking about the Baby Boomers. That led me finally to learn the meaning of the phrase, for I think it describes their current predicament.

Oh, and the meaning: The petard, it seems, has long since fallen out of use, but was a small engine of war used to blow breaches in gates or walls. They were originally metallic and bell-shaped but later cubical wooden boxes. They were full of gunpowder, i.e. bombs.

The phrase means to be blown up with your own bomb. How does it apply to a population cohort?

The Baby Boomers have always been a little quixotic. Statistically, they, as measurable cohort, supported the Vietnam War. Statistically, as a measurable cohort, they did not support participating in the Vietnam War. They are, somewhat unduly, credited with stopping the war. Actually, the Viet Cong and NVA had something to do with it. Trust me. In fact, the opinion of a whole slew of Baby Boomers concerning war seems to have solidified in favor of the darned things since Jan. 27, 1973.

Fast forward to the present. The cohort appears to have taken a hard course toward conservatism. Republicans they are to a large degree, as Yoda would say. Their attitude seems to be what we call the Clarence Thomas Syndrome: “I’ve got mine. Ya’ll bite me.”

Now comes the hoisting. Having helped elect Donald Trump get elected, and having watched their investments, to a significant degree donated by their parents, soar for ten years or so, the Baby Boomers leaned back from warm rooms on full stomachs, turned on the Fox show, and prepared for the comfortable descent into Valhalla. Young people were discounted as being stupid cell phone addicts. Progressives just wanted their hands on someone’s money to build bridges and sewer plants the “Boomers” no longer cared much about. Worse still, they wanted to hire teachers by raising taxes. Minorities should have never come to America in the first place. Science was as useless now as it was in high school. Life was good.

Then came Covid 19. It was a nuisance. It amounted to nothing but a hoax, their hero Sean Hannity told their other great hero. It would pass soon. Laissez les bons temps rouler. The virus will pass quickly. Prez said it would.

Well, lo and behold, it didn’t. Worse Sean is telling “The Prez” that he must now open the economy up, i.e. quit all this non-participation nonsense. Profits are falling and that is a real crisis. Let's all go out and party on.

Oh, there would be some problems. A lot of people would die in the process.

No problem. It would be the old folks. You know … Baby Boomers who didn’t have a safe place to hide or respirators to see them through. They’ve had their day in the sun. Now it’s time for their day in the barrel.

That’s what it means to hoist yourself by your own petard.

January 27, 1973? That’s when the military draft ended. You know. Baby Boomer Day.