Takeaways and reflections:

I hate to say it, but I fear this terrorist rebellion will prove far more inclusive that we now imagine. I hope I'm wrong. I think I'm not. When I heard that the assault had begun, I imagined lines of motorized vehicles and broad phalanxes of police and soldiers roaring into action. Instead I saw a largely unimpeded flow of terrorists charging almost unopposed into the most important building in America like crowds entering stores on Black Friday.

Yes, I expected the National Guard. I had heard they would be on hand, since anyone who had observed a legitimate news source in a month knew the assault was coming. Then I learned that the Guard’s mission was "traffic control” and could not be changed except through the chain of command, a chain of command controlled by the person who instigated the assault.

This mad me think of something with which I am familiar. I imagined a U.S. Naval vessel encountering a sister ship under attack or a modern-day Titanic with her bow sliding beneath the waves and our Captain saying, “Nope, can’t stop. Our mission is to proceed to home port.” Maybe the National Guard is different. I don’t know. I hope not.

How many times have I heard, “Oh, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley must be smart. They graduated from Ivy League law schools." Folks, I've known Ivy League graduates. They are well educated, fitting one of Plato’s requirements for a good life. Many show spirit in the use of their education, completing a second layer. But it is in the “appetitive” layer, the rational element in our gut that builds moderation, and distinguishes the restraint-guided human soul, that many, including the likes of Cruz and Hawley, lack entirely.

In fact, of three people I’ve known in my life who best fit the prime example of a smart, well ordered life, one graduated from the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, one from what is now the University of Central Arkansas at Conway, and one from Arkansas Technical University in Russellville. Cruz and Hawley smart? No, they are devious, cunning, and resourceful. Morally, they most resemble the type of people from whom our state suffers, ones who have never worked a day at a job but somehow keep a steady supply of cigarettes and beer on hand for their survival. They squander their health and abilities like Cruz and Hawley squander their educations. We Americans suffer equally from both.

Finally, I haven’t resolved how I can approach what I once considered good, decent people who still support the American president who certainly incited, perhaps took a hand in planning, the terrorist assault on our nation’s Capitol and Constitution. I can’t take them seriously, but my standing orders, both from the Galilean and the military oath I took, require that I offer them the same care and concern as those who would seek a more meaningful life. The hardest to love will be those who spew societal treason from the pulpit of a church. They seem to believe that that the problem of two men, or two women, loving one another outweighs the sight of terroristic thugs ravaging the hallowed halls of Congress.

I’ve much thinking to do. Won’t you join me? Our country needs us.

Fear

 These words stand before you written by a man who is far from perfect. On my decent side, I love reading, studying ideas, from science to history to woodworking. On the negative, I’m “not eaten up” as my Sainted Mother would say, with the desire to do manual labor. I’m prone to be mercurial at times. A close friend once said that I “don’t have 24-hour a day attitude about anything." I’m a bit selfish and known, I think, as a nice person except when I’m not.

 I do have a consistent attitude about some things. I eschew, for example, blind bigotry and prejudice aimed at those who don’t deserve it. This includes people of color, people whose genes have produced different sexual makeups, women in power, and immigrants fleeing death and persecution. I abhor violence toward others, crime, deceit, physical and mental abuse, disrespect for the physically challenged, gratuitous lying, the use of inherited wealth (really any wealth but particularly the “lucky sperm” kind) to mistreat or take advantage of others.

 I’m ambivalent about most religions but hostile to any that espouses hatred, violence, or bigotry. I’m very suspicious (a condition taught me by aforementioned Sainted Mother) of religious fanatics and hypocrites. I especially steer clear of those who use religion for financial or political reasons.

 I’ve paid taxes each year since 1961, served my country for four years, one in a war zone, and have managed to convince a remarkable woman to keep me for over 48 years. The only financial handouts I’ve received were via the G.I. Bill and my portion of stock values of companies that are heavily subsidized by local, state, and federal taxes, (which is almost all of them).

 A typical 2020 version of J. Alfred Prufrock you say? I’ll accept that. But just imagine, only imagine, the shock I’ve felt during the last four years as I’ve learned that close friends, some of whom I’ve used as role models, have succumbed to the trumpet call of a group ruled by a man whose every action stands in direct opposition to everything I love and respect, who preaches and supports all the elements of life and history that scare me into a primal fear and dread of living. Now, it seems

 Bad is good,

Good is bad,

Beauty is ugly,

Ugly is beautiful,

Facts are stupid things.

The U.S. Constitution sucks.

Greed is the highest order of things,

Altruism is for fools and liberal fantasizers,

Science is a foolish fantasy of progressives, and

The function of politics is to make your enemies weep.

 I weep, but not for myself. I’m old and everything I write is “from a warm room on a full stomach.”

 I weep for the grandchildren of my friends and pray, “to whatever gods may be," that they are never born poor or different.

Orphans in a Storm

 Sometimes there just isn’t anything you can say about a situation. In fact, I have come to realize that for some situations, it’s just better to say nothing. Saying something you had to think up that might fit the moment just sounds like a self-serving plea for absolution. I found that out years ago.

Two days after James Earl Ray murdered Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, the I – Corps area of the then Republic of South Vietnam was tense, almost as tense as it was the previous January during the Tet Offensive. Bars were closed and all access to alcohol stopped. American military bases were on “lockdown,” and nobody was saying much, not much at all in our compound just outside Da Nang. Events halfway around the world had our little universe on the brink of explosion.

That morning, they chose me—perhaps because I was a little older than most in the Naval Security detachment—and another sailor because he was an unofficial leader among what everyone called “the brothers” back then, to guard the far back gate of our compound. We knew one another as shipmates, nothing more. We were just two wary souls thrown together in the face of a storm we neither chose nor caused. They told us that no one was to leave, and no one was to enter.

I strained my brain for the six hours while we stood the watch for something to say. Nothing came. So we did our duty and stopped anyone from leaving and joining some fracas or other. I stopped the white sailors and he stopped the black sailors. Had any of them refused, I have no idea what would have happened. We, of course, would have been fully authorized to fire upon them. To this day, I don’t know what would have happened. We stood our watch and turned the post over to our reliefs. It was dark by then and tensions had cooled. We nodded to one another and parted. I was sent up to a mountain compound shortly thereafter and I don’t think we ever saw one another again.

I’m not African American, so I cannot even imagine what it would be like to be in constant strife with the authority around me. I cannot image what it would be like always to stand guilty whether innocent or not. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be viewed as a lesser form of citizen. I have endured curt glares and some caustic comments, but only because of some service ribbons given to me “by a thankful nation.” Those looks and comments mostly came from fellow servicemen, so I had to overlook them.

I’ve never been a police officer. Those I have known personally have been honorable people. I have no idea how it would feel to drive the mean streets of a city on the midwatch, with suspicious eyes staring from every windshield and every bedroom, not knowing which car seat contained a loaded pistol. I do know that I’ve been alone during those same dark hours with the safety of my comrades in my hands, so scared I would have shot my own mother had she burst out of the jungle and ran toward me.

So I’ll pass no judgement on the community of police officers. Neither will I condemn those who riot. I have no idea what I would do if my genetic improbabilities had developed differently. I’d probably be rioting, but who knows?

I’ve witnessed and watched, though, and I’ve lived a long time. I feel entitled to make some observations, not judgments mind you, just observations.

Sadly, there is a percentage of Americans who simply don’t like people of color. It may be from ignorance, lack of communion, radical nurture, tribalism, a penchant for homogeneity, shortsightedness, fear, racial prejudice, bigotry, xenophobia, or some social disorder. We used to call it all those things. We’ve now collapsed them, and linguistically elevated them to the simple “racism.” Wars on nouns are always dicey, but this one sets a particularly high bar.

Now I don’t know what the percentage of those to whom I referred is. I suspect it’s around 30 percent of white Americans, larger in the South. It's not enough to determine elections if the righteous and pure of heart wish it otherwise. I do know something about white Americans of righteous bearing. It is good to have them on your side, or at least in tacit support of one’s fundamental rights as a human being. That tacit support can be a strong ally. Ask the American Freedom Fighters of the 1960s. I also know that it is subject to being added to or taken from, sometimes becoming a welcome ally, at others a missing friend. Ask Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, both affected by the margins. Increasingly, it seems to me, those increments determine our elections.

I'm not talking only about those who sit out elections. I'm also talking about those who may base a vote on the fact that a freeway was blocked by protesters while they tried to get their sick child to a hospital. Unfocused retribution falls on the just and the unjust.

Adroit politicians and those whose primary purpose is to win first and be right later, will avoid actions that effect the tacit support that can determine revolutions as well as elections. I know that elections increasingly turn on small increments of support.

I also know that Donald Trump is an expert at manipulating the support and moving the flexible fringe toward his side.

He needs no help whatsoever.

A Trip Back Home

We decided, my wife and I, to take a “spur of the moment” trip to my hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas today so I could mow some pasture land my brother owns, a part of the old home place. He’s not enjoying good health at present and isn’t even able to put diesel in his tractor. I took him some, fueled the tractor, and mowed the field while he and Brenda sat in the shade and talked. I can only hope that it wasn’t all about me.

I wasn’t bored. A portion of the field I was mowing once boasted the best homemade baseball backstop ever built by boys under the age of fourteen. It comprised sweet gum saplings sunk in the ground and backed by burlap feed sacks stitched together. Since the lads were better builders than batters, it held up to a lot of hard use. Each time I passed the spot, I could hear the sound of a ball pounding into burlap, oh, and, on rare occasion, the crack of a bat.

I mowed alongside an old stock pond that probably saw more youthful recreation per square foot than any patch of ground in America. It was partly filled with debris now. But the sight of a young boy sitting with his grandmother and begging to “pish” just a little more still shines through the dim past.

Across the field, I mowed along a dirt road that lead no place geographically but to amazing places in the minds of young boys: cowboy hideouts, Indian camps, unseen spots for smoking pilfered cigarettes, and a gathering spot for bemoaning the vicissitudes of childhood and the unfathomable allure of girls for older boys.

The family home and grocery disappeared long ago. To a person growing up there, though, key markings remain. There’s my dad’s favorite tree, still bearing the signs of white paint left from a trick my brother played on our nephew. There’s the road to nowhere, originally named “King’s Road,” after an African-American man who lived toward the end of it. That name didn’t suit the 9-11 addressing crew, so it’s now named after my family, over the strenuous protests of Sainted Mother at the time.

She was a stickler for tradition and truth. I still recall her “aghastness” when a group of yuppies moved onto a road near where she grew up and made the County change the name. To mother, it had always been “Hog-eye Ben Road” and should have remained so.

There’s the house across the highway from our homeplace, standing in the exact shape as it did over 70 years ago. In my brother’s yard, if one looks closely, he can see the remnants of the pipe where our pump house once stood, From there, one can triangulate, using the painted tree, to the location of our chicken yard, barn, wash house, and even the privy.

I finished the mowing and we left, deciding to “drag Main,” and see what was happening. The old town has suffered in modern times. There’s nothing more fun for the residents of “Sundown Towns” than to laugh at the old girl and the troubles she’s seen. I suspect it’s better, though, to live in a town full of problems and people who are willing to work on them, than in a town full of bigoted assholes.

One final joy, the old Community Theater still stands intact. In fact, we enjoyed a conversation with two nice young men doing some repairs to the flooring. When I was a kid, if you were white and had a quarter, you could spend an entire afternoon there. You paid ten cents to get in, ten cents for a box of popcorn, and five cents for a cup of soda. For that, you got a double-feature and four cartoons. You had to be white, though.

Still a handsome city.
My great-grandfather's
Civil War unit once defended
this street from attack
by the Rebs.

Folks are now spending big money in the city for projects that are available to all citizens. They are even beginning work on restoring the old Pines Hotel on Main. There’s lots of new building going on, some near the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. A once distressed shopping center in our part of town now appears fully occupied. There are glimmers of hope everywhere.

Things change in this world, and they don’t change toward equity. It takes luck and hard work to provide livable and diverse communities. My hometown takes no back seat to any in terms of the latter.

Oh, and my brother was grateful for the help.