Power

“He didn’t really mean it. Didn’t mean it at all. Being sarcastic, you know.” That’s understandable from a high-school graduate who has never read a book and relies totally on Facebook for news of the world.

It’s another thing coming from a highly trained and competent professional associated with the president of the United States of America. We’ve seen it. The dude says something really stupid. Next day an expert in the field goes on national TV to claim that the statement was either not made or was misunderstood. It’s worse when one of them actually corrects the president and has to deliver a mea culpa next day. There the whole world watches while a decent human being backtracks “bigly” for speaking truth. You just wonder what caused the reversal.

Know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of an incident years and years ago when I first went out to serve as a consultant to a town of 10,000 people some 45 miles southwest of Little Rock. I was young, dumb and full of it back then. I had hoisted anchor, laid down my sword and shield, and was a (not quite yet) highly paid urban planner. Then I watched something that gave me quick and lasting lesson about life in America.

It happened this way. In this town lived a man. All towns had them, some more than one. He was a combination real estate broker, insurance agent, and banker. They grew like weeds in our state … were like weeds in fact. This one was a particularly mean old bastard. He was the kind who would kick a poor family out on the street in the morning for missing one payment in ten years while buying a home from him “on contract.” Then he would attend his Rotary Club meeting at lunch, check in at the bank, drop by the church with a donation, and go home. Later, he would take the widow next door some fresh tomatoes from his garden.

He came to a planning commission one night to announce plans for a project in the middle of the only decent neighborhood in the city for African-American families. The project would make him some money while exerting a devastating impact on the neighborhood, ruining the property values. It just needed a little of what we call “spot zoning.” In my ignorance, I advised against it, advice to which no one paid the least attention. It did elicit a blistering denouncement about “This kid from Little Rock, who probably hasn’t done a valuable day’s work in his life, coming here to tell us how to run the best town in Arkansas.”

I didn’t shrug it off. I did what I always do. I filed it away. I’ve found it all pays the same and revenge is, as they say, a dish best served cold. Trust me. That old account was settled long ago.

The planning commissioners did listen to a spokesperson from the neighborhood. He was an articulate man who held a professional job and was married to a school teacher. They were purchasing a nice home in the neighborhood and feared the impact of the project proposed by the businessman. The neighborhood was their only choice for decent, stable housing and their dreams could be shattered by the proposed project.  He presented such a reasoned argument that the commission tabled the proposal a month for further study.

Imagine my surprise the next month when the homeowner arose and announced that, upon further study, he now supported the project and, further, apologized to the banker for speaking out before he had examined all the facts. The inevitable then happened.

Later, I couldn’t resist asking the town’s city manager about the reversal of attitude. What had changed the man’s mind?

“Oh, he just got reminded who held the mortgage on his home, who was head of the School Board, and who was a fraternity brother of his boss.”

It’s always something, isn’t it?

Brainstorming

Bill O’Reilly had the answer: "Many people who are dying . . . were on their last legs anyway," the disgraced former Fox host told Sean Hannity, himself pretty much as disgrace to the human race. They were discussing the Covid 19 crisis and how to sacrifice the elderly to allow their conservative friends to get back in action.

“Guess that’s one way of doing it,” said the gardener while watching two praying mantises making love.

Know what it reminds me of though? Way back in the 1980s, the countries of Iran and Iraq were locked in a bitter war. As an aside, if I remember correctly, the Reagan Administration was aiding and supporting both sides. It’s a wonder it didn’t make those folks hate us.

Anyway, finding heavy minefields between the opposing armies, the Iranians developed a model scheme. They told young kids and their parents that the youth would to straight to Paradise if they would only charge across “no man’s land” to clear paths for the attacking troops.

So we could let the elderly go. They require a lot of care and don’t offer much in return. Here’s one reason, among others, why I don’t like the idea. Click here.

One wonders whether if the virus was particularly deadly to the young, our country’s current leaders might think of a way to use the kids effectively, say by ordering the re-opening of the schools or beaches.

Oh wait …

Planning and Execution

Reading the account of the assault on Cemetery Ridge by Earl J. Hess. Unlike, say, “Pickett's Charge in History and Memory” by Carol Reardon, Hess concentrates on the military minutia. Seems that generals Hancock and Hunt on the Union side had a little “set-to” about whether to maintain artillery fire before the assault to motivate the Union troops, (Hancock), or to save it for the assault to de-motivate the Confederate troops (Hunt). I’ll put that on my list of things to ask the “Redleg Major General” about next time we share one another’s company.

Yes, I know a Major General. I know a couple of ministers too, along with a bunch of banjo pickers and a few curmudgeons. My social spread would amaze you. I learn from each person within it. I even know some affable conservatives. They aren’t as cocky now as they once were but we still enjoy fellowship.

Anyway, the pre-assault bombardment on the third day at Gettysburg went on for something like an hour. (It seems nobody timed it exactly.) I think I read somewhere once that they heard the sounds of it in Baltimore. Brave officers on both sides rode along the infantry lines bolstering courage. Real leaders to that. The apex of danger is no time to spread distrust. Amidst all the death and destruction, some of the Union troops actually fell asleep toward the end of the bombing.

Finally, things fell silent and flags began to appear in the distant woods. The assault had begun.

Like many things that aren’t thought out carefully, or flow from ego and not reality, it didn’t end well. Ask a banjo player. The fingers all have to roll in rhythm for to carry the tune.

Repair Work

Wanna see something real scary? Check out quickly the true cult members had received and were posting explanations  that the president of the United States of America was “just kidding” when he suggested injecting disinfectant to prevent Covid -19. He was being sarcastic, you see, and the press and most of us Americans were just too stupid to understand it. We are the same people who are so “slow on the uptake” that we believe, as the epic photograph illustrates, that he actually mocked a disabled man? What about the time he “reportedly” said those awful, demeaning, things about women. Why he was just illustrating to us what probably goes through Barack Obama’s mind every time he sees a white lady.

Is there some website called “He’s done it again dot com” where the true zealots go to learn the exoneration du jour? It is absolutely frightening how quickly the repair work is promulgated. Perhaps if we put the “talking point trolls” in charge of distributing tests for the virus, we could get some results.

There is no doubt that they, the trolls, would be more usefully occupied. In the meantime, here he is showing us the type of behavior towards our disabled brothers and sisters that he finds abhorrent.

Unleashing the Monster

Maybe we all need to pay closer attention to things. Oh, and maybe we need to calm down in the process. Donald Trump is playing us all “like a rusty squeezebox.” I say “us,” and I mean it, but the press in particular is falling for his ploy like kids chasing the Pied Piper. Myself, I don’t think he is saying these dreadfully bizarre things because he is dumb or crazy, be those as they may. I think he is saying them simply to make us angry, angry enough to hate whomever. It’s an old pro-wrestling trick, and we’re falling for it.

Angry people are malleable people. Ask the Germans. Ask the Rwandans. Ask the James Jonesians. Ask the Branch Davidians. Anger is a passion, not a calculated conclusion.

If Donald Trump can generate the passion, i.e. the anger, the Fox show, the meme generators, social media, and the Russian trolls can produce the objects for that passion. Leading up to the 2016 election, it was Hillary Clinton, the Obama Family, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democratic National Committee. You remember it. That’s the group that had the unmitigated audacity to prefer a member of the Democratic Party as its presidential nominee. That highly publicized predilection and the directed anger it produced convinced a group to sit out the normal processes of a free democracy. The results of that non-participation are apparent now, if we take the time to look beyond the daily news cycle.

It’s happening all over again. Work folks into a rabid frenzy and they’ll go anywhere you want them to. Targets change. Passions don’t. Prior to both World War One and World War Two, many parents were angry, and the object of that anger was the idea of their young sons being sent to die in a European War that seemed to them simply to be the latest production of a never-ending play. Young men directed their anger toward the draft and a military that would interrupt their jobs and dating schedules. Young women were angry that their lives would change for the worse.

It only took persuasive, but manipulative, politicians, a willing press, and (in the case of WW II) a few Frank Capra films to redirect that anger toward Germany. Then, due to an unmitigated act of stupidity (one that included one sovereign nation’s attacking another sovereign nation that had never done it harm, hmmm), that re-directed anger gained a dreadful and terrifying legitimacy. Justified? Of course it was, but justification doesn’t produce action. Ask our African-American brothers and sisters.

So, my fellow Americans. We don’t need to be angry. We need to be afraid. Very afraid. And we need to be aware, very aware. Most of all, we need to be resolved. Very resolved.

Darkness

In the world’s greatest gallery of sinners, I’ve always held my own. I doubt if I’ve ever been used as a role model. Friends tell stories about me around campfires. My relatives call me an anarchist and won’t let their kids come near me. The word “potential” never appears in a sentence about me without the ubiquitous “squandered.” Through it all, I pressed on, hoping for some ray of hope, as William Faulkner said of Boon Hogganbeck from The Reivers. “No epoch of history nor generation of human beings either ever was or is or will be big enough to hold the un-virtue of any given moment, any more than they could contain all the air of any given moment; all they can do is hope to be as little soiled as possible during their passage through it."

I persevered, and I think I changed some for the better. My attitudes changed on numerous topics.  For example, I entered the United States Navy with a churning belly full of resentment. Now, I wouldn’t take a million dollars for those four years. In other ways as well, I have altered my attitudes. I’ve even learned to like English Peas and poetry.

A friend once said of me, “I love you for you don’t have a 24-hour and attitude about anything.” But I think he was wrong.

Now that I’ve offered my mea culpas, let me argue that I don’t think the “better angels of my nature” have changed over the years, and, if they have, the direction was for the good of humanity. When I was a teenager, I believed in the equality and sanctity all races and backgrounds of people. I still do. When a college student, I came to believe that The Sermon on the Mount was a sublime piece of literature and righteous guidance. I still do. I believe in honesty, good government, striving to help others, truth in advertising, not trusting Russia, and the paramount superiority of turnip greens and cornbread over escargots or kidney pie.

I did flirt with a wee bout of conservatism once when I became seduced into believing it would further my career. Mike Huckabee cured that when he threatened to close migrant worker center in south Arkansas. For those who should have been paying attention, that was a preview of things to come. The road to Hell is not one hidden long from view.

Anyway, about this idea of core beliefs. I see examples of change for the worse every day in friends I have known for years, some for a lifetime. These are folks I once knew to be kind, generous, and caring people. Or they seemed to be. Now, it seems as if a dark cloud settled upon them. They post bad things about good people on social media, and good things about bad people. Something or someone seems to have stolen their sense of righteousness. There is no example of avarice and mendacity for which they cannot find praise if the offeror claims the right political initial after his or her name.

These are not the people I once knew. Or, are they? I don’t know. Dark monsters hide deep within us are monumentally patient. Something rose in my friends, and it isn’t pretty.

They appear, from all aspects to worship a serial divorcee, liar, swindler, adulterer, cheat, and hatemonger. They even boast that the possibility of upsetting me about it is funny.

I’m bemused. The Galilean must be nauseated.

That’s the darkest irony involved. Many, if not most of whom I speak, claim to be Christians. Not Galilean ones, mind you, but followers of the part of the old and new books of faith that espouse despising gays and supporting slavery. Some even claim to be preachers of the Christian faith. Their only core belief lies in the topic of abortion. They want it to be criminalized, but it eludes them that a heavy concentration on sex education, availability of contraception, elimination of poverty, and male accountability would be much more effective (and good for the country) than electing political scoundrels who pretend to be on their side.

Yes, they attend, or lead, services on Sunday mornings and then spend the afternoon on Facebook bearing false witness against Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama (and his wife), Jimmy Carter, and others.

Something changed them. Maybe the aliens who pick through our smoldering remains will figure it out.

The Tragic Stretch

Sometimes I think of American decency as a rubber band. That is to say that once it is stretched to the limit, it may never go back to its original shape. And sometimes it might not go back to any recognizable shape.

At other, more positive times, I think of our more decent moral foundations as rocks along a wild seashore. Flood tides may cover them, but comes the ebb and they break the surface and stand again in all their strength and glory.

For example. It was my luck to have served in the United States Navy during the high tide of disdain for the military. Having lived through it, I figured, at the time, that it was a permanent trend. No, the tide receded following America’s withdrawal from Vietnam and a long period of respect has followed. Of course, feelings come easy when, for more than 99 percent of Americans, serving your country during war or peace is merely a vague and fuzzy abstraction. It is something that other people and other people’s children do for us.

The point is that our perspectives and attitudes seem to change with time, or do they? I think it was Thomas Hobbes who said, “Our passions don’t change. Only the objects of our passions change.” If this is true, does it mean that our passions are consistent, but guide us toward changing goals? That may have some kinship with the beliefs of William James, the so-called “Father of American psychology.” He was reported to have said, “We don’t sing because we’re happy. We’re happy because we sing.”

This makes me tend more toward the rubber-band theory of moral and ethical behavior. America, it seems to me, is governed at this time by a large group (actually a modest but consistent percentage) of political scoundrels led by a man without a shred of social decency, moral compassion, or ethical underpinnings. Has he stretched our sense of propriety to the point from which it may never return? I fear so.

In the 1950s and 1950s, we discriminated against minorities and women, blew up recruiting centers, assassinated our leaders, destroyed legally constituted political conventions, bombed countries that had never made a threatening gesture toward America, illegally sold arms to a country that had, and murdered college students, among other disdainful acts.

These seemed, in most cases, to have sparked some sense of moral outrage. That had begun to create positive change. Then a likeable old presidential contender chose to announce his candidacy in the southern city where four civil rights workers have been murdered by racist thugs. The message was tragically clear: “Hey, vote for me. I hate the same people you do.”

Out passions—our ugliest passions—perhaps did not change as much as they were legitimatized. We didn’t change immediately. But our moral high-water mark was the election of an African-American president. Passions that stank like rotten garbage rose like Sci Fi monsters of the Cold War films. That led us to the current situation.

Where is the moral outrage this time? It’s there. Those passions for morality, ethical behavior, compassion, peace, love, and harmony are there. It just seems that the power junta has figured out new methods of neutralizing our outrage. They have done it and continue to do it. Our band of righteousness is being stretched beyond its limits by greed, avarice, misogyny, bigotry, and an unquenchable thirst for power.

I question whether we can snap back from it this time.