Complexity

 Sometimes I post things here that I fear might rankle some. I do it anyway for I believe that thinking is preferable to clinging to, as Plato observed, false or erroneous perceptions and belief.

I saw a post about Vietnam Veterans that sparked a long simmering thought of mine. Followng us just a finding of facts, that’s all, not a condemnation.

Back in the 1960s, John McCain was doing the wrong thing, but doing it honorable on orders from, and in service to, his country. He did not order the bombing of innocent people. Self-serving and misguided people did. After being shot down, he acted in the most honorable way imaginable. He was a hero then, despite what Donald Trump may think.

On the other hand, Jane Fonda’s beliefs were honorable, but she carried them out stupidly at best, dishonorably at worst.

My take on all this? Life and the pursuit of righteousness is a complicated affair and not achievable through sound bites and Facebook posts. I’m going to work on new perceptions today. That should be the basis for action.

Regrets

When I was young, I came to the conclusion that America was not a perfect country. While it held a great future for me, that future wasn't available to others that I knew who worked and strived as much as anyone. Sometimes I felt that we operated on shifting sands.

As I grew older and more aware, that thought grew. It peaked when I was sent to an immoral war, from which service I received no thanks but some benefits. Even those benefits eluded a large segment of the brothers and sisters with whom I served. Through it all, though, I strongly believed that, though not perfect, the country I served had the potential to be a good and righteous place. It was showing a movement thereto,  a movement led by its better angels. Then one day, selfish and greedy people, seemingly from out of nowhere, began taking over.

Now they, and their counterparts on the opposite end of the political spectrum, seem hell-bent on combining forces to destroy this needy country that I love so much. I weep not for myself. I’ve had a good run and have learned to survive. I weep for the young, and for friends who cherish their young. We are faced with such a waste of unwanted promise.

I only wish I'd had more courage.

Fatigue

 Last night I dreamed I was chatting with the Galilean

Me: It’s these neighbors.

Him; What about them?

Me: They won’t take care of their property.

Him: So?

Me: I’ve been doing it for them for 15 years.

Him: Bless you, my son.

Me: But I want to quit.

Him: And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

Me: I don't seem to be making any progress.

Him: Are they healthy?

Me: Yes: They just don’t want to take care of things.

Him: Hmmm. If you are doing it for them, you are doing it for me.

Me: You never asked me to clean your yard.

Him: But I might come like a thief in the night.

Me: How long should I continue?

Him: You haven’t forgotten seventy times seven have you? Wasn’t I pretty clear?

Me: There is danger, venomous vipers all over the property.

Him: Fear not. I am with you. I’m on this side of the fence but still with you.

Me; But I have lost a dozen workers over the years, children of my friends.

Him: Shall I send you Saint Patrick? He rids houses of serpents in the name of God.

Me: But the serpents are their gods.

There was silence. I looked.

The Galilean was gone.

Accountability

 Odd thought of the day:

In our state, the group that brays the loudest about how "gubmint" should be run like a "bidness" share a common trait, other than being elected officials of state government. No, the trait is that if government shared the same strictures and liabilities as private corporations, many of those most adamant about how it should be run would be in federal court defending themselves of charges of fraud. 

Actually, taking the dilemma of Covid-19 into account, the charges might be more severe. 

 They were there, had we only looked: bigotry, prejudice, and racism, the monsters of our psyche, writhing and slobbering like a den of 1950s science fiction monsters.

 They were not dead, as we had hoped and dreamed. They were not even moribund. They were simply submerged, like Godzilla, or a giant spider, just waiting to be freed by a shock of super-seismic proportions. What would it take to release them upon an unsuspecting public?

 It took nothing more than the election of a president of the United States born of a white mother and African father, the very model of a modern African-American.

 That’s all it took. The “monsters from the id,” as they called them in the 1956 film, The Forbidden Planet, took control of the minds of otherwise decent people. Things changed overnight. Old friends began to greet you with, “How do you like our n****r president?” Hatemongers on the internet devised the acronym “SOS” to describe the elected leader of the United States of America. Photoshopped images of watermelon patches on the White House lawn appeared on social media. The man’s family members attracted descriptions as “gorillas” or worse. Sentiments and language that had been shoved to the bottom of our cultural sea and buried were fashionable again. Hate groups flourished and became more emboldened, as did hate media. A sense of shame settled over us.

 Campaigning against candidates of the Democratic Party in our state became simple. All one had to do was request it from East Coast PACs and they would deliver boatloads of brochures, simple ones with just a photo of their opponent facing a photo of President Obama. The stated message would be, “he/she is with him.” The hidden message would be “the n****rs are coming for your women and he/she is going to help them.”

 It worked like magic, even among citizens of our state who are alive today because of the Barack Obama’s efforts toward universal health care. The illogic of that could make a healthy person nauseated. Our state will suffer for decades.

 Now don’t get me wrong. I strongly support the rights of Americans to vote for the candidates of their choice. My only wish is that we would all vote for candidates on the basis of the principles of good government, as we see it, and not the principles of the KKK.

 Meanwhile, can’t we work toward eliminating the monster born of bigotry and racism? Unchallenged, it will destroy us as a unified nation as surely as a giant lizard could destroy a city. The Galilean’s admonition for us to “love one another” might be that best hope for us. As they used to say in the aforementioned films of the 1950s: “It just might work!”

 It becomes more obvious every day that such healing will not come from the highest offices of government. It must begin at the citizen level.

 I’ll try. That’s what I think on July 4, 2017.

Urban Planning Taboos

 There are taboos in my profession, topics for which you don’t share any cynical apprehensions. One topic concerns the concept of “the homeless.” We progress under the shibboleth that all those unfortunates who live under overpasses, dig through restaurant dumpsters, and wander the street in miserable, disheveled condition are there for several justifiable reasons, all of which are directly our fault, certainly not theirs.

 Most are there, we understand, because they lost a good paying job and, next, their home.

 Others are there because they mistakenly joined the military and came out too traumatized to fit into society in any meaningful way. Of course, the Vietnam vets are the worst, notwithstanding the fact that they are getting a little “long in the tooth” to wander the streets, sleep on the frozen ground, and frighten the righteous as we, uh they, have done for half a century. Military veterans, often grouped under the subset, “homeless veterans,” seem to add a bit of patriotic cache to appeals for money. Everyone loves a vet, or so they say.

 It is this latter group which prompted me to examine the matter of homelessness in more detail, risking much alienation and approbation from liberal friends and professional colleagues.

 It started when a friend from northwest Arkansas came to Little Rock for a meeting and invited me to lunch. I met him at a downtown diner and found that he had brought another person. He introduced her as a homeless advocate, and we sat to dine. The talk soon turned to her advocacy. She proudly related how her efforts were aiding the poor and unfortunate up in what some call “Walmartia.”

 Interjection of a Generalizaion_1: The only poor and unfortunate people in northwest Arkansas are there by choice and not by fortune.

 Interjection of a Generalization_2: All generalizations are specious, even the previous one.

 Anyway.

 She proceeded to set off a hidden bomb that I had been harboring for nearly 50 years. She just had to go and mention all the self-satisfying work she was doing for the homeless veterans in northwest Arkansas.

 Homeless veterans in northwest Arkansas? Now don’t get me started. Oh, you already have, you say. Oh well.

 To make a long story bearable, I calmly asked a question that had been smoldering within me like a lit fuse headed for a store of dynamite. “How do you go about determining veteran status?” I asked. “Do you require a DD214?"

 I’ll swear on my Sainted Mother’s grave that she forked a bit of salad in her mouth, chewed, and calmly said, “What’s a DD214?”

 I took a deep breath and thought of rose gardens and Martha Lou Shomier from high school. I exhaled, managing to keep my cool. “Only the proof that those people you are calling ‘homeless veterans’ have actually ever served in the military.”

 “Oh,” she said, obviously relived that it wasn’t a requirement that had to do with grant proposals. “I do suppose we have some that may ‘assume the persona,’ I really don’t know.”

 “Assume the persona?” Was I hearing correctly? She did say, “Assume the persona” and not the more military-related, “Assume the position,” didn’t she?

 I turned to my friend. “Have you ever actually known a homeless veteran?” He pretended that he had been so busy enjoying his meal that he had missed the conversation. Of course he hadn’t known any homeless veterans. He had, in all likelihood, only known a handful of veterans in his life.

 Just then, fate interviewed. I caught a glimpse of a friend from high school enjoying a meal with colleagues, all in their finest “litigatin’ suits.” Judging from their raucous comradery, they were probably on opposite sides of the same lawsuit.

 “See that man?” I said. “He spent a year as an enlisted man in an artillery unit in Vietnam. He’s now a partner in one of the most prestigious law firms in Arkansas. And, oh by the way, he’s not homeless, not weighted down with any false persona, and is more representative of the military veterans that I know, than any of your so-called ‘poor homeless vets.’ So you can take your ‘persona’ and shove it.”

 I didn’t finish my meal, but I did, I’m afraid, end a friendship.

 Next: Searching for a definition.

 

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