Where were you on the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor? I ask, because there is a big difference in attitude between those who remember that day and those who have merely read about it. Even historians get the story muddled. 

The attack was a surprise. But the war was not. We saw it coming. We were getting ready for war with authoritarian dictatorships.

The biggest concern in 1939-1940 was, how would western democracies be able to stand up to despots. We never imagined it would be a good idea to become a despotism ourselves.

The morning of the attack, we were living in Tallahassee. My dad had been away at the Louisiana Maneuvers and had just returned two days earlier from the Carolina Maneuvers.   

About noon, our landlord knocked on the door.

"The Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor, he announced."

My dad grabbed his B-4 bag  and rushed off to the base. We didn't see him for a couple of days, when he came back to pack his foot locker.                                        

African Americans At Normandy (D-Day): Medgar Evers

Last week, The Raleigh News and Observer printed an article about African Americans at D-Day.

The article did not mention it, but one of the African Americans fighting for the allies at D-Day was the late Medgar Wiley Evers, a civil rights activist in Mississippi who was assassinated on June 12, 1963 by Byron De La Beckwith of Greenwood.

After World War II, Evers received a degree from Alcorn State College near Jackson, and became the state's first NAACP field secretary.

Beckwith was also a World War II veteran, having served on Guadalcanal. He belonged to both the Klan and the White Citizen's Council.

After three trials, Beckwith was finally convicted of Medgar Evers' murder in a state trial in 1994. He died in prison.

Donald J Trump Is A Disloyal American

The release today of the Mueller Report makes it clear that Donald J Trump is disloyal. He is also a crook.

But we already knew that.

We also already knew that the only way he was elected to the presidency is with the help of Putin and his Russian collaborators.

In this country, about three million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for Trump.

Trump is a loser.

Back On Line

I've been away for awhile. Getting back on line. In the meantime, had a hurricane (Florence) and some not very bad medical issues. Worse than that, we have had a sustained, prolonged attack (by our president and the NC state legislature) on American democracy.

Only we can save ourselves.

Seventh Century Solution To A Twenty-First Century Problem?

At least, that's what some observers say.

Actually, it is a seventh-century B.C. solution. At least, that's when the Great Wall of China was first begun.

It didn't keep the Mongols and other nomads from entering China.

Nearly three millennia later (in 1981), my wife and I passed through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin. That wall didn't keep us out, and it didn't keep all of the Berliners in. It survived all the way from 1961 to 1992.

It didn't do much good.

So what is the problem Donald J. Trump is actually trying to solve?

Best to know that before spending a lot of money.

We seem to have pretty well solved the problem of illegal immigration from Mexico.

NAFTA did that.

More cruelty and inhumanity and refusal to carry out our international obligations toward refugees and asylum seekers won't make that better.

Ozymandius

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away". 

Literature Network » Percy Bysshe Shelley » Ozymandias

When Did America Become Great?

There are many possible answers to that question.

I offer August 14, 1941 as the candidate for when we became great. That was the day President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met to sign the Atlantic Charter. The Atlantic Charter laid the firmest foundation for our system of alliances that won World War II. We built our structure of international security and prosperity on that foundation.

President Trump is demolishing that foundation.

Eternal Father, Strong To Save, Whose Arm Hath Bound The Restless Wave

The last few days, I have been thinking about the late George Herbert Walker Bush, an honorable man who served his country well.

He was a navy man.  He had just turned eighteen when he enlisted.

He went into harm's way.

He flew aircraft off of aircraft carriers, and was nineteen years old when he was shot down over Chichi Jima in Japan's Bonin Islands.

He could have perished in the sea near Chichi Jima at the age of nineteen. But he survived to serve his country in many capacities until his death at the age of ninety-four.

He exhibited the modesty so characteristic of his generation.

He did not boast. He did not brag. He was not a bully.

A good model to follow.

Many commentators marvel at George Bush's youth at the time he enlisted. As I think back to that time in my own life, I realize I had turned seventeen four months before I entered the navy. So I don't see Bush as having been all that young.

It was a different time.