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.

I was sorry that Mike Espy lost the Mississippi runoff election for US senate, but not surprised. He got more votes than either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton did, so I suppose we should celebrate that.

Even so, I wos hoping he would do even better.

I was disappointed at some of the commentary, which I thought was inaccurate.

I am an old white guy from Mississippi. I would like to set a few things straight about the state.

On a personal note, Espy is from Yazoo City, a place I know well. My paternal grandparents, my father and my brother were all born there. Many family members are buried in the cemetery.

I will work on trying to clear the record. It may take a while.

Brett Kavenaugh - Not Suitable For The Supreme Or Any Other Court

I watched yesterday's confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavenaugh, who already serves on the DC Court of Appeals - the next highest federal court to the Supreme Court.

I conclude from his angry tirade delivered during the hearing that he lacks a judicial temperament. He should not be confirmed.

The hearing was held to address credible charges by a serious accusation by Doctor Christine Blasey Ford that in 1982 when she was 15 years old and Kavenaugh was 17 he attempted to rape her. She told a moving and convincing story.

At the time of the incident,  Kavenaugh was a student at an elite  Jesuit prep school in the DC area. I have a strong bias against these institutions, especially regarding a pervasive attitude of misogyny regarding women.

I attended public coeducational schools. I first encountered the prep school phenomenon when I went on summer training cruises with Naval Academy midshipmen. Many of these midshipmen had graduated from Catholic boys schools. I thought some if not most of the young men from that background thought rather too much of themselves and had an immature attitude toward girls.

Doctor Ford was the only accuser allowed to speak, but other accusers told even more harrowing tales of the sort of thing Kavenaugh and his colleagues did. These tales reminded me of exploits that prep-school types of Naval Academy midshipmen bragged about. They claimed to have arranged to have a young women in a bedroom with young men outside the bedroom door standing in line to take turns having sex with them. That was in 1955.

I never personally witnessed any of these claimed exploits and I thought it possible they didn't actually happen. Empty bragging is not unknown among 19 year olds. But whether true or not, what they bragged about was pretty disgusting. Especially among people aspiring to lead our armed forces.

I encountered many of these prep school types later in my naval career who never matured.

On the evidence of what I saw during the hearing, Brett Kavenaugh is one of those. His misogyny was strongly evident in his responses to questions from women senators. I know they are used to this, but we citizens should not put up with it.

Twenty-seven years ago, just as Brett Kavenaugh was graduating from Yale (which he bragged about to Senator Amy Klobuchar as "the number one law school," clearly implying that this entitled him to a place on the Supreme Court). That same year, 1991, was the year of the navy's infamous Tail Hook scandal. Tail Hook was another example of misogyny by young leaders of America's elite.

I see Brett Kavenaugh as strongly in the same tradition. In my view, his confirmation should be strongly opposed.

Nominees And Explanations

Some years ago, Oriental's retired Superior Court Judge, Jim Ragan, wrote an entertaining political musical centered on a scandal that emerged at the last minute. When the scandal became public, the campaign manager sang: "he didn't do it - but if he did, there's nothing to it."

Judge Ragan has a good ear for political dialogue. If you don't believe it, just compare his song to that of Judge Kavanaugh and his supporters in the White House. Same lyrics.

More Reflections On John McCain

I never liked the generational analysis of American History.  X Generation was this way. Y Generation was that way. The Generation that lived through the Great Depression and won World War II were "The Greatest Generation." Thanks, Tom Brokaw, but maybe they weren't greater than all the others.

And yet.....

Last week the presidential historian Jon Meacham had an interesting thought about John McCain.

John McCain, he observed, was one of the last members of the World War II Generation.

If that's so, it explains a lot. It also means that I am also of the World War II Generation. In fact, John McCain and I received our Navy commissions on the same day in May of 1958. He flew airplanes and I drove ships, but it was the same navy.

John McCain was about eight months older than me. He was five years old when the Japanese attacked, I was four. Neither of us was surprised that war had started, because we had witnessed our fathers preparing for war.

My father had just returned to Tallahassee from the Carolina Maneuvers on December 5th. Earlier in the year, he was away at the Louisiana Maneuvers, a massive trial and demonstration of new military tactics. I had seen with my own eyes the two-lane US highways across the South clogged with enormous military convoys.

On that day of infamy in December of 1941, my dad grabbed his B-4 bag (always packed to go to war) and went to the air base. John McCain watched the staff car drive up to his house in New London and take his father away.He doesn't remember seeing his father again until after Japan surrendered.

If John McCain was the last of the World War II Generation, then so am I.

My head is filled with the sound track of World War II. Go into any cafe, and juke boxes were filled with tunes by Glen Miller, the Dorsey Brothers, Woodie Guthrie, Harry James and others. There were singles like "Praise the Lord and Pass The Ammunition," "Coming in On a Wing And a Prayer," nostalgic tunes like "I'll be Home For Christmas (if only in my dreams").

The war had not yet started when we heard ominous warnings that Democracies were weak and would not be able to stand up to the authoritarian dictatorships taking over the countries of Europe and Asia.

I didn't follow those discussions closely, but movie newsreels painted an ominous picture of the perilous state of affairs for the democracies.

Then, without much fanfare, Great Britain and the United States on August 14, 1941 signed the Atlantic Charter. Looking back on that event, I think it is not an exaggeration to say that that piece of paper laid the foundation for victory.

The eight principal points of the Charter were:

1. no territorial gains were to be sought by the United States or the United Kingdom;
2. territorial adjustments must be in accord with the wishes of the peoples concerned;
3. all people had a right to self-determination;
4. trade barriers were to be lowered;
5. there was to be global economic cooperation and advancement of social welfare;
6. the participants would work for a world free of want and fear;
7. the participants would work for freedom of the seas;
8. there was to be disarmament of aggressor nations, and a common disarmament after the war.

The truth is, the Charter sounded much like Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points of 1917. It proved to be a powerful incentive for other nations to join in a grand and eventually victorious alliance. As in 1917, the goal was to make the world safe for democracy, but also safe for commerce and prosperity.

The World War II generation did not accept authoritarian dictatorships. We did not accept the idea of a "Master Race."

To be sure, many Americans believed in White Supremacy. But the World War II generation changed all that. It was our proudest accomplishment.