March Madness

No, it's not about basketball and the final four or whatever. It's about the fact that it's March, and I'm mad. I'm mad that the defense budget's being cut again, that military folks returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and other trouble spots that the chicken hawks in the Bush Administration have sent them to have lower benefits that I received almost 40 years ago, after my two very reluctant years in the U.S.Army (the photo below is of me, taking a break while trying to keep the Viet Cong from overrunning at least one patch of South Vietnam, in 1966. And yes, that's a cigarette. We all smoked then. The Surgeon General hadn't gotten around to telling us that it would kill us all someday, more efficiently than the Viet Cong ever did. But I digress). The GI bill and education benefits helped pay for my graduate education, for which I'm grateful. I wish it hadn't been necessary to pay for the degrees that way, but the funding was available, so I used it.

And now? With the administration having to pay for the follies in the Middle East while simultaneously cutting taxes for their rich friends and family members, they've shredded support for veterans. While at the same time outsourcing much of the military's work to higher paid civilian contractors. It's all about the money, as has become increasingly clear in recent weeks--not about supporting troops, not about equiping them properly, not about planning the Iraqi War from the beginning. And it's infuriating. President Bush's ratings are at an all time low--but let's see how that translates into votes this fall. After all, it's the Congress that's supported these policies, approved the spending and budget cuts, and which bears the ultimate responsibility for the country's business.

A reminder: how many of the present adminstration are combat veterans? One. Jim Nicholson, the Secretary of Veteran's Affairs, served in Vietnam and, like me, earned a Bronze Star medal there (if his also has a 'V' for valor attached to it, it's not mentioned in the official bio). Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Secretary of Transportation Mineta, and Attorney General Gonzales all served in the military, but during peacetime. Of the cabinet members and inner circle advisors at the time of the Iraq invasion and its planning, only Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, had combat experience. And his advice was apparently ignored. Paul Wolfowitz, a primary architect of the anti-Iraq effort also never served. And the military records of President Awol and Vice President Too Busy to Serve are well known. Chicken hawks all.

One could also ask how many members of the present Congress have children serving in the military. According to New York Congressman Charles Rangel: one. Again, chicken hawks all.

Our leaders are thus removed from the actuality of war almost entirely. Few have any direct experience of it, virtually none have any personal investment of loved ones in the military. No wonder the government both acts as if the military is an instrument of policy without worrying about the human results, and simultaneously hides their casualties from public view as much as possible--no press coverage of caskets returning to the continental United States, and our leaders have yet to attend a single funeral.

It's March. This war--unjust, unwinnable, unnecessary--has now dragged on for three years. More than 2300 Americans have died in Iraq. See what I'm mad?

The Facist legacy; musings on Strange Fruit

A screening of Joel Katz's documentary, Strange Fruit, tonight, as part of the Columbus Jewish Film Festival--a history of the Billie Holliday song (written by a Jewish New York schoolteacher active in progressive politics, Abel Meeropol). A deeply moving exploration of the song and its context (for more on the film, see http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/strangefruit/film.html
"Strange Fruit" is, of course, about lynching, and powerfully evokes that peculiarly violent American tradition. What's clear from Katz's film is the linkage between progressive politics, protests against racism and violence, and the deep connections between the struggles against all prejudice, be it racist or anti-Semitic. The linkage between protest and progressive politics is made clear when Meeropol's two sons, Robert and Michael, are interviewed--and we're reminded that they are the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, adopted by the Meeropols after the Rosenbergs' executions in 1953. A montage at the end of the film, which evokes the murders of Matthew Shepherd in Montana, James Byrd in Texas, and other acts of violence caused only by the ethnicity or gender or sexual preference of the victim, makes the lynchings of the past connect powerfully with the present.

Lynchings were, and are, horrendous (and for more on that part of our past, checkout the Without Sanctuary site, http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/main.html). But even more hideous is the other bit of history the film suggests: the use of violence as an oppressive measure by the hegemonic forces of society. What becomes clear in looking at this aspect of our past is the readiness with which a majority finds means to terrify and subdue a minority, to 'keep them in their place,' and to affirm, through violent means, the dominance of the majority view.

Those violent means are often accompanied by dehumanizing the minority 'other'--turning the African-American, the Jew, the Italian, the Indian, the Asian, the Central or South American, the Mexican, the gay, the woman (and fill in the blank here) into something other than fully human, which then removes any compunction about the use of violence. That dehumanizing process is frequently aided by loud public figures, be they politicians (Senator Joseph McCarthy comes to mind), religious leaders (Father Coghlin, Pat Robertson, Rabbi Meir Kahane, Osama Bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), or commentators (Bill O'Reilly and any number of other radio talkers might well qualify). Those being dehumanized are first made into 'others'--and that's on religious grounds, or skin color, or national origin, or--equally frequently--on the basis of political benchmarks: "radical left" "Communists" "free thinkers" "pacifists" "unAmerican antiwar demonstators" "unpatriotic cowards"--the list could go on and on, and does.

This is essentially a facist operation. And it's chilling to see it played out over decades, always encouraged and fomented by the power establishment, always to oppress minorities. In this context, our current adventure in Iraq, and the trashing of anyone who objects or questions as either cowardly or unpatriotic and/or traitorous (see Congressman Murtha's experience, or that of Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson) is sadly familiar. As is the President's "you're either with us or against us"--setting out a stern warning for those who might disagree.

The main lesson? The facists seem to be always with us. And almost always in power, oppressing anyone who disagrees or might be a threat to their power--or figuring out ways to oppress.

starting

1948; perhaps a good place to start. A war just over--not that I was at all aware of any of that; the Korean War was the first to penetrate consciousness, just as the first election of Eisenhower was the first national election I found interesting. The latter half of the 40s, by contrast, were all family centered, with little awareness ourside the immediate family circle. So I reached some sort of external awareness, at about the traditional age of reason. By then, the family had moved from Tennessee to Massachusetts. And we were Republicans, although my mother's uncle was at the time a Democratic state senator in Maryland. Don't recall any political discussions from the adults, other than Cold War worries. It was, after all, the time of duck and cover.
Hamilton was about 35 miles north of Boston, on the North Shore--but not on the shore--just inland from Beverly, Ipswich, Essex, Gloucester, which were on the actual coast. When my family moved there in 1949, a highway had just been completed going north into New Hampshire from Boston--an early freeway--which made a commute into Boston by car possible (there was also a train)--but the town was not yet a commuter place. We were among the first families there whose breadwinner--then always the father--actually worked in Boston. The town was otherwise all local people, divided into three widely separated groups, who rarely intermingled: 1) very, very, very rich people, who lived on very, very, very large estates. One was the owner of the United Fruit Company (of Chiquita Banana fame), Mrs. Bessie Preston Cutler. Another was the widow of General George S. Patton--indeed, a tank purported to be General Patton's sat in the center of the small park, called "Patton Park," and we climbed through it when we weren't on the swings or the teeter/totters (which about exhausted the playground equipment. 2) the people who serviced group 1--maids, butlers, groundsmen, gardeners, etc. Since Hamilton was also the home of the Myopia Hunt Club and Golf Course, there were also the folks who kept up the greens and the stables. Supposedly, the Myopia Hunt Club was founded in the nineteenth century by some myopic rich guys; I've no idea if that's true, but the golf course is apparently famous; see http://www.golfclubatlas.com/myopiahunt1.html --like most male kids in town, I served my term as a teenager as a caddy there. Wasn't much good at it, in those pre-golf cart days. 3) the people who serviced group 2 and occasionally group 1: merchants. Hamilton had a small downtown with a train station, a post office, a small grocery store, the 'paper store' where you bought newspapers and sundries (and could buy milk and bread on Sundays when the grocery was closed due to the 'blue laws'), a dry goods store, a bar, and a package store. There were also a few gas stations, some plumbers and contractors, the town librarian, and so forth. What there wasn't: a restaurant, other than a lunch counter at the drug store and a snack bar at the railway station--you had to go elsewhere to buy a meal. There was no movie theatre in town, although films were shown on Friday and Saturday nights at the Community House, an all purpose gathering place near Patton Park; there was also a Saturday matinee film showing, either of the regular weekend film or, if that was thought to be too adult in focus, of a special film for kids. For every kid in town went to the Saturday matinee, which usually turned into a screaming mass of kids; at some point nearly every week, the film was stopped, and the testy manager appeared on the stage in front of the screen to tell us all to shut up, or the film would be cancelled, and we'd have to go home. That usually quieted us down. My family were anomolies, at least at first, belonging to none of the groups. We weren't rich, weren't merchants, weren't part of the service class (most of whom were Irish and Roman Catholic; the merchants and rich were Protestants--the merchants mostly Methodist or Congrationalists, the rich almost exclusively Episcopalian). That made us hard to type. We were also hard to type since my folks were from the south, and had traces of southern accents. And the kids in school--I began second grade in Hamilton, my older brother in fourth grade--had all been together from kindergarten, and so were a cohesive unit. And it was a small school. My grade was the first to have two classrooms of 25 kids each--on the cusp of the baby boom. That was a huge number for the town's school, which up to that point had only a single classroom for each grade. And note that I said the town's school--there was only one, in two buildings: grades 1-6 in a building a block from our house, grades 7-12 three blocks away. So: the town was small. And people who've grown up in small towns know what that means: everybody knows everybody. You know family tragedies, and personal quirks. You don't buy candy at the paper store from just anybody, but from Neil Crockett, the son-in-law of the Millericks who live across the street who's married to their daughter Peggy who's slowly becoming crippled with arthritis. You go to school with the boy whose father was asphyxiated with the babysitter while they were making love in his car in midwinter and left the motor running to keep warm, so they were found nude and dead of carbon monoxide poisoning. And that girl's older sister disappeared one December after growing fatter and fatter, only to return six months later, newly slim, at about the same time her parents adopted a baby who'd been born to distant cousins. And the scoutmaster . . . .
In any event: my folks bought a brand new house, a Cape Cod cottage, with two bedrooms, one bath, and an unfinished attic. Here it is, that first winter (from the vacant lot across the street--the front yard wasn't all that large, even with the non grass strip left for a future sidewalk):