New Year's Evolutions

A new year dawns. I make no resolutions, no promises I cannot keep. I do not pledge, for example, to blog every day this year (I would have blown that one already anyway). I do make plans and give vent to my aspirations: my hopes for 2015. After all, the new year is a moment for Hope, for turning toward the future, for putting aside regret. I have trouble with the last, regret, but I am working on remembering my successes – which are many – and not giving into the Blues. I did indulge myself in the Blues yesterday, but once I got some quality sleep I began to write this blog: looking forward. 2015 is going to be a major year for me. I turn 65 in February. It’s daunting. I used to think that 65 was ancient. But now that I’m nearly there, I feel as though I’m just beginning. Like the t-shirt says: “I plan to live forever; so far, so good.” But I know my days are shorter than they used to be, and fewer in number than once upon a time. And yet, with that reality in mind, I still squander them. We all know our days are finite in number yet we all squander so much of our time. Maybe we need to, to remain healthy and important within ourselves. Kevin, my cat, squanders time like a professional. But he has no legacy to build, no monuments to erect, and no audience to entertain or impress. He’s a cat. He has staff. He spends twenty hours a day inside his own head, napping. He has never once expressed to me concern that his time is wasted. So perhaps “squander” is the wrong word. “Preparing” may be a better choice. Or: “being at play in the fields of my mind.” What we achieve is far more important than the amount of time it takes to achieve it. I remember one critic’s assessment of the composer Richard Wagner: “He lived sixty years, wrote sixty hours of music, of which six hours are brilliant – not a bad trade.” There are a few things I want to improve about myself, a few places for improvement. I tend to forget to be grateful for what I have. And, I lack discipline. I do really want to improve on that: I am way too easily distracted. I seek distractions. Oh look! A squirrel! With more than a little help from my best friend, editor in chief and bride of forty years, and others, I have already given the world a novel, a biography, and a good poem or two, like “Banned in Boston” and “Charles Sorley’s Ghost.” Hundreds of people have seen them. I want the number to swell to thousands, hell, millions – but hey, it’s not a bad trade, and I am only getting started. Squirrels, beware!

Christmas Spam and Forty Years

Christmas Spam and Forty Years There are two kinds of Spam in the world. One is annoying, the other edible, although there are many who think the edible version is also annoying, or worse. Diane, for one, hates Spam, the meat-like substance in a can. But I love the stuff. In fact, I found a kindred spirit in my nephew Erik, who also loves Spam. Whenever we get together, either here in Montana or there in the Netherlands, we always set aside one day for a Spam eggstravaganza. I discovered in the book Year Zero that I come by my love of Spam naturally, being one of the foods supplied to hungry Dutchmen after their liberation from Nazi rule in 1945. You might say I eat Spam to honor my country’s liberators as well as the Dutch spirit that did not buckle. Or not. This of course means that I have Spam once in a very great while, maybe every two years. I told my grandson Xander about Spam and how much Opa loves it. I even got him to try it – a piece smaller than half a kernel of corn. He spat it out, gagging. “I hate Spam, Opa!” he proclaimed. But then he lightened, telling me, “But I’ll like Spam when I am twenty.” He is six. Oma thinks he has discerning taste. Now I have a running joke with him, asking him if he would like Spam milkshakes or Spamcakes, to which he usually responds, half smiling, “Opa! I don’t like Spam.” “Try it.” I say, “Try it and you might.” But of course he already did try it. I even told him this Christmas that maybe Santa would put some Spam in my stocking. Xander told Papa Frank about my love of Spam. Papa Frank also likes Spam. In fact, he bought several case lots some time ago. So when Xander told him, Frank immediately led Xander to his stash and had him carry up a case for me. It’s a Costco case, with six large tins of original Spam – a veritable treasure trove worthy of the Dragon Smaug. Frank, who just underwent triple bypass surgery, explained that he didn’t think Spam was on his menu planner anymore. Besides, he still had two more cases in his larder. After we got home Diane noticed that the Spam in the case had an out date of December, 2013 – a year ago. I was shocked. I did not know that Spam had a shelf life; I mean, jars found in archaeological digs in Egypt containing Spam proved to be edible after millennia. So I am debating if the out date really matters. Tomorrow I will not eat Spam, and that is a promise. Tomorrow is the fortieth anniversary of the day Diane and I got married. We will celebrate with very little pomp and circumstance. We know that forty is a big deal – twice as long as Derek Jeter’s major league career. We had thoughts of celebrating in Europe before fiscal reality set in (as it always does – rudely). We now are shooting for the Big 4-2 for the big trip. It gives us time to save our stuivers, and 42 is a magical number that has followed me around my entire life. Besides, 40 is just a number, one of many passed and many to come. We have had our ups and downs, but mostly ups. We have been very fortunate in our lives together. Even our worst times were better than many people’s best times. Friends and family continue to be our inspiration and our joy. People salute us for our forty years. Diane likes to tell them dumb luck brought us together and a lack of imagination keeps us so. The truth is, our deep and ever deeper friendship is the key. That, and love. But she still hates Spam.

Onward Christian Soldiers: A Just War for Jesus

Onward Christian Soldiers: A Just War for Jesus I assure you, as often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me . . . I assure you, as often as you neglected to do it to one of those least ones, you neglected to do it to me. Matthew 25:40; 25:46. Here I go, reflecting on my writing for the past week and my direct opposition to war as a means of diplomacy. I have to admit that the definition of the word “war” can lead to several interpretations; of course, the meaning I referred to is that of a clash of armed forces with the intent of imposing the will of one side upon the other through violent and deadly means. We refer to a sporting event as a war between two sides. We have a card game that is called “War.” Other games, like chess, are thought of as strategy games bases on concepts of real war, but played, not waged. And we do speak of waging war when we go after a cause: you might say that I am waging war on war itself by what I say and how I try to act. So, as a Christmas wish or observation, I state the following: Christian, if you are not a hypocrite, look beyond your self interest to the truth: every three seconds, somewhere on this planet, a child dies. In the time it took me to get this far in my blog, 40 children have lost their lives. They died of disease and starvation, war and murder. Two more. I look into the eyes of my energetic grandchildren and try to imagine them sick or starving, with no hope of any end but Death, or living in an environment plagued by raiding maniacs or long distance bombs. I feel blessed that they are safe. But I ask myself: beheaded by ISIS, blown to pieces by a drone, expiring from lack of even simple food or clean water, killed by a disease like malaria that can be easily treated – what difference does it make? Dead is dead. Just because we do not see it, do not feel its impact directly, do not smell its stench, does not mean our responsibility to do something about it is less. The oil will play out. The stuivers and shekels and Euros and dollars and yuan will all remain behind when you leave this earth. So I propose to you all: if we must have a war to fight, wage your war on Poverty. It is a war that we can win; it is pragmatic to devote our resources it it; and the rewards go far beyond conquest. We all like to cite the evil of Adolph Hitler when supporting the concept of a just war. But we must recall the impoverished conditions of Germany in the 1920’s that allowed him to rise to power. He took power in 1933. He gave his people nearly full employment within five years. Prevention can be the cure. It is not enough to say: give a man a fish and he will be fed for a night; teach a man to fish and he will be fed to a lifetime. We must also stock the lakes with fish – continually. As for me: I do what I can when I can. I am fortunate in my own existence but the only power I have is a voice too few as yet are hearing. I am not as good as the widow who gave her last coin to Jesus, but I know my priorities. So did He.

Rebuttal: No One Read This!

My triple blog on pacifists garnered one written response. I quote: “I hope your home here in our country is never invaded by an enemy of any kind. And God forbid you defend yourself or your country. I wonder if Hitler, the Chinese, or any other government would accommodate the freedoms we take for granted here in America. I agree WAR is not answer, but for the attacked, it is a defense. Not to fight back may be Godly, but not very patriotic or manly.” This gentleman and I long ago agreed that our viewpoints differ drastically, and I welcome the fact that he took the time to both read my words and thoughtfully respond to them. I would remind him of three things: first, that a patriot who loves his country can and should strive to point out to that country when he or she feels it is traveling down the wrong path – it is our right and our duty just as it is his to disagree; second, that dissent IS the power of democracy; and that, three, to choose not to kill or participate in the killing aspect of War is a matter of conscience, not cowardice. More on the subject of invasion: When the United States was attacked in 1941, we had virtually no standing army at all. What we did have for a Pacific fleet was stationed at Pearl Harbor, the point of attack. It was not an attack on the US mainland nor an attempt to invade. The Japanese calculated that knocking out our fleet would buy them one year, during which they would consolidate their Pacific Empire and then hopefully sue for peace. But we responded mightily: in May in the Battle of the Coral Sea and June at Midway, we had already begun to turn the tide. Our ability to mobilize and militarize stunned the world. If we ever were invaded, we would rally so fast that any invader would be rendered dizzy. And in today’s world, the prospect of invading, occupying and controlling as vast a country as America would be daunting. It has been stated that an occupying force needs one soldier for every ten inhabitants just to maintain control. That would require an armed force of thirty million men. Even if China put together that huge an army, plus the logistics to support and supply it, the price tag would devastate their economy. It is not fiscally possible to occupy the US. China does have the second largest military budget in the world, roughly 30 percent of the largest, which of course is the United States. There might be a madman who would consider it, but even if he could bring it off, resistance among the populace would wear him down. Much better to wage economic battles and erode the current worldwide control of Corporate America by, for example, buying up our public debt. Hitler may have entertained plans to extend his dominance to the entire world, and reshape that world in his own image. But he wore his military thin, in the long run, by trying too much. Yes, we fought him, and yes, we were on the winning side, seventy years ago. The Greatest Generation deserves all due praise for meeting the challenges and enduring the sacrifices asked of them. And yes, the cause was just. But remember this: for all the righteousness of our side of WW2, Hitler tried to get us to go to bed with him against Stalin and Communism. We chose Stalin, and the post-war world was split among the victors with an iron curtain between the halves. Jim, I do not think you have to worry about us being invaded. I also do not think you have to worry, for the present, about pacifists taking over the world. I don’t even think you have to worry overly about my being able to pollute the minds of future generations, because pacifism is not in style today, war is, especially in America, and no one seems to be paying any attention to a liberal from Montana who sees the world as it should be, and the United States for what it is. Our leadership still believes that war is a viable means of diplomacy, of getting what you want. Mohandas Gandhi famously said, “In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” War is evil even when good men wage it. And innocents die, which is supposed to be contrary to the teachings of every moral code to which those good men pledge their faith.

The Pacifists, Part Three of Three: The Future of War

PART THREE: “My subject is War, and the Pity of War. The Poetry is in the Pity.” -----Wilfred Owen. Pacifism was not yet back in style in 1967. It became fashionable within a year: I was ahead of the curve. I believe to this day that you cannot stop killing by killing, that the death of one soldier never ended a war, and that war is no longer a viable means of diplomacy. And yet we continue, we arm, we fight, we kill, we die. Peace, it turns out, is much harder to wage than war, even though war comes with the Surgeon General’s explicit label on it: “Warning: War has been shown to be hazardous to your health; in fact, War causes death.” Stupidity lives. Ignorance is curable. Human beings enjoy the culture of war and violence. The culture of peace remains a lofty ideal most of us accept as unattainable. I do not want to believe that Mankind cannot change. If that makes me crazy, then so be it. Sanity is highly overrated, and I have seen what allegedly sane people do to each other. We know that non-violence works. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King stand as proof. That change is slow. But all social change is gradual – or gradually accepted. Violent change, such as via revolution, most often leads not to a true change in social structure but only a change in leadership. True social change comes not from the top down, but from within, spreading outward. Not one dead soldier ever brought about true social change. The cost, however, is dear even for the most patient: King was assassinated long before the change he envisioned began earnestly to be accepted; Gandhi saw change come about only to be assassinated at that very moment. Gandhi once said, “There are many causes I would die for. There is not one cause I would kill for.” To those who clamor that such and such would have happened if we did not join the fight, the comment begs the question, “And has the fighting stopped?” It is easy to recognize that pacifism is impractical given the nature of Man. This does not mean that pacifism is wrong; instead, it is the ideal toward which we all must strive. How many Wilfred Owens must we allow to die days before the Peace? Woodrow Wilson tried desperately to keep America out of World War One. When he no longer could, he seized the opportunity to promote his own ideals at the peace talks at Versailles, though less than welcome. His vision of the post-war world included establishing a League of Nations that would prevent further wars. The rest of the world, including his own countrymen, was not ready. The failure of the United States to ratify the treaty nearly killed him. Still, he left us these words: “I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail.”

The Pacifists, Part Two: In and Out of Style

“I do wish people would not deceive themselves by talk of a just war. There is no such thing as a just war. What we are doing is casting out Satan by Satan.” -----Charles Hamilton Sorley Pacifism goes in and out of style. Memories are short, and most young people are too naive to realize that all wars are waged to the benefit of a select few at the expense of a great many. There are no exceptions, even if the cause is just. Just causes are a reaction to unjust ones, and justice is often defined – and later conveniently re-defined – by the victors. We stopped Hitler after six million Jews and five million non-Jews were murdered in concentration and work camps. We did not stop the Rape of Nanking, the Killing Fields, the destruction of Biafra, the ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia, and on and on. Governments, our own included, examine the costs relative to the gain. Perhaps World War Two was the last justifiable war, from our point of view. We had to stop Hitler. We did not stop Stalin. Since World War Two, the United States has been embroiled in conflict after conflict, leading at least one social critic to call us “cops of the world.” He was a Canadian pacifist named Phil Oochs. For me, the tradition of pacifism is ingrained: my family lived through the occupation of Holland by the Germans. I was a teenager when the Vietnam War escalated into an American war, and faced the possibility of being drafted. I made my decision not to run away to Canada but to stand up for my beliefs and go to prison if necessary, modeling myself after a man who did just that, David Harris. Harris served three years of a five year prison sentence; to us he was imprisoned for refusing to kill. I was lucky. I won the draft lottery, and did not have to face that choice. I was off the hook but still vehemently and loudly opposed that war and our involvement in it, along with millions of others. Vietnam so polarized American opinion that I thought peace really did have a chance. But I was wrong: subsequent history continued America’s path down a warrior’s highway. Once again, an army of brutal extremists demands that we stop them. We created Saddam Hussein (as a buffer against Iran), then toppled him, creating a power vacuum and destabilizing the region. This in turn created ISIS, at least in part within the prison walls we guarded. We did not strangle ISIS in its infancy, and now it is growing into a threat large enough to warrant the return of US troops on Iraqi soil – and probably on Syrian soil as well. Why? Not for humanitarian reasons – we might have intervened w hen there were ten thousand ISIS warriors butchering women and children and beheading Iraqi soldiers. Instead, we have been watching the numbers grow. Our interests are served better by the need for our return. And, why? In a word: oil. It does not matter which billionaires’ politicians control Congress. If they want a war, they will find a way to have it. World War One proved that point a hundred years ago. Germany felt left out of the empire building that dominated Western European politics for the previous three centuries. They wanted their share. The balance of power in Europe, designed to prevent a major war, now aligned the two blocks that would duke it out – one side fighting to gain territory, the other to preserve territory already gained. Most of the nations involved were ruled by descendants of Queen Victoria, but this was no family feud. When Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was murdered in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, it formed the perfect pretext for war. What followed was a four year struggle that is best described as “redundant slaughter.” Incidentally, ethnic cleansing was a big part of the picture. Most of the nations of Europe, as well as the Ottoman Empire, actively sought ways to force “undesirables” to leave or face violent consequences. Large numbers escaped, mainly to America. Some were turned away even from there and sent back to Europe. Millions were slaughtered. The Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915 set a tone for the century to follow. In that century, 187 million human beings would die in war or by genocide. After World War One, pacifism became fashionable among the victors. So much was lost, and so brutally, that repeating the performance seemed out of the question. But the peace that was brokered at Versailles instead set the stage for another global conflict. That war began almost 25 years to the day from the beginning of the first. Pacifism once again slipped into disfavor and those who believed in it were considered cowards, even if they chose to serve in non-combative ways. War after war followed; the United States met its match in a faraway place called Vietnam.

The Pacifists, Part One

“Jesus was a pacifist.” -----Chris Hedges Mirriam-Webster defines pacifism as, “the belief that it is wrong to use war or violence to settle disputes.” The root word is “pax,” ancient Roman for peace. The word “pacifism” was coined by French peace activist Emile Arnoud (born in 1864, died in 1921). It was adopted by the tenth Universal Peace Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1901. But the tradition of pacifism reaches back millennia. In major Indian religions, the Sanskrit word “ahisma,” which means “to do no harm,” expresses this philosophy. Christ invoked us to “love thy neighbor,” and Moses might well ask, “What part of ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ do we not understand?” What I don’t know always amazes me. When I moved to Montana from California I knew I was leaving a deep blue state for one that I believed to be crimson red. But I discovered that Montana has a tradition of independent thought; I even have found a liberal scattering of liberals throughout the state. More, I learned of a woman who defined pacifism in her whole being, a Montana native. Discovering her has rekindled my personal desperation to write on the subject. Her name was Jeannette Rankin. Jeannette Rankin holds two unique distinctions in American politics. In 1916 she was the first woman to be elected to the House of Representatives. Nationally, women had not yet achieved the right to vote, but Montana was among a handful of western states that enjoyed full suffrage. Rankin, a Republican, soon thereafter was called to a special session of Congress, in April 1917, to vote on whether the United States should enter World War One. In all, 50 Senators and Representatives voted No – Rankin among them. She did not win re-election, but returned to the House in 1940, just in time to vote on America’s entry into World War Two. She cast the only No, making her the only human being to vote against entry into both world wars. She stated that she could not in good conscience vote to send another mother’s son to die in battle. Despite immense pressure to make the vote unanimous, Rankin stood her ground. After the First World War, dubbed by some as “The War to End all Wars,” eighteen million people lay dead, ten million soldiers and eight million civilians. The conflict was indeed global as distant outposts of various empires became contested property. But at war’s end, everyone, especially the victors, was weary and disgusted. Pacifism as a movement gained favor. In 1928, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, originally supposed to be a treaty between the United States and France, grew into a declaration that war was and is illegal. Although little more than a gesture without teeth to support it, nonetheless this law has never been repealed. Anti-war sentiments dominated the literature of the time. Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, told from a German foot soldier’s point of view, so universally captured the plight of all warriors of that conflict that it became an emblem for pacifists. In 1930, Lewis Milestone directed an American production of the film, which stands today as a harrowing and frank account of war in general, not as an issue of strategy but one of slaughter. The film’s young star, Lew Ayres, was so moved by the film of which he was a crucial part, that he became a pacifist himself. When World War Two broke out, Ayres refused to fight. His initial request for conscientious objector status nearly destroyed his reputation. But he was no coward. He had requested status as a non-combatant medic, but military policy forbade servicemen from requesting assignments. Ayres then filed for conscientious objector status and was sent to a CO camp. The military changed his status in April, 1942, and soon he served as a medic in the Pacific Theater. Still, the shift in climate made it almost impossible to be a conscientious objector, or a pacifist.