An Overview of Vietnam 1989

An Overview of 1989

In 1989 the people of Vietnam were in worse condition than they had been in 1970-71. The South where the rice grew was better off than the industrial north where factories and heavy equipment had been bombed. The ethnic Chinese merchants in Cholon had not been permitted to leave because they knew how the economy worked but their businesses and bank accounts had been seized by Communist Party leaders (hereafter called The Party) who knew early Soviet doctrine. 

Farms had been collectivized and had failed. Farmers grew enough rice to feed their families and no more. Vietnam, whose major export other than people had been rice, had to import rice to save people from starvation. By 1988, Vietnam’s economy had almost collapsed. The only bank in Vietnam had run out of money. The post office had stamps but no glue. The government, unable to pay government agencies, gave the agencies businesses, hotels and factories, to operate for income. 

In 1989, Hanoi permitted petite capitalism by the people and anyone who could buy a pack of cigarettes sold them to those who could afford only one cigarette at a time. Those who had woks built small contained fires on the sidewalks and sold food, one bowl of rice, one piece of chicken at a time. Along the highway water was sold by the barrel for overheated trucks. In the Hai Van Pass wedges chopped from trees were sold for chocks to prevent disabled vehicles from rolling downhill.

I returned to Vietnam five years later, 1994. The embargo had been lifted and Vietnam looked like a nation reborn. Farmers could lease land from the government and grow rice to feed their family and sell the surplus to the government or a private buyer, whichever paid more. People had jobs producing knock-off Chinese products. 

Citizens could put money in the bank but they could not earn interest on it. Many of them bought hard currency like US dollars or precious metals and jewels and buried them inside dirt-floored hootches or outside after dark. Under the embargo it was illegal to sell US dollars to Vietnam. The Vietnamese dong was worthless outside of Vietnam creating a blackmarket in dollars.

The jungles and roadside vegetation that had been destroyed by Agent Orange had regrown. Helmets, a variety of barbed wire, unexploded ordnance including 250 pound bombs, perforated steel plates (psp) and other bits of metal that had been stacked for sale outside most hootches in 1989 were gone, transformed by industry.

Many people know little and want to know little about Vietnam. 

Others want to wipe it from their memories but the war will not die and continues in films, news reports, books including history, biography, autobiography, fiction and memoir. And in minds until a smell, a sound, a word brings it back in all its horror and heroism. Everyone who was touched by the war, including those who opposed it, still carry the mark. And you don’t go home again. 

Some want to travel to Vietnam to see it, smell it, touch it so that their father, their husband, their sweetheart, their son is more than a name on The Wall. Some go there to see it or re-see it in oder to come to a separate peace. I did that in 1989, but I still haven’t come home. Not to the country I left. Or maybe it is my eyes that have changed.

With the collapse of the Cuban Missile Crisis so did one nation indivisible. After Appomattox, the Rebels had gone home but not all had surrendered. Some had fought a rearguard terror campaign with bullets, ballots, bombs and separate but equal delaying liberty and justice for all since 1865. Others, with a longer view, realized they had to infiltrate local, state and the federal government and sabotage it from within. When the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts became possible the neo-rebels had a voice and money and political power, even in the Supreme Court, to prevent or roll back those acts and integration to return America to white Christian male dominance.

The Other War in Vietnam

In 1970, I rode in a guntruck escorting a truck convoy carrying supplies from Camp Baxter in Da Nang to Camp Eagle near Phu Bai. The guntruck had a white crew manning two .50 caliber machine guns, two M60 machine guns and an M79 grenade launcher called a “blooper” because of the sound it made when fired. 

Their driver had been killed in an ambush in the Hai Van Pass the previous day and his life’s blood was still in the cab. The gunners had spent the night mounting the second fifty. They believed in fifties the way they believed in Playboy and rock and roll. A fifty could turn a rock into a pile of gravel around a Charlie with an RPG.

I climbed into the bed of the truck with the gunners. The bed had armor plating; the cab did not.The gunners were on edge and surly. None of them spoke to me. They were still in their protective zone where everything outside their zone might need killing. The lieutenant (LT) in command of the guntruck and the convoy was black. He gulped from a carton of milk. He said he had nothing in his stomach but milk since the driver was killed. 

Camp Eagle was their base and the LT invited me to sleep in his hootch which meant a stained cot with no bedding and no pillow. The other officers, all white, welcomed him back with an enthusiasm that surprised me. “Am I glad to see you”. “Our brother is back.” “I can sleep tonight.” 

“They think this hootch won’t be fragged as long as I’m in it,” the black LT said. “I hope they’re right”.

The next day two sergeants from the Public Affairs Office (PAO) took me by Jeep to Quang Tri to join a similar guntruck in a convoy to a firebase on the DMZ. There was an armored car, a half track and another guntruck defending the supply trucks. We were “tail end Charlie”. If a supply truck was hit or broke down we were to stand by it until a mechanic could fix it or a bobtail could drag it to the firebase. 

The firebase was an isolated outpost with eight inch cannons that fired interdictory fire across the DMZ at suspected PAVN movement or concentration. They also fired in support of US infantry in the jungle below them that were seldom seen but were supposed to prevent VC or NVA from overrunning the artillery men who had little training or equipment for self-defense.

(PN: I use PAVN to designate North Vietnamese soldiers in large units in North Vietnam and NVA to distinguish North Vietnamese soldiers who have infiltrated and fight in South Vietnam. VC are guerrillas. Some have been trained in the North but most died in the Tet Offensive in 1968. After Tet the VC were not as well trained or led.)

The two PAO sergeants were to arrange interviews with selected personnel at the firebase. They wanted me to write a story about a white Master Sergeant whose men were trying to kill him. When we were safely inside the wire of the firebase they led me to his hootch. I was scarcely inside his hootch when something hit the roof. I hit the deck fearing it was a grenade. The MSgt. laughed at my innocence. It was a rock thrown by a trooper to remind him that it was as dangerous inside the wire as outside.

Inside the wire the troops were close to refighting the Civil War. Most of the “lifers” were white like Sarge and the Confederate battle flag of resistance flew from their hootches. Most of the African Americans (AAs) were draftees and they raised fists and shouted “one for the man and then the Revolution”. Vietnam would teach them how to fight a guerrilla war and back in the world they would demand their religious and civil right to be equal creations made in the image of God. That revolution never happened because of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who believed in nonviolent insistence. That war continues.

At the firebase the insult was so trivial that no one remembered what it was or which side delivered it but the troops came together in two gangs. In the center they were nose to nose, shouting, shoving, cursing; on the edges of the mobs individual soldiers threw punches, wrestled on the ground, attempted to claw out eyes or bite off ears. There wasn’t much else to do except occasionally fire across the DMZ and hope that the PAVN didn’t return fire. It was like being in a submarine with the same scenery, the same faces, the same annoying guy who spat on his glasses and cleaned them with his fingers for a year.

The officers remained in their hootches. Sarge had forced his way to the maw of the anger and began ordering troops back to their hootches. The lifers went first because a charge of disobedience would end a military career. The AAs disbursed because there was no one to fight but there was no way to disburse the seething rage that they were fighting to free Vietnamese the way they had fought to free the French, the Scandinavians, Burmese, Chinese when no one was fighting for their freedom. Sarge was the only one who could contain their fear, frustration, loneliness, despair, futility, boredom and pain that they directed at him.

Sarge found a grenade pin on his door with a scribbled message. “This time you got the pin; I got the grenade. Next time I get the pin.” One morning he had opened his door to find a claymore mine that would have shredded him and his hootch if it had been triggered. He forgot his soap on his way to the shower and when he turned back to get it the shower blew up without him. 

Sarge didn’t know who or which side wanted to kill him and he had seventeen more days in Vietnam. If he survived he would return home to the same war on a different scale.

Intro to “I Woke up in Vietnam”

The War That Will Not Die

I have been to Vietnam three times. Each time it has been a different country. The first time it was a country at war with itself and the by-products of war were obvious on both sides: corruption, atrocities, hunger, homelessness, grief, fear, casualties, collateral damage, brutality as a way of life. 

The second visit was in 1989 during the embargo. Fourteen years earlier the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN aka NVA or North Vietnamese Army) had captured Saigon and organized resistance had ended. In those fourteen years neither the land nor the people had recovered from the war at least in part because of the embargo but there was also a brief war with China, and the invasion of Cambodia. The PAVN still occupied much of Cambodia but were withdrawing. 

The third trip in 1994 was the first American cruise to Vietnam since the war. The passengers included travel writers, journalists who had covered the war from Saigon, a Vietnamese American from Saigon and one from Hanoi who had escaped Vietnam in different ways. Many passengers were Vietnam veterans and their wives. Some vets were not happy to be returning to Vietnam. Some vets came with stories that were familiar to those who read or watched TV, and a French pilot who had flown missions in the battle of Dien Bien Phu.

The central focus of the book will be the visit in 1989 when I returned to Thang Bien to tell the incredible story of the Combined Unit Pacification Program of Golf Company, the CUPP Marines of Second Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment. It will be necessary to inject, seamlessly I hope, Personal Notes (PN) that will include information about the earlier and later visits.

Kneeling Before the Flag

Kneeling is the posture U.S. Marines assume when memorializing a fallen comrade. Do you want to tell us that’s disrespectful? When you kneel in church, what are you disrespecting? The Cross? The Creed? The Hymnal?

Kneeling is at least as respectful as standing at attention with one hand on your heart while talking to your neighbor or enjoying your hot dog or beer in the other. It is at least as sincere as on the last stanza singing “and the home of the” and shouting “Chiefs”.

Why would anyone assume that kneeling is intended to dishonor the flag or the anthem? As for the fist in the air, that’s a salute to the First Amendment.

Rot in the FBI?

You heard of FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page because the  Justice Department revealed their names. You knew they were having an affair because the Justice Department announced it. You read their mash notes in which they expressed their opinions of candidate Trump because the Justice Department showed them to reporters.

FBI agents and other Intelligence officials do have a right to opinions, even political opinions, as long as they are not acted upon or publicly expressed. Strzok’s and Pages’ crime was that they believed their messages were private. The wrath of Republican politicians and their “liberal” media lackeys fell upon the two agents but also upon the other US intelligence agencies that reported Russian interference in the 2016 election to hurt candidate Clinton, whom Putin feared as much as Trump did, and help her rival, Putin’s friend.

Strzok was hauled before cameras so that those without sin could destroy him as a person. However, Strzok turned out to be the bravest person present. One might wish that instead of falling on his sword to preserve the integrity of the FBI Strzok might have seen a greater patriotism by preserving the integrity of the election process by revealing what he knew of the attempt of Putin to corrupt American democracy. It’s possible that even if the collusion of Putin and the Trump campaign had been known many Trump supporters, especially “He-vangelicals” like myself, might have voted for Trump anyway. Disclosure: I didn’t vote for Trump. I was an Evangelical when Evangelicals did not require lepers, the unclean, the despised.

The He-vangelicals demanded that the FBI be cleansed of lepers who had deviant opinions and Republicans demanded an investigation by the FBI’s Inspector General. The IG complied and issued a report that quickly became public but was apparently examined only for the Magic Words. Strzok and Page did not like Trump. Treason.

Overlooked was the fact that the Inspector General’s report concluded that despite their personal opinions Strzok and Page did not interfere with the Trump campaign. Well, anyone could have missed that.

What is not a secret but was largely unreported was the efforts by the FBI’s New York office to undermine Clinton. Before the election, Guardian reported, “Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election.” As one agent put it, “The FBI is Trumpland.” That was quickly shoved down the memory hole by the “liberal” media.

The IG’s report stated that the New York FBI Office had a “visceral hatred” of Clinton and did attempt to thwart her campaign with leaks damaging to her campaign, including fake leaks that were reported by fake news.

And the leaks? Investigations into the Clinton Foundation that turned up nothing. Based on leaks, Rudy Giuliani stated on Fox News, “I do think that all of these revelations about Hillary Clinton finally are beginning to have an impact. He’s (Comey) got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next two days.” Fox News’s Bret Baier reported a false leak that Clinton would soon be indicted. He later apologized for reporting a false story but apologies never get the attention of breaking news.

Has the Justice Department revealed the names of the FBI agents who leaked news and false news with the intention of hurting Clinton? 

Have Congressmen Nunes and Gowdy read the report of the Inspector General? Have their committees subpoenaed agents who leaked information, sometimes false information, in order to thwart the Clinton campaign?

Have the “liberal” media grilled agents from the New York FBI Office?

I wonder why not.

(A shorter version of this report was published by the San Antonio Express News 8/12/18)

Russia’s Attack on America: Who Cares?

July 3, 2018, a second Republican majority committee reported that US Intelligence services were correct. The Russians had meddled in the election at the direction of Putin to help Donald Trump become president. That was huge. It appeared that Gowdy, Nunes and other Republican members of Congress were guilty of obstruction and maybe conspiracy. But where were the “liberal” media? 

False accusations and misleading information by House committees daily made front page headlines and Breaking News splashes on TV and hate radio. The declaration by a second Republican majority committee supporting the Justice Department and US intelligence agencies made a faint bleep and was shoved down the memory hole. Finding a print version of the full story of the denial and cover up by the Republican House is hard, although print has a longer shelf life. To its credit the Express-News, that as a business leans a little to the right, did report a short version.

Most everyone has heard of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the FBI officials who were having an affair and exchanged text messages in which they expressed their mutual distaste for the future president. Citizens have heard because Trump’s Justice Department showed reporters their private messages. The media and Republican politicians daily condemned the FBI and other US intelligence agencies. However, the inspector general’s report concluded that despite their mash notes, Strzok and Page did nothing to thwart Trump’s campaign.. 

One might wish that instead of falling on his sword to preserve the integrity of the FBI, Strzok, who knew about Putin’s attempt to put Trump in the White House, might have seen a greater patriotism by preserving the integrity of the election process by revealing the attempt of Putin to corrupt American democracy. However, many Trump supporters, especially “evangelicals” like myself, might have voted for him anyway.

The more important part of the FBI and the election is the not secret but largely unreported story of the efforts by the FBI’s New York office to undermine Clinton through leaks to the media and prominent Republicans. The Guardian reported before the election, “Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election.” As one agent put it, “The FBI is Trumpland.” 

A former Justice Department official told Vanity Fair in 2017, “It was widely understood that there was a faction in the (New York FBI) office that couldn’t stand (Clinton) and was out to get her.”

Agents leaked information about investigations into the Clinton Foundation to Rudy Giuliani who reported it on Fox News. Two days before Comey told Congress that the bureau had reopened the investigation into Clinton’s emails, Giuliani opined on Fox News, “I do think that all of these revelations about Hillary Clinton finally are beginning to have an impact. He’s (Comey) got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next two days.” An FBI source told Fox News’s Bret Baier that Clinton would soon be indicted. Baier later apologized for reporting a false story but apologies never get the attention of breaking news.

Largely overlooked in the inspector general’s report is the conversation of  Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director Comey. Lynch said they had to talk about the New York FBI Office. “We both know them. We both, you know, think highly of them.” Lynch then said that the New York office had become a problem. Comey replied that it was clear to him that there was “a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton.”

Have Nunes and Gowdy read the report of the inspector general? Have their committees subpoenaed agents who leaked information, sometimes false information to Republican sources? 

The major lesson of the Russian interference fiasco may be that those getting their information in snippets of TV watching or hate radio listening and never reading the deeper and fuller story in print media may be a greater threat to democracy than Russian interference that continues. 

The True Story of Adam and Eve And the Garden of Doom (Based on real events)

 

The Great and Powerful Gardener had a Great and Gorgeous Garden, beautiful beyond description because words had not yet been invented. In the Gorgeous Garden trees were heavy laden with fruit and nuts: walnuts, hickory nuts, coconuts, peanuts, and pecans. 

One non-24 hour day, the Great Fixer-Upper, tinkered with the Milky Way that was not lighting up the way the Great Tinkerer had intended.  Once it was just right the God of Corrections remembered the Gorgeous Garden and discovered what Gardens do when you’re not watching. The Gorgeous Garden had grown into a beautiful and gorgeous but tangled jungle. 

The Great Gardener had better things to do than prune and weed a jungle; therefore the Glorious  Creator created a poor but useful undocumented worker to square away the jungle until it was a gorgeous Garden shipshape Bristol fashion. And the Great Name Caller called the worker, “Man”, which was the Great God’s word for Adam. 

The gorgeous Garden became more beautiful every day, but Adam looked glum and glummer. The Wise and Powerful God wondered if Adam had the flu, but the Almighty One hadn’t created the flu yet. Or dyspepsia. There were fruits and nuts and berries; why did Adam have no appetite? 

The Great Omniscient God studied the other animals the Creator had formed. The cattle were lying in the shade chewing their cuds in contentment. The crocodiles greeted their Creator with a smile. The unicorns were so fat their Creator feared they would knock off their horns trying to get in the ark, but that was later. Adam had everything the other animals had but a companion. 

Adam hung out with the dogs and that’s why humans have flat nails rather than pointed nails. For flea disposal. Filing your nails to points is wrong and stop it.

The Great and Creator God had learned some things in creating so the Holy Maker created a mate that was better built than Adam. The woman was built like a 36-34-36 Abrams tank. With a personality to match.

 And the Creator looked at the woman and she was good. But she was a mistake. She opened her eyes and didn’t like what she saw. “I have to fix this place up,” she said. “Make it a decent place for a woman to live in. And no dogs in the house.” 

And the Ever Present God said, “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

A lot of things displeased the woman, starting with the hairy thing that said he was an Adam. The woman didn’t know how many Adams there were but she knew they all required fixing up to be presentable. This one didn’t even wear clothes. She didn’t wear clothes either but naked women looked better than naked Adams. Except King David. But that was Michelangelo’s David. God’s King David had feet of clay.

This Adam had invented language and with his first words said she was his servant. Well, that was heifer dust.

“I’m hungry,” Adam said. “Get me something to eat.”

“Get it your…”, she paused. 

Adam had picked up a club and he swung it at a round orange thing on the ground but he was thinking of her. 

”Try these,” the woman said, handing Adam a handful of peanuts. Peanuts gave Adam gas and Eve plucked peanuts, threw them on the ground and stomped on them. And that’s why today peanuts grow under the ground. 

The woman went to the river that flowed through the Garden to get a drink in a still pool and saw her reflection. She didn’t know what it was until she tried to touch it and saw the reflection of her hand. She examined her reflection in the pool. “I have to do something with this hair”, she said. 

She decided to explore the Garden to find a comb and maybe something that would surprise and please Adam. Maybe if she pleased him enough he would do something with himself to please her. Maybe he would pluck his own food from the trees. But no more peanuts.

In her exploration she found the prettiest tree in the Garden. The woman had an eye for beautiful things and hands for practical things. Beautiful blossoms, luscious looking fruit. She picked blossoms and stuck them in her hair to please Adam. She really should wash her hair but … later. 

She couldn’t reach the fruit because there was a serpent under the fruit. It was probably a Komodo dragon because if you see one today it will stick out its tongue and flap its mouth trying to talk, but the Great and Terrible God made it dumb for being so smart.

The dragon said, “Did the bad cop tell you that you can’t eat anything in the Garden because it’s His Garden?” 

The woman said, “God doesn’t speak to me. The Almighty only speaks to Adam.” It was a complaint.

 The woman plucked a fruit from the tree and gave it to the dragon. It was probably a pomegranate.

The dragon closed its eyes and tasted the pomegranate. Drool ran from the corners of its mouth. “When you taste it you’ll think you died and went to heaven,” the dragon said.

The woman tasted the fruit and she did think she had died and gone to heaven. She thought to herself, I know, I’ll take some to Adam. He’ll eat anything, even peanuts. I need to give him ambition, improve his taste, make him a person with feelings. 

She wished she had a skirt or a shirt so she could carry more fruit. She could only carry two, one in each hand. She tried to carry one between her throat and her chin but she sneezed and the dragon grabbed the pomegranate, closed its eyes and died.

The woman took the fruit to Adam hoping he would notice the blossoms in her hair. They were so pretty and smelled like chocolate. Adam noticed nothing but the pomegranates. “Where did you get those?” he asked.

“From the prettiest tree in the Garden. You never notice anything.”

“God told you that you could eat from any tree in the Garden except that tree,” Adam said.

“God doesn’t speak to me,” the woman said. It was a complaint. “The Almighty Name Caller hasn’t even given me a name.” That also was a complaint. Until he met a woman Adam had never heard a complaint. “Why didn’t you tell me?” the woman asked. “You never tell me anything.”

“I tried,”Adam said. “But you talk so much I never get a chance. God told me that if I ate the fruit of that tree I would die.”

“I gave the big lizard a pomegranate and he said he felt like he had died and gone to dragon heaven. Then I dropped one and he ate it and was speechless.”

“Since you went all that way and brought me one, I reckon we ought to eat them.”

It wasn’t a thank you but Adam did notice she had done something for him and she was speechless.

They ate their pomegranates and heard thunder like the  Great and Powerful God waking from a nap. They felt the shake of the earth as the Well Rested God went walk-about. What if the Great Explorer God looked for them? And they knew they needed a door. For the bathroom. And the bedroom, and maybe a front, and especially a back door. But there were no doors so they made aprons of leaves so they would have a way to carry more pomegranates. 

The God Who Knows Everything asked, “Why do you need a door? Have you eaten of the Tree of Doom?”

Adam didn’t have a mother he could blame. That left God and the woman. God was scarier but the woman was louder and in his face. Adam said, “The woman that You gave me made me do it.”

Soon-to-be Eve was miffed. Adam blamed her for everything and the first time God spoke to her it was to blame everything on her and put a curse on her and also all the female mammals in the Garden. And the Almighty of All Good Things didn’t give her a name but let Adam give her a name.

Adam. Adam couldn’t remember what he named the velociraptors and called them Evangelicalciraptors. And the transgender duck-billed platypus, Adam couldn’t remember whether to call it guy or gal, man or madam, dawg or the B word.

“It’s not fair,” Eve said. “You made the Tree of Doom the loveliest tree in the Garden where you knew I would notice it,” Eve said. “Adam never notices anything. A dragon could crawl up and kiss him on the ear and he wouldn’t notice it. You made it good for food when You knew I was the practical one who was most concerned with feeding the family. You made it desirable to anyone who wanted to be wise when you knew Adam spent his time dreaming of another wife or two and an air-conditioned tractor.”

Adam had asked for a handiwoman he could use around the house and God had given him a Marine drill instructor.

“You knew I was the one in the family who hated serpents. Why did you put one in the Garden? When you destroy the world with a flood don’t let serpents in the ark or it will be your fault.

“And besides,” Eve said slowly winding down. “I gave Adam a pomegranate because I’m the one who shares. Adam doesn’t even share his feelings.”

Adam put his hand on Eve’s shoulder that was draped in leaves and guided her away from the wrath of the Source of All Help lest it destroy them both. Adam knew he had to stand between Eve and the All-Loving Father, lest she persuade God that she was an Adam, too. Or deserved equal pay. 

Eve prayed more than he did, except in public. The Eternal Father loved all creation but Adam wanted to be loved most. Adam didn’t want to be shipshape Bristol fashion. Adam kind of liked his faults. If he had to give them up he would miss them. Adam wanted God to cut him some slack with Eve.

“Sometimes I wish I could choose my own husband, someone who wasn’t wrapped up in himself all the time or kicking or throwing or clubbing fruit because it was round. That would be nice,” Eve said.

Adam resolved to keep Eve busy washing children and tending dishes. Especially when Adams gathered to make rules, pass out leadership roles, and decide what Eves were good for and what they should wear. Adam would assume authority over Eve. In affirmation, Adam squeezed Eve’s shoulder.

“That hurt,” Eve said. 

“It’s for your own good,” Adam said.

God killed a couple of animals and made clothes for the naked: a donkey for Eve and an elephant for Adam because God hated clothes that were made of different kinds of leaves. 

And Adam and Eve left the Garden of Doom knowing they were going to die, which is the root of all knowledge.

Germany 1930 America 2017

There is no equivalency between Germany in 1he 1930s and America today, but there are parallels. One of those parallels is religion. Germany, Austria and Hungary were among the major Christian nations in the world. No American president has more blatantly declared his Christianity than Adolf Hitler and since Hitler the faith of no politician has been so widely accepted.  Millions of Christians around the world admired him, including Americans. Some German-American Bunds taught German propaganda, as did Defenders of the Christian Faith, Knights of the White Camellia, Sentinels of the Republic and the Christian Front.  The America First Committee accepted funding from Germany.  

Christians admired Hitler for several reasons:

  After World War One he called his nation to repentance. “Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell…And in this hour we sink to our knees and beseech our almighty God that He may bless us, that He may give us the strength to carry on the struggle for the freedom, the future, the honor, and the peace of our people. So help us God.”    

His faith-based charity, “With a tenth of our budget for religion, we would thus have a Church devoted to the State and of unshakable loyalty.” 

His morality. He did not smoke or drink and he abhorred pornography and homosexuality.

His mission. “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord”…We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. . .We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press–in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess. . .”

His belief that his nation’s weakness was because  “…the watchword of German foreign policy ceased to be: preservation of the German nation by all methods; but rather: preservation of world peace by all means.” 

His certitude: “The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others.  If an idea in itself is sound and, thus armed, takes up a struggle on this earth, it is unconquerable and every persecution will only add to its inner strength.” 

His promise to end terrorism: “. . .we must not dodge this struggle, but prepare for it, and for this reason acquire armament which alone offers protection against violence.  Terror is not broken by the mind, but by terror.” 

His belief that the Ten Commandments were the foundation of Nazi Germany: “The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there’s no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul.” 

His desire for birth on demand. “And marriage cannot be an end in itself, but must serve one higher goal, the increase and preservation of the species and of the race.  This alone is its meaning and its task.”

And God seemed to favor him.  “I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany.” “I follow the path assigned to me by Providence. . .there is a God. . .And this God again has blessed our efforts during the past 13 years.”  February, 1940

Guns and Hard Candy

Guns and Hard Candy

My sister, brother and I made our Santa Claus lists from catalogs—Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, Bella Hess. We were a farm family in north West Texas and when Santa didn’t deliver our mail order presents in time for Christmas, our parents told us that Santa sometimes dropped by on New Year’s Eve on his way back to the North Pole and maybe he would leave our Christmas wish then. And he did. But it was another whole week after we had been waiting months for Christmas.

Stores in our town didn’t have Santas but sometimes he was driven down Main Street standing in the back of a pickup and the elves at his feet threw unwrapped hard candy. I never really looked at Santa. I went for the hard stuff.

Santa did come to our two-room school house once. Our two teachers passed out bags of hard candy and Santa, who looked a lot like Dude Byars in women’s makeup with a mess of cotton covering the rest of his face, said, “Ho ho ho,” as though those were the only words Santa knew. The spectacle scared us so that Santa was never invited back.

We got another bag of hard candy at our Church Christmas Eve celebration, and another bag of hard candy under our Christmas tree. Our dentist handed out hard candy with both hands. We racked up enough hard candy to rot our molars before our wisdom teeth arrived.

We didn’t have a chimney. We lined up our boots in front of the radiant gas heater that kept the house toasty for up to five feet in front of it. When Mother opened the oven door to baste the turkey, we basked in the blast of heat. We put our hands on the outside of the oven to warm them, then we emptied our boots of an orange in each boot followed by hardshell nuts and hard candy to put our cold feet in the fire-roasted but sticky boots.

We knelt before the tree to discover what Santa had brought us. And also to keep our sockless feet from pressing against the overheated leather. My brother and I always got cap pistols, until we graduated to BB guns, then a .22, then a shotgun. In Texas guns outnumber armadillos and Christmas blows in locked and loaded.

I spent one Christmas away from home in the Marines with 71 hours of liberty and no place to go. I hitchhiked to L.A. and spent one night in an all-night movie theater, one night in the bus station where I could sleep sitting up. If I stretched out I was awakened by a cop, who was respectful of my uniform, tapping on the sole of my shoes. I sat up and dozed until sunlight. I returned to the barrack where I could stretch out but had to get up at reveille, fall in outside for roll call, march to chow and return to duty. It was the longest liberty I ever had.

I spent one Christmas in Vietnam and handed out hard candy and toys to kids who had never tasted candy, seen picture puzzles or sidewalks on which to skate sent by people back in the world who wanted to help. The Marines had removed war toys—guns, tanks, helicopters, war planes with which the children were familiar and taught them how to throw footballs and frisbees, skip rope alone or with others, hopscotch, and of course, there were baby dolls, white babies, blonde babies, Barbie babies.

My wife, Jean, gave me a hunting rifle one Christmas and an automatic shotgun another Christmas. I always think of guns at Christmas.

When I was little I loved stuffed animals more than guns and I had asked Santa for a stuffed bear in a military uniform. America was at war. There was no bear of no kind under the tree. What had I done that was so bad? My thumb had been crushed when I was six-months-old and the nail was attached only to the first half of the nail bed. I could point my thumb at a girl and bend half the nail back to make her scream, but that wasn’t mean. That was using my potentials as Dad always told us.

I found a dead hawk that someone had shot and took it to Dad. He cut off one claw, tied a string to a tendon and I could pull the string and the claw would close in some girl’s hair or maybe the back of her neck, but that wasn’t bad. The other boys thought it was funny. One of the older boys gave me a nickel for it. He asked to see it and when I handed it to him to look at he walked away with it. I followed him asking for it back, my voice a little louder each time so that the teachers would notice and he gave me a nickel.

I still had another claw but I would have to tell Dad what happened to the first one.

And who told Santa? I had always been faithful to Santa and Santa had been faithful to me. I had heard older boys at school laughing about—No.

“Mom, Bob didn’t get a stuffed animal,” my sister said. I wasn’t really crying but my cheeks were wet and cold. Bettye was the oldest and she protected me from my brother who was older, bigger and didn’t like stuffed animals unless they were mine.

“Did Santa bring you a teddy bear?” Mother asked, while I waited for the dreaded another whole week speech.

“No, Ma’am,” I said and sniffed.

“Did you look everywhere?” she asked.

Why didn’t Mother say that Santa would bring it on his way back to the North Pole? I had been good and Santa—why couldn’t he stop by on New Year’s Eve?

“Jim, have you seen Bob’s teddy bear?” Mother asked

“No ma’am.”

My heart failed me. Santa Claus failed me. I was afraid to speak for fear I would cry.

“Maybe Santa dropped it outside,” Mother said. What kind of Santa was that? Spilling presents all over the world and breaking kid’s hearts?

Mother opened the door and the porch was covered with snow. There were boot prints in the snow. Then I saw the stuffed bear. It wasn’t in uniform but that didn’t matter. I picked it up to hug but it was cold and wet. Santa had dropped my bear in the snow and had ruined it. I knew I was going to cry and I was too big.

Mother said, “I’ll put it in the oven and when it’s dry you can play with it.”

I was still in my flannel drop-seat longhandles and my boots were wet and cold but I walked around the corner of the house to follow the tracks. The tracks went to the garage and the barn. Dad must have opened the barn doors so the reindeer could get inside where it was warmer and the toys wouldn’t get wet. I didn’t know why the tracks went to the garage. I could think about that later when it no longer mattered.

I went inside to stand by the stove to shiver and get warm and watch my bear dry. Anybody could drop a bear in the snow. It wasn’t Santa’s fault. I knew that. Probably one of the deer had knocked it out of Santa’s bag and Santa hadn’t noticed. Reindeer were like that.

Wait ‘til I told the kids at school. I had seen Santa’s boot prints in the snow. Dad had let the reindeer into the barn. I had almost seen Santa. And he wasn’t scary like he was when he came to school. He was a little scary but he loved everyone. How could I have ever doubted Santa?

Mother handed me the bear. It was almost too hot to hold and the oven had singed a bald spot on it. Santa almost ruined my present but I pressed it to my heart. I had a teddy bear. It wasn’t factory perfect with shiny buttons on its uniform but I loved it all the more for its imperfections.

Santa stopped by on New Year’s Eve and left me a bag of hard candy and a heavy-glass pistol filled with tiny pills of hard candy. I broke it almost before I ate all the candy inside it.

My favorite Christmas was one that Jean and I and Deirdre and Brigid had celebrated alone. Our special Christmas. Christmas trees had not arrived, no houses were decorated, no Santas had appeared in stores. It was our special Christmas because I was leaving for Vietnam. Brigid, who counted the long days until her twelfth birthday, had won a ribbon at her school’s bicycle contest and the opportunity to compete in the city-wide contest. Brigid wanted a racing bicycle with gears for Christmas. Deirdre, who was almost fourteen, wanted an Appaloosa filly. She and Brigid each had a horse but Deirdre wanted a filly she could train and later breed.

I don’t remember what I or Jean received. It didn’t matter. We would make our girls’ dream come true.

I woke up to our traditional breakfast tacos. Jean and the girls had been up for an hour, Jean preparing breakfast, the girls almost beside themselves trying to be quiet so as not to wake me. There was neither a bicycle nor a filly under the tree. After the first round of tacos, I put on my Santa cap and passed out presents. We each opened our presents, expressing thanks and admiring what the others had received. Yet, something seemed to be missing. We asked Brigid to go outside and see if Santa spilled a present on the way inside. Sure enough, a careless reindeer had knocked a racing bicycle with gears out of Santa’s sleigh.

Santa was bringing Deirdre’s filly from Pleasanton and they had not arrived. We told Deirdre her Christmas package was late but would be delivered. It was our Christmas but the mail still ran. Brigid asked if she could ride her bicycle until Deirdre’s present arrived. We whispered to her that Deirdre was getting her Christmas wish and let her take her bike for a spin. She returned and asked us to watch her run through the gears.

Deirdre waited outside for her package to arrive. Brigid rode her bicycle on short jaunts ready to race home when Deirdre’s gift arrived. Jean and I waited inside watching for a truck and horse trailer. When the truck stopped and began backing the trailer down the driveway, Brigid raced for home. Jean and I went outside and Deirdre watched, afraid to believe she was getting her Christmas wish. Then the rancher opened the tailgate and introduced us to Teresa Babe or Teresa B, as Deirdre called her, a registered Appaloosa with a Joker B bloodline. Deirdre waited years for Teresa B’s promised spots to appear. They never did but it didn’t matter.

Maybe there are no perfect Christmases free of broken dreams, old sorrows, fearful futures, ancient grievances, dark shadows of Christmases past. But this was ours. We sang our hymns, prayed our prayers. There were other Christmases with much of the world celebrating the same day, with grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and some little girl crying because she didn’t get the bicycle that she didn’t know she wanted until Brigid got one. But this was our special Christmas.

No need for Santa on his way back to the North Pole.

Our special Christmas was the last Christmas that the four of us were together. Shortly after I returned from Vietnam Brigid died still short of her twelfth birthday.

I had been faithful and Santa failed me. There’s no way to describe the hollowness of our family, the void, the silence, the extra plate, cup, spoon that no one wanted to see and no one wanted to remove. Laughter had vanished and might never reappear; photographs appeared documenting a missing person. The little dog that Brigid had rescued waited for her at the end of our road every day, although the bus didn’t stop anymore.

The death of every child is violent, regardless of the cause, blowing a huge hole in dreams of future birthdays, Christmases, Easters and hunts for plastic eggs until candy inside the eggs was replaced with hard cash, Thanksgivings with family, friends, food and football; Halloweens with scary masks and funny tricks, graduations, weddings, anniversaries, new births, reunions, trips to Mexico. The kind of violence no automatic weapons, extended clips or bump stocks can stop, no Pentagon budget can prevent.

We each were in our own private hell, missing a piece of ourselves, each of us knowing that two other people needed us to help them carry their unbearable burden when we were driven into the earth by our own unbearable load. I wanted to run someplace where I felt no one else’s pain so that I could endure my own. Jean held us together as best she could. Jean and I talked of a suicide pact but it couldn’t be murder/suicide. We had to go together but we couldn’t both desert Deirdre. Which of us was the stronger to stay behind and help Deidre with her grief and the confusion of teenage years?

Teresa B. was a companion when Deirdre needed to be alone but not by herself so that Deirdre could talk and cry. Deirdre’s friend, Pam, called us Mom and Dad, and brought laughter into the house.

What had we done that was so bad? Nothing. We were ordinary parents, giving our children what we believed they needed—love, time, vacations, vaccinations, braces, regular checkups with their doctors, education, Sunday School, piano lessons for Deirdre, guitar lessons for Brigid, riding lessons for both, although they believed they knew everything they needed to know. Some things spilled. Some things were singed or got wet. Most of all, we wanted to give them a safe home and a safe life that every parent wants to give and no parent can give. Not even God.

I endure Christmas with its joy as fake as the snow in store windows, as false as Rudolph’s red nose, as artificial as the lighted Christmas trees.

Santa will return on New Year’s Eve, but it’s the longest week of the year.

***

This story first appeared in the February 2018 issue of Voices de la Luna. http://www.voicesdelaluna.org

Restoring the Constitution

Forget gun control. We need to restore the parts of the Constitution that were nullified by the “felonious five,” as Vincent Bugliosi called them on another occasion.

If you graduated from a public high school you should know that the Continental Congress required every colony (state) to form a militia; that the reason the British were marching to Concord and Lexington was to seize the armories where militia weapons were kept, and that after the British surrendered ending the Revolutionary War Gen. George Washington disbanded the army.

There were British troops on the Canadian border and the British Navy ruled the sea. There were French settlements to the south, Spanish settlements in the southwest and Indians, some of them hostile, on every side but the seaside. When the Founding Fathers were writing the Constitution and forming the federal government, who protected them? The militia. When they wrote, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state”, what other militia provided security?

President George Washington signed two militia acts. The first required all eligible males between 18 and 45 to enroll in the militia and muster for training. The second act stated explicitly what weapons, ammunition and equipment they were to obtain at their own expense, keep at home rather than in the armory and bear to muster.

Let’s reinstate the first clause of the Second Amendment, and also, Article 2, Section 2, “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several states, when called into the actual Service of the United States…”

Let’s reclaim Article 1, Section 8: “The Congress shall have power to provide for organizing, arming, and discipling, the Militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the services of the United states…” and, “The Congress shall have power to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrection, and repel invasion.”

Does any high school graduate honestly believe that “calling forth the militia to suppress insurrection” means providing malcontents with access to assault rifles and unlimited ammunition to defeat the US military and overthrow the elected government?

Those who took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” voided part of the Constitution in order to render a new and unique interpretation of one clause. The effect is to give the Second Amendment priority over the First Amendment. When firearms are present there is less freedom of religion, less freedom of speech, of assembly, of the press or to petition. Let’s rescue the Constitution.

Hacking the Election

US Intelligence officials met separately with President Obama and President-Elect Trump, January 5-6, to inform them of the intelligence they had gathered regarding Russian hacking attacks on US agencies, officials and citizens during the presidential campaign. Previously the president-elect had tweeted his doubts that the Russian government interfered with the election. He continued to believe Vladimir Putin rather than the US Intelligence Agencies.

A very brave and patriotic young woman, Reality Leigh Winner 25, a six-year veteran of the US Military, answered a question that many asked but that no one had answered: Did the Russians hack into the active voting process, the voting machines and the machines that tabulated the results? Ms. Winner is accused of “removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.” She could face 10 years in prison.

The classified documents (05/05/17) were published by The Intercept (06/05/17) with some parts redacted as requested by the the government. The Intercept reported, “Russian Military Intelligence (GRU) executed a cyberattack on at least one US voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election.”

In Esquire (01/13/18), Charles P. Pierce wrote, “The Russian hackers hit systems in 39 states”, and “Thirty-seven states reported finding traces of the hackers in various systems… In two others — Florida and California — those traces were found in systems run by a private contractor managing critical election systems.”

Mr. Pierce further reported, “The Department of Homeland Security tried to declare state election systems to be part of our critical national infrastructure…The Republicans in Congress shot that down… Some states declined to cooperate fully with DHS.”

The Russians appeared to have the capability to change the vote counts, so why didn’t they? An employee of the Russian Internet Research Agency told the Washington Spectator (01/01/18), “Our goal was…to make Americans hate their own government. To sow discord, dissatisfaction, to lower Obama’s approval.” If that’s true, they enjoyed spectacular success. It’s hard to find a citizen who doesn’t hate at least one branch of the government, at least one Republican or Democratic politician.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo told the Washington Post (01/30/18) that Russia hadn’t scaled back its election interference efforts. This is an election year. So who is protecting us from further and perhaps worse interference? The President is still in denial. Congressional Republicans are busy attempting to undermine the Department of Justice, The FBI, and Special Counsel Mueller.

Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity expert at Harvard’s Berkman Center, said, “Elections do two things: one choose the winner, and two, they convince the loser.” Schneier also said, “The problem we have is that voting security doesn’t matter until something happens, and then after something happens, there’s a group of people who don’t want the security, because whatever happened, happened in their favor.”
(presidential expletive)