Because it all didn't begin last week

The year I turned 30 was 1974.This was a year when I was starting Graduate school. My political activities were winding down. Vietnam was clearly lost by then in any case. So in fact it was sort of a victory, right?  But my political cohorts and I were also wandering around (and lost) what do we do next? I chose graduate school. For my birthday one of my close friends, Bob, an English lecturer on the verge of getting his phD gave me a copy of the Iliad translated by Richard Lattimore. Bob wrote on the cover page. "Because it all didn't begin in the 20th century. Happy Birthday, Bob."

What did he mean by that? What he was reminding me was that with my penchant for Hemingway and Fitzgerald as well other early 20th century writers that there was far more to understanding the human race than a few American writers who defined the Lost Generation. Even if their political stances, I'll say Dos Passos and Steinbeck and some others who fit my own political thoughts.  When I thought about it he was right. Most of what I had taken in College, outside of a Shakespeare course and 17&18th Century English drama was focused on the 20th century, including philosophy classes which only examined Existentialism.  

What a barbarian I must have seemed? Or was I? At least I was looking at historic matters which affected the current situation. I was spanning at a minimum fifty years. 

But what about today? We have a generation growing up before our eyes who will be taking over the world pretty soon but whose attention span is ruled by video games, streaming services and their handheld devices. So many strike me as not stupid or dumb or even all that ignorant just not cognizant of that which may have happened before last week. So kids pay attention and just remember and repeat this as a mantra to yourself-- "Because it all didn't begin last week."         

Selma I don't know why I never wrote this up or posted it before but this is what happened the night of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, March 7th 1965

Listening to Congressman John Lewis on a repeat of the Colbert Report one June morning in 2012, reminded me of an incident that I participated in. Lewis has just written about the first march across the bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, AKA “Bloody Sunday.” ("Across that Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change"). I was home on weekend liberty from the Navy. I paid attention to the news and absorbed what had happened, but in those days I never knew how to argue anything or express myself very clearly. However, I had paid attention to the civil rights movement from the days of the freedom riders. Though I held the standard view among ignorant, white suburban teenagers at the time, I think there was an element of curiosity that I harbored and a sense of courage that I may have perceived but couldn’t give voice to, certainly never to my Irish friends and hardly to my family.

But first just a note about my family: Racial epithets were not something that was said very much at home. Maybe sometimes they were but there wasn’t a litany of racism. My parents had friends who were not all white and Catholic. My Mother in particular had a black friend from work and she brought her home for dinner once to our white, suburban neighborhood. That was in the mid 1950's. I was about 11 years old and very nervous about meeting her. No doubt she must have been nervous and probably worse scared. My father, who generally kept silent about such things, actually about most things, had Jewish band mates that he traveled and hung around with. His hero beyond sports heroes was Benny Goodman and he also had an uncle who eloped with a black woman. His best friend growing up was a Cuban who I was named after even though the first born son should be named after his grandfather. Both parents were FDR, Kennedy type democrats and members of unions. My grandmother, my Mother’s Mother, who I was very close to and lived with us tended to be the one who uttered the most racist comments though she spoke fluent Yiddish and was friends with the Jewish elderly woman next door and they played bingo together.

We lived in a fairly liberal school district even though it was a Republican run town and most teachers expressed what we would call today “liberal” views. As working class people, though, my parents didn't exactly fit the mold of Ozzie and Harriet, the Cleavers or any other TV family. As a child I was probably fearful of the "otherness" of Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Asians, Jews but I don't recall having ill will or hatred towards any others because they were different from me. In the 1950’s there were a lot of public service announcements. I recall animated cartoons about race and religion and how we should treat everyone as equals. While sitting there watching TV and not really paying full attention it still sunk in. For example I still remember this ditty:

“Don’t be a schmo, Joe.
Be in the know, Joe.
Religion and race just don’t count in this place!
So don’t be a schmo, Joe.
Be in the know, Joe.
Remember that and you won’t fall on your face!”

Yet the first time I recall feeling simpatico for real (or some kind of human feeling of recognition) with a black person was when I was on a train trip returning from Hollywood, FL and going to NY in the summer of 1960. I encountered segregation the whole time we traveled south and back and especially I remember the segregated bathrooms and water fountains at a stopover in Jacksonville and recall feeling very odd about it at the time, that there was something really weird. That this was what I had seen on TV or had heard about in social studies, but here it was for real. I was 15. There were also all those small ramshackle buildings that I saw from the train as we passed. Barely fifteen feet or so from the passing train you could see dozens of small black children poorly dressed in rags playing or milling about in the dust though some would wave at the train. And there were the chain gangs just about everywhere working highways when my uncle drove us around south Florida. Most prisoners were black.

On one leg of the return trip from Florida, the only vacant seat that I could find for part of the trip was next to an elderly black woman. There didn't seem to be segregated seating areas on the train. I was extremely anxious about sitting next to a black person. Plus I was sure everyone else who was white was looking at me. My father just ushered me over to the seat. The lady looked very old, older than my Sicilian grandparents who were pretty old at the time. But for the first time I could see the face of a black person who reminded me of my Sicilian grandmother, only darker. She had a lined, crinkly face and tired eyes that were more golden than brown, short knotted gray hair and she looked up at me without a smile or any kind of acknowledgement and seemed to sigh and then looked away out of the window. She wore an old washed out printed house dress and some kind of worn out looking shoes, and she hugged a small satchel to her breast. She was very small as her feet hardly touched the floor of the train. I'm not the type to talk to strangers even to this day and so I sat there quietly trying to read a magazine that I had though I couldn't concentrate and I was fascinated by this tiny woman and I kept stealing glances at her the whole time she was on the train. It probably was from that time on that I realized that there was just one human race and that everyone deserved to be treated as such.

Today I marvel at the thought of that woman. Why was she on the train? Was she traveling alone? Where was she going? Obviously she had lived through the worst excesses of Jim Crow and was probably a descendant of a slave once removed. Did I frighten her as a white person, a hulking white pimply faced white teenager? If only I could have had a conversation with her, would I have been automatically enlightened? Still whatever the facts are of my life these days and how it evolved to the world view that I possess, it all probably started to change at that encounter when I recognized that "the other" was exactly the same as me and mine.

So back to that weekend in March-- That Sunday evening's news that I watched in a Blarney Stone (or maybe it was "Smiths") or one of those types of bars at the time across the street from Port Authority was filled with TV reports from Selma and showed clips of the fighting and the police brutality. And those clips were shown a few times. Every time they were shown the drunks at the bar, the white drunks would hoot and yell epithets not at the police but at the marchers. And since there were a couple of hours yet for me to get on the bus, I drank and drank by myself and I eventually got pretty drunk, but was still able to walk. I got on one of the buses that were reserved for servicemen, mainly sailors. I knew no one on the bus. Usually I traveled with sailors from my ship who lived in NY but this time I was solo. We left Port Authority and headed into the Lincoln tunnel. I guess the Selma story and what I saw on TV haunted me, and in my drunken state I got up and started making a speech.

What I said I don't really remember. Truth is I remember none of the events as they were told to me when I was finally sober, but it was purportedly a drunken rambling speech about how we are all brothers and whatnot. And as I looked around I saw a black sailor and I singled him out and cried to the heavens that he is just like us. The black sailor tried to shrink away, obviously not wanting the attention. There were shouts of anger at me but I didn't care. Right in the middle of the Lincoln tunnel, it was around midnight after all, the bus driver halted the bus, got out of his seat, grabbed hold of me and made the sailor sitting in the first seat get up and change seats with me. He told me to shut up and sleep it off which I guess I did. I awoke to daylight as we stopped at Little Creek, VA to let the bulk of us off. A sailor said to me as were getting off. "You know you almost caused a riot last night." And then he proceeded to tell me what I did and what transpired as I didn't recall any of it.

Today as I reflect on his words; "You know you almost caused a riot last night," I wish I had. 

The Summer of my discontent

When I was graduated from high school June of 1962, the next day my father insisted that I start looking for work.  It's not that I hadn't worked. Since I was 11 years old, the last six years of my life, I had a job of some kind. I delivered newspapers, I worked in a drug store as an abused helper, (that's another story) I caddied at the public golf course, I cut lawns in the summer and shoveled walks in winter for my neighbors for cash and there were the occasional truck unloading jobs and the times I worked for Mr. L and put the Sunday papers together for him every weekend. And one time I got a three day job with the Clyde Beatty Cole circus when it set up in town.  In between all that I had to mow my own lawn, shovel my own walks and clean the basement and take care of the dogs & feed the cats.  The work he wanted me to do though was to get a full time job and he wanted me to turn over half my wages for room and board.  I guess he was trying to teach me something. My own desire though was to just get drunk or high with my friends. And weekends I'd do that.

I did get a full time job that summer.  I worked for a diminutive man, named Helmut Hoffman, in a small shop in an East Farmingdale, L.I. industrial park, where he made industrial sized cameras to order.  My job was to assist Ray his assistant repairing the wooden film slides used by professional studio photographers. I guess I was an assistant's assistant.  The company "Hoffman Camera" was one of two firms that repaired them. His was the only one on the  East coast.  Mainly my job was to do the grunt work. I unloaded trucks, swept the shop, cleaned up the scraps of wood and metal, dump  the trash and anything Hoffman said I had to do.  Sometimes he had me doing repetitive work, drilling holes in the small pieces of wood that made up the frames of the slides and also cutting slots in them with a table saw. Even with the noise though I could hear Hoffman's radio blasting out some talk show. I can't remember who it was, but it must have been early talk radio.  My job paid $1.15/ hr. After taxes I got about $32.00 a week. Ray, the assistant, married with 2 kids and paying for a car made $1.50 an hour.

Hoffman was a very disagreeable individual.  His thick German accent was sometimes hard to understand.  And if you didn't respond fast enough he'd give you a kick in the shin or a slap in the back of the head. Usually it was more than a love tap. The hours were 9 to 5:30.  Lunch was a half hour but if you didn't bring lunch there was a truck that came around selling sandwiches and coffee.  But that was too expensive so I always brought lunch.  The only way I could get to work was by taxi. That cost a dollar a day in the morning. At night I'd walk home about 3 miles. But a dollar day meant 5 dollars a week.  I argued that if I turned over half my salary every week that would leave me with $11. Finally my father agreed to only take $10.00 which left me with about $17.00. Enough to get high on. 

So we got a half hour for lunch. And Hoffman allowed us 15 minutes each half a day to go to the toilet and to do nothing. I'd go outside and smoke cigarettes one after the other.  Ray did too and we'd talk about our dislike of the work. The toilet was incredibly filthy and I was glad I never had to sit on it plus there wasn't toilet paper. Hoffman went to the toilet whenever he liked and he took toilet paper with him. 

After I had been there about two weeks Hoffman took me aside outside and said in his German accent: --I see you take the full half hour for lunch every day. I would like you to end your lunch 5 minutes sooner so that you can  reacquaint yourself with the shop and your work.  He turned on his heel and told me to follow him inside.  As I crossed the thresh hold, I see a ball peen hammer sitting on top of a 55 gallon drum.  My fantasy has me picking up the hammer and driving it into the back of his skull.  Fortunately I knew better.

One day Hoffman has to drive to NYC and says he won't be back and gives Ray the keys to close up and gives us our checks.  It's already around 1 PM on a Friday.  So I go back to work on the table saw cutting grooves in the small pieces of wood. After a half hour or so.  Ray stops and signals me to turn off the machine.  He says, let's go into town and buy some wine. We buy a cheap bottle of Gallo red and some potato chips, go back to the shop and fuck off, smoke cigarettes, laugh and carry on and turn on Hoffman's radio to listen to rock n roll.  Both of us tipsy now or worse we decide to finish up our work as quitting time is at 5:30 and it should look like we did some work. I go back to the saw and start cutting grooves. I'm not being careful and as I push one of the pieces of wood through, it flies away and my right index and middle finger hit the blade. Deep cuts, blood flies everywhere. I yell to Ray.  He runs over with a dirty rag and covers my hand.  He drives me to the hospital on Hempstead Turnpike not far from my house.  And there I wait at emergency for awhile bleeding all over the floor.

I'm out of work two weeks. I'm out of money.  I return. It's impossible to use my right hand to do anything. It hurts even with the self-medication. Hoffman is not happy with me, but I make up a story claiming that because there was no guard, no way of using an implement to push through the wood on the saw's blade that it is his fault and that I now have  a workman's comp case. He gives me light duty. He expects me to just keep things cleaned up. By the end of the week I inform him that I am quitting. In my 2 week's hiatus I got another job but it wasn't going to start until after the summer.  This time the job is at Republic aviation at $2.16/hr. They made F-105's.  (And that's another story) Later that year before I go in the Navy I decide to not go through with the Workman's Comp case even though the lawyer my father got says I could get money. As much as I hated Hoffman, I didn't think that any of it was his fault but only mine and the fact that I had been drinking.   

 

Communication Today

In the days before telephones, people sent notes to each other.  The note usually had some kind salutation and some kind of polite sign-off. When they met in person, there was probably at least a handshake. And when they departed, they said goodbye which like so many languages had the word God in it. Good refers to God. Adios. Adieu, etc. Not that it matters to me. But it was just a polite expression. Letters written always had greetings and some form of well wishes. And then came the telephone and the tradition persisted to some degree: Hello? Good bye, Take care, see you soon and so on. There was ham radio with sign-ons and sign-offs. And then arose the digital age. E-mail still allows for such greetings and in fact I will still use some kind of greetings to friends, but treating it as a kind of informal letter writing communication. But now we have social media, where we have "friends, followers or following." There are rarely ever greetings. Just statements, contradictions, smart aleck retorts, smiley or weeping faces, emojis that are supposed to express among other things emotional feelings. There's a lot of one upmanship going on, so much so it seems like an endless competition. Yet these are our "friends."

We wonder or at least some wonder why the fabric of society is fraying. Whereas the digital age has done so much to move humanity, who could acquire such tools, forward by leaps and bounds, quantum leaps, so to speak. But at what cost? Civility? Politeness? True human social behavior? To my mind these small social conventions slowly disappearing are the equivalent to the kinds of social behavior, social animals require, grooming among primates is a good example. Without that kind of social behavior the clan (not Klan) or troop falls apart. Friends? Social adhesion? Now robotic behavior because a good portion of social media are robots and the humans can't tell the difference any more.

Winners and Losers

When there are winners there are always losers, so I have noted most of my life. 

However, let's take our country for example. Wars of our own making which we alone have started, we have not done so well in. Vietnam, for example, is a such a case. We lost. That war lasted unofficially from about 1954 when we inherited the situation from the French till 1975 when the last American left. I won't assault you with the numbers except for two: Democrats and Republicans. It started in a Republican administration, then a Democratic administration, another Democrat, a Republican and then one more Republican. Winners and Losers. Clearly we know who the winners are.

The 21st Century has Gulf War II which is in another part of the world and is another case in point. It included Afghanistan, Iraq and other Mideast countries by proxy, and  rages on in Syria and points west and is now almost 16 years old with no finale in sight. Don't ask me to explain why but it probably was precipitated by Gulf War I, which was fielded in a Republican administration but carried on through a Democratic one. Again I come up with two numbers, Democrats and Republicans. Gulf War II commenced in a full two term Republican Administration, then a full two term Democratic administration and now continues under a Republican Administration. So far not much has been won by anyone.We have plenty of losers.

Now Korea which is on everyone's lips again is an unusual case and in the proximity of Vietnam. The U.S. reacted to a North Korean invasion of South Korea which we were occupying at the time. And when the U.S. beat back the attack across the 38th parallel, we couldn't leave well enough alone and decided to push on into North Korea causing China to participate against us. The Korean War, though hostilities stopped early on but with no peace treaty, has lasted through 12 Presidential administrations and once again the important number is two: Democrats and Republicans. Not one has figured it out how to make peace. Will there be any winners and losers in the future in this spooky endeavor?  Nope just losers irradiating.

So out of my 3 examples no way I can say 2 out of 3 ain't bad. All I can say is that it's all bad and we're all losers. And with one exception there is a winner but at a horrific cost. But those two numbers Democrats and Republicans keep on rolling along and like Bart Simpson they all say "I didn't do it" while pointing fingers at each other and both act like they're winners. And like I said at the outset, when there are winners, there are losers even when the winners are imaginary.      

Some thoughts on Russian spying in the U.S.

Some thoughts on Russian spying in the U.S. These are my most recent. . .

Let’s focus on the concept of “useful idiots.” It is someone used as a tool that may be completely innocent or may be participatory in some degree in a spy operation but not fully aprised of the extent and/or scope of an operation. Ultimately the useful idiot can also become the “fall guy.”

My view: The operation put forth by the Russian FSB may have gotten some lucky breaks in particular the fact that so many people associated with the Trump campaign happened to have had connections to Russian businessmen and governmental officials which probably was just business and innocent of spying and collusion. (except for that meeting Donnie Jr. had) Thus, useful idiots.

What was the scope and goals of the operation, an operation that must have changed over the time and when did it start?

By mid 2015 there were many who were already vying to be the Republican Presidential candidate. It was pretty obvious by then that Hillary would be the Democratic candidate. Bernie hadn‘t formally announced until May/June 2015. And for a brief period he was also looked upon as a joke. Ted Cruz had already announced March 2015 and the rest of the Republican crowd followed. Trump announced June 2015. Russian intelligence was watching all this and I think after Trump entered the race and was gaining popularity by late summer that the scope of the operation widened but they also had their focus.

I believe the operation was first hatched by late 2014 after the Republicans got complete control of congress. It was clear that divisions between Rep/Dem, Conserv/Lib were very deep. The goal then was to further these divisions and sow chaos and discord in the U.S. around the Presidential election. Hillary was already under investigation by congressional Republicans for Benghazi and the FBI for her personal email server. So that was another benefit for the FSB to sow discontent. The operation would take advantage of that to help drive that wedge between her and angry skeptical American voters, namely Republicans and independents. It is supposed that because Putin hated Hillary that that was the focus. No, not the focus just another way into the operation to disrupt the election, to cause dissent, to discredit individuals and for people to lose trust in their government. The goals were much larger than just taking revenge on Hillary Clinton. The goal was to somehow destroy the U.S. association with allies in Europe. Would Russian intelligence do this? No, not completely. They were relying on the discord and chaos that would result.

In addition “fake” news was planted in stories throughout the internet and made to look like acceptable “real” news. So many of these fake stories ended up in credible media. Cable news programs helped by focusing on one distracting story after another. The same as they are doing today. (It’s what our viewers want to hear.) Hillary and Bernie fought it out for almost a year and supporters of both were more concerned about defeating the other candidate while Trump’s ascendency was treated as pure entertainment in both late night TV comedy shows and cable news. This was either a lucky break for the FSB or they helped by planting fake news to stir this pot. Certainly the DNC hack which was not fake news really stirred the pot. I believe that she did not get the vote she should have gotten as a result of this discord.

When it looked like Trump was going to swamp the field, other parts of the operation kicked in. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Jared Kushner and of course Donald Trump all had connections to Russians and the Russian government for various business dealings. (Useful idiots). When people like Jeff Sessions and Reince Priebus had meetings with the Russian ambassador, the FSB probably couldn’t contain themselves with joy. Wow look at all the connections! The seeds were now planted whereby the operation could be easily rolled up and blame would be aportioned to all of them. In other words it was your classic set up for fall guys.

I imagine that they were so surprised when Trump actually won. (As surprised as he was) I don’t think this was the part of the plan they were relying on. But fortune smiled upon them. The plan, according to me BTW, was that if Hillary was elected she’d be so discredited and the country would be so divided that it may have done far more damage than if Trump was elected. In fact the FSB could continue their operation to sow discord after a Hillary electoral win. The Democrats wouldn’t be investigating anything. Their candidate won. The Democrats would be working to continue the programs already in effect since Obama, wanting to figure out how to win back congress and wouldn’t have the time and couldn’t justify spending resources or using up political capital to do any investigating. Besides Republicans were in charge of congress and would be still hounding Hillary and voting to overturn Obamacare. I doubt there would have been rapprochement between HRC and most Republicans. And the Democrats would be trying to win over the electorate who didn’t vote for her. But just in case there was a problem the FSB still had their useful idiots to take the fall.

With Hillary as President, a woman, half the country would be even angrier than the half that is now angry with Trump. And who knows where that would have led. That is the half that owns most of the guns. Right now they think they are in catbird seat with Trump as their President.

I think ultimately that all of the investigations into Trump won’t turn up anything that he may have done that was illegal. I don’t think that he will be found to be in collusion nor did he engage anyone in Russian intelligence to help him try to win the election. He’s the kind of narcissist who thinks he is superior and doesn’t need any help and could do it all on his own. All he ever wanted from the Russians was to make money. He did use some of the hacking when he was told that Russians hacked into DNC and combined with the HRC e-mail problems and he used that information to his benefit. But he is still a useful idiot and also a fall guy by association. Of course I don’t pity him. Just don’t see him going to jail. He still might get pushed aside by the 25^th amendment for complete incompetence or if we’re lucky die from a stroke or heart attack.

But what does it all mean? One thing is don’t follow the cable news shows. They focus on one mostly irrelevant thing after another our useful idiot does for the short period of time that it is in vogue and then they move on. They have little regard for historical evidence, form no overall framework of ideas into which the little petty events can fit into. And they ignore all other issues to the detriment of their viewers, most of whom are in our demographic. The other thing is we may end up with nothing, nothing at all after all the investigating. If that is the case we could end up being in thrall to Trump and Trump like politicians for a long long time to come and we will be going backwards . . .

My last trip to Spain

I've been Spain three times. All those times via ship/boat. Twice I was in the Navy. The last time I was a wandering traveler. That last time, 1977, I went to Spain I took a Traghetto from Palermo to Livorno and it was the most pleasant of trips, cloudless and comfortable with a view of a gorgeous setting sun into the sea/sky horizon. Once there I took a train to Genoa and left the following day on another Traghetto, this time to Barcelona. We encountered the worst storm I had ever been in since a hurricane in the Caribbean in 1964. There was a lot of crying going on among the passengers, not to mention vomiting and crapping but I had been in worse.   I left Spain twice the same way, by naval vessel. The final time I took a bus to Marseilles while recovering from a food poisoning well past the vomiting stage and not having eaten in two days in time grew incredibly hungry but with not a morsel of food and stopping at a rest stop in France, I had no Francs only Pesetas and could not buy even a piece of bread, I went through the cafeteria taking the scraps of food left in trays on the tables. Desperation it was. Some man shouted at me in French. I gave him the Italian chin flick and headed for the bus. I tell you this because today is the fortieth anniversary of that last trip. 7/29/1977. Today is 7/29/2007