War, What Is It Good For?

Many of us remember this rhetorical question from Edwin Starr’s 1970 protest song, War.  He answers his own question in the third line with, “Absolutely nothing, uhh.”  This song protested America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.  The lines “good God y’all” and “absolutely nothing” were ad-libs by Starr and not part of the original lyrics.  These are some of the most remembered ad-libs of all time.

That war was perhaps the first to be so widely covered in the news.  There was a seemingly endless barrage of war-related words, photos, and film.  It was certainly the first war I had any interest in as it was the one going on while my wallet held a draft card.  I was born just days after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, and lived through Korea as a child, but Vietnam was my personal sword of Damocles.  Now I was interested in politics and history.  Now it all had meaning.

Since Korea, the US has been involved in conflicts (read war) in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba (Bay of Pigs), Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, Persian Gulf, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Indian Ocean (Operation Ocean Shield), Libya, Uganda, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.  You may have seen some listed more than once because, contrary to popular belief, nobody ever wins or ends these things.  “Mission accomplished” is never a true statement.  We often have to go back to “accomplish” our mission again and again.

My point here is that, within my lifetime, my own country has been “involved” in a conflict somewhere on earth for most of that time. 

Beyond US involvement in some conflict, the world has been engaged in warlike activity non-stop since Ogg first picked up a stone and threw it at a nearby cave dweller.  With the advent of mass communications, we have all seen the horrors of such wars.  Those images assault our senses.  I am reminded of the character Alex from A Clockwork Orange and his comfort with violence as a way of being.  We eventually become more blasé than outraged.

We are currently being numbed by the visuals of the atrocities of Ukraine being wrought by Vladimir Putin.  The mere fact that a single individual can initiate a conflict so evil that tens of thousands of innocent civilians will die, is difficult to contemplate.  In war, civilians always die, it just seems that in this case, it is part of a strategy.  The civilian casualty was to be a tool of war to force submission.  So far, it has had the opposite effect.  It has steeled the efforts of the Ukrainians and observers in areas of the world where some semblance of a free press still exists.

We have no defense against a primary nuclear threat nation save economic sanctions, and our ability to supply ammunition, weapons, training, intelligence, and logistical support to Ukraine.  Europe is in an especially tenuous position as Russia is the source of much of its energy needs.  Oil, gas, and coal play a significant role in the leverage Putin has over much of the EU.

The ultimate outcome of this most recent display of one man’s greed and thirst for power is undecided.  What has been decided is that cities have been destroyed and tens of thousands of people have been slaughtered or made homeless to satisfy the wants and desires of a single individual.  Putin’s recent appointment of General Alexander Dvornikov, the so-called Butcher of Syria, to lead a new initiative on the Donbas region, speaks volumes as to his sadistic and callous nature.

General Alexander Dvornikov gets Hero of Russia Star from Putin

All war is evil and senseless.  The earth needs to stand still for a moment and reflect.  Perhaps Gort could be of assistance.  You remember Gort, the seven-foot-seven-inch robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still.  From that movie we have, "The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure.  Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom except the freedom to act irresponsibly." – Klaatu.

Vlad (imir) the Putin and his predecessor, Vlad the Impaler share a common personality trait.  Both have used extremely cruel measures to inspire fear in those who got in their way.  There are conspiracy theorists who believe that they are one and the same person.  They claim Putin is immortal and thousands of years old.  There is even a series of 3 photos showing a soldier in 1920 and one in 1941 that bears a resemblance to the Vlad-Putin of today.  Who said this world couldn’t get any stranger?

Vladimir Putin will have to step up his game however if he wants to go down in history as one of the “best” at his profession of instigating human misery.  Joseph Stalin engineered a famine in eastern Ukraine in 1932-33 where 3.9 million died. 

Stalin Rule by Starvation

Stalin imposed collectivism to counter Ukrainian nationalism.  He replaced Ukraine’s small farms with state-run collectives to punish the independence-minded Ukrainians who threatened his authority.  The resultant famine was known as the Holodomor, which was a combination of Ukrainian words for starvation and the infliction of death.  Farmers died of starvation or were imprisoned for not meeting quotas.  With fewer farmers, the famine got worse.  Stalin then moved Russians to Ukraine as replacements.  The whole thing was a disaster of epic proportions.

Stalin’s efforts in Ukraine to eliminate their culture, stamp out their language, and force submission had the opposite effect.  Ukrainian resentment for their Russian overlords brought about a renewed sense of nationalism.  Perhaps that is some of what Vlad the Putin is seeing in the form of resistance from the Ukrainians who haven’t forgotten this previous oppression.

If history is to be the judge, Putin will certainly be labeled another in a long line of Russian despots.  Why he is idolized by Donald Trump and some in the GOP remains a puzzlement.  Where dictators prevail, corruption and abandonment of morality soon follow.  "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely" - English historian Lord Acton (1834–1902).

I will leave you with a few more quotes that deal with the futility of war.  We all know what it is good for.

“To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.” ― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one”

John Lennon - Imagine

WOKE, huh?

Is anyone else tired of hearing the word “woke” being hurled as an insult without context?  This would be where the listener is left to guess at the underlying objectionable behavior?  I hear the word being uttered by those who are clearly attempting to insult.  It seems to be a catch-all disparagement requiring little thought by the speaker, which, in most cases, would be beyond their ability.

Fox News wrote an article (yes, I read them too) that defined woke as anyone who is “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.”  This was reported as a shift from the previous definition of being “well-informed and up-to-date.”  They went on to explain that the changes were brought about by “AAVE” described as African American Vernacular English.  They attribute its origin to a 2008 rap song titled "Master Teacher" by Erykah Badu who repeatedly used the line “I stay woke.”  An even earlier reference and interesting use of the phrase was in a New York Times article, If You’re Woke, You Dig It, published May 20, 1962.  The link to that article is below.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/05/20/140720532.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0&fbclid=IwAR2XBBJOcOinG5BO1boPNULmPRG36e_vzb1E8E5EABIc0vb_4rGqvYeGekE

The term woke became entwined with “cancel culture” in the minds of many conservatives.  While none of the assigned definitions of “woke” are derogatory, in the minds of those who use it as an insult it seems to be a reference to anyone who might be concerned with racial inequalities and injustices.  That inference is red meat to a racist and they get the not-so-inside meaning of the slander.

To me, those who use “woke” as an insult are just lazy.  If you object to something, just spell it out.  Come out of your racial closet and tell us where you truly stand.  Just make sure your sheets are cleaned and pressed.

[postscript]  The NYT article of May 20, 1962, that is linked is an interesting time capsule of that period.  That was 60 years ago. My 1962 was spent as a junior in a totally segregated Florida high school when Miami still had Colored and White water fountains and in many stores, they would have four bathrooms separating the sexes and races.  Are we “woke” yet?

𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐫𝐚 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐩

A Trump supporter friend recently recounted the appointment of Elon Musk to the board of Twitter following Musk’s investment in that company.  He expressed hope that Donald Trump would now regain his Twitter account access.  He questioned whether speech in America was “really free” or was to be controlled by the “Liberals and Dems.”  While I share his concern for free speech, I can’t say I miss the daily barrage of news media memes reposting Trump’s latest epithets of derision.

a damaged Iranian launch site after an explosion. Trump's message tweeted to Iran, "I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One."

I must admit that I knew that Trump’s Twitter account had been suspended indefinitely but, given that this happened amidst the chaos of January 6th, I hadn’t delved into the specifics.  I was somewhat surprised by the weak explanation from Twitter of the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Their reasoning was not that Trump had said something that specifically violated their rules but that his words were being interpreted by others in a specific way.  I then read the two tweets, issued in the days after January 6th, that pushed things over the limit.  In isolation, they were innocuous.  

[I won't post the original content for fear that I could land in Facebook Jail.]

They were, however, considering concurrent events, certainly incendiary.  This pointed out just how thin that tightrope of Free Speech must be.  This reminds me of the classic explanation where speech is not free, specifically, yelling FIRE in a crowded theatre where there was no fire.  In that example it was not the specific word that was the problem, it was the reaction that word would have on others that would unnecessarily put them at risk.

The word “fire” is not, in isolation, a bad word but in certain situations, it could cause injury or death.  In Trump’s case, what he said in his tweets was benign, but given the power of his office, the incendiary environment, and his specific target audience, it was viewed as a call to arms or violence.  In the wink, wink, nudge, nudge times of the QAnon era, free speech may have met its’ final hurdle or met its’ match.

We have always had some limits on free speech but are loathe to enforce those limits except in extraordinary times.  January 6, 2021, had to qualify as one of those times.  When I step on my social media soapbox, I reach maybe a few dozen people, the POTUS reaches millions.  My audience is somewhat restricted to folks I know or know of.  Most are rational folks, the rest of you know who you are.

With QAnon now in congress and in bed with a Justice of the Supreme Court, not to mention the Q t-shirt and red hat crowd of Neanderthals that have crawled out from under their rocks in the last decade, we have a new environment and test of our limits to free speech.  Drawing the line between tolerated and not-tolerated speech is a dangerous task.  It is always highly subjective.

In the case of one Donald J. Trump, this subject is somewhat ironic.  For a man who heaps praise on Vladimir Putin and Russia’s machismo form of government, he forgets that there is no free speech allowed in Russia.  “Free Speech” is only for those who have the reins of the government at that particular moment.  By January 8th when Trump’s Twitter account was suspended, to use a western movie analogy, Trump not only didn’t hold the reins of government, but he had also fallen beneath the wagon, had one hand on the rear axle, and was about to be deposited in the ruts of the dirt road below.

From Wikipedia:  “Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also an exception to free speech.”

I call special attention to the two items listed as, “speech integral to illegal conduct, and speech that incites imminent lawless action.”  I feel it was a real stretch by the “rules enforcement” department of Twitter to deem those two last tweets by DJT to fall within that definition.  But, when you take into account the previous 4+ years of tweets, his widely known public pronouncements of proven falsity (last Washington Post count total was 30,573), his position as the former POTUS, and the events he had already inspired on January 6th, I find fault with Twitter only in the “too little too late” category.

For those of you wondering what the included photo has to do with any of this topic, I will explain.  It was a classified intelligence photo that Trump tweeted from a highly classified U.S. reconnaissance satellite known as USA 224.  It was a "whoops-tweet" that revealed a great deal to our enemies.  For anyone other than the president of the US to have done this would have meant time in Leavenworth.  The photo shows a damaged Iranian launch site after an explosion.  Trump's message tweeted to Iran,  "I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One."  Nobody knows what the purpose of such a message was and why we needed to divulge top secrets to our enemies to get that message out.

"𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙛𝙛 𝙞𝙨 𝙖 𝙛𝙤𝙤𝙡'𝙨 𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙖 𝙤𝙛 𝙜𝙡𝙤𝙧𝙮." -- Bruce Lee

Cancel Culture

In an era of labeling others with names with negative connotations to simplify arguments and avoid debating an issue, the term Cancel Culture has been a common gauntlet thrown by the conservative right to wound the opposition.  This contemporary phrase is supposed to describe the indiscriminate ostracism of others for a transgression, real or perceived.  It has been most often used as a tool to level an otherwise unlevel playing field.  Boycotting a person or business by an aggrieved minority population was effective.

While the concept of “canceling” someone has been around for eons, it has only recently been used as a GOP whipping post.  They deride the “cancel culture” and use it as a means of denigrating those who use it as a tool.  The term “people who live in glass houses” comes to mind.  How often have you heard the right labeling someone “un-Christian” or “unpatriotic” to “cancel” that person without debating the true topic?  Let’s face it, both sides of the political spectrum use “canceling” as a tool, but the right has used its ambivalence to hypocrisy to declare it the exclusive domain of the left.

I will have to admit that some on the left side of the political equation have gone beyond rational thought by having sicked their ire on less important issues.  As a child, I watched as Pepé Le Pew pressed his amorous intentions on resistant females, but I doubt it warped my personality.

Millions of children, and a few adults, have enjoyed the series of Dr. Seuss's books but six titles were recently pulled from production due to insensitive depictions of Asian and Black characters.  Likewise, Disney’s Dumbo, Peter Pan, Swiss Family Robinson, and The Aristocats will be pulled as unsuitable for the under-7 crowd for perceived slights.  In Dumbo the singing crows were likened to minstrel performers.  I watched Dumbo as a child and I couldn't have told you what a minstrel was, these were just singing crows.

In other venues, perhaps it was time to retire brands like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s.  These brands and logos go back to the 19th century and did advance racial stereotypes.  On a more positive note, Nancy Green, Agnes Moody, Lillian Richard, Anna Robinson, Rosa Washington, Anna Short Harrington, Edith Wilson, Ethel Harper, Rosie Lee Moore Hall, and Aylene Lewis were hired as some of the first Black corporate spokespersons.  

On the flip side of the recent rebranding, descendants of models Lillian Richard and Anna Short Harrington had another thought.  Vera Harris of Richard’s family said "I wish we would take a breath and not just get rid of everything.  Because good or bad, it is our history."  Lillian Richard has a historical marker dedicated to her in Hawkins, Texas that is capitalizing on her fame as the “Pancake Capital of Texas.”

The cancel culture exists now and has been with us for a very long time.  It can be an important tool when needed but its' indiscriminate use should be avoided.  We have much to worry about in this world, we just need to focus on the most important ones.  Cancel, shame, boycott, or otherwise level the playing field when necessary but perhaps we should let a cartoon skunk flirt a little, within reason.  A quick note to Disney, maybe you could get Donald a pair of pants before he too becomes a pariah.