399. Epitaph for a Coward

Leave me alone in dignity

You fight for the rest

But death comes free

Leave me alone in dignity

398. Poem: Ken Burns Counterpoint

You come out of Burns's Vietnam man you are saying horror horror never again never again and you read history to see how to avoid such things and you come out saying Christ I don't know I don't know. 

"But surely you know some things.  Like 'Study the hell out of the other guy's strengths before you go to war with him.'  You had seen what bad students our 'brightest and best' had been before we went into Vietnam."

Oh yeah I had seen how big-ass anti-communism had blinded us to what gave them their strength, the passion to get foreigners out of their country, and I saw that big-ass anti-communism was blinding us to a lot and I had learned my lesson: don't be a big-ass anti-communist.

"So you do know one thing."

Did know.  I read some more history and saw how badly big-ass anti-communists were needed when the Greek communists fed by Tito were about to take over Greece in 1947 and the Italian and French communists fed by Stalin were getting stronger and stronger and I said oh for some big-ass anti-communists in Congress to support Harry Truman, who knew we needed to get in there and help.

"So Truman knew a thing or two.  He was not like our Vietnam smart guys."

Well, whatever he knew produced the Marshall Plan and contained communism and kept the Cold War from getting hot and let the two systems compete long enough for the weakness in the communist one to show up and put us on top at the end without any horror horror.  So I have to say yes, he knew.

"And what he knew looks like the same thing the bright guys knew when they got us into Vietnam, get in there and help, but you know it's not the same and you expect them to know that it's not the same.  You know the horror that followed and you know how great the passion to get foreigners out of their country was.  But how could they, at that far time, in the middle of the last century, and that far distance from the foreigner-fighting natives, in Washington D.C., bright or not, how could they know those things?"

By looking more closely at history, by listening more attentively to scholars.  John Cady at Ohio University, specialist in Southeast Asia, could have told them all they needed to know about the passions of the natives.  And, in his books and articles, had told them.  They could have listened but by 1963 listening had gotten very hard.  There was so much noise from the anti-communists, whose asses had been pumped up by Henry Luce, publisher of Time magazine. 

"And what did Henry Luce know?"

He knew that communists were "godless" and that's about all a good Presbyterian, son of missionaries in China, needed to know.  And he knew enough about his readers, a large percentage of the American electorate, to know that his knowledge could easily be passed on.  Pumped into them, I'd say, hardening their asses against communism.  Which has to harden the asses of an administration that wants to get re- elected, which when it sees scholars like Cady in its State Department will get rid of them because their asses are too soft, soft on communism, and leave them only the ears of some college students to take in their words.

"I see the problem, it's ears, direct passages to the brain.  You've got to keep them clear, starting with the wax in individual ears, and you've got to damp down the noise from outside, so that notes like Cady's can be heard, tuned scholar's notes, one for Europe and another for Asia, one forte the other pianissimo, the soft pedal way down.  Hear the difference and you won't produce the horrible sounds you did in Vietnam."

Difference audible in heaven, maybe, the Music of the Spheres, but this is earth.  Your listeners aren't angels.  And the problem isn't ears, it's asses.  Human asses.  They're like tires, you blow air into them and the whole thing gets hard.  Hard in Europe, hard in Asia.  Saves you one place, ruins you in another.

"So we know just what has to be said to the American electorate: quit the hell feeling asses and start hearing tunes, the ones scholars play in college."

Ah, the clear, the clarifying tunes, ah musicians like John Cady.  But hear them down here, among all the voices, all the clamor to get elected?  Hear the tunes when you've got such noise and confusion, and noisemakers knowing that confusion gives them a better chance?  We don't have the listeners capable of it.

"You have students capable of it.  Cady had students capable of it."

But not right away.  They had to find out what college was all about.  What listening was all about.

"But that's education, man.  It can be done.  We've done it.  Do it with the few, you can do it with the many, the many who vote."

Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's what I believed, and thought we had done a lot of.  With so many college graduates in the electorate, millions and millions.  More voters, more than we'd ever had, able to hear the clarifying tune.  And then they help elect a noisemaker, thriving on confusion.  I still think we can do it, but it's going to take many years, many more than I'd thought.

"And what will we do in the meantime?  What do we do now?"

Christ, I don't know, I don't know.

397. The Dogs That Aren't Barking

You have to think that if Donald Trump had done a single thing to a woman — to a date, to an employee, to an intern, to an associate — if he'd grabbed, if he'd tickled, if he'd touched, we'd be hearing a lot about it now.  You know, getting the further thoughts of the touched or grabbed, what it did to them, their shock, how it affected their later lives, what it told them about men with power.  After all, the Congressmen we're hearing so much about now are men of comparatively little power.  Trump is the big Kahuna.  A juicy about him would be the sugar plum of the Times Christmas season.

But no.  Just more of the same indirect, indicative, by now redundant, little stuff.  And the Times was hot on the trail, the first dog, sniffing every side track.  Back in 2016 it interviewed at least fifty women — girlfriends and intimates, or just dates or associates — who had a chance of being touched, grabbed, or tickled.  Given the thoroughness and resourcefulness of Times' reporters you know that the slightest yield of juice would have flowed in the story.  We got a drop.  From a source that quickly dried up. 

Jill Harth, a pageant promoter, had said that at a three-person restaurant dinner with her boyfriend Trump had "groped her under the table." (NYT, 5-14-16, "Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private," by Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey).  But she had dropped the groping into a sentence about Trump's constant name-dropping and the occasion for it was a deposition in "a lawsuit that alleged Mr. Trump had failed to meet his obligations in a business partnership."  She had withdrawn her own suit "alleging unwanted advances."  Not enough, apparently, to make a big noise over.

Of course we got the bad words that indicated a lot of male badness inside Trump, but nothing like a Moore or Franken performance, nothing that would give the story legs, nothing that would start the pack baying.

And that, to me, looks like material for a missing story.  Or editorial.  Trump had claimed that what he had said to Billy Bush about his way with women, grabbing them by the whatchamacallit, was just talk.  The liberal press and readers like me were sure it was more; it was a sign of his customary behavior.  The failure to turn up anything was a pretty good sign that Trump was right and we were wrong.

What?  Trump right and us wrong?  Nah, can't be.  Assholes can never be right.  And who's going to stand up in a newsroom and say Trump is not an asshole?  This story is in a class with the ones Fox pastes up.  Leave it to them.

396. Poem: Viciousness comes out of vice

and god were we vicious in Vietnam killing all those poor little buggers with bags of rice around their necks that were little communist buggers and some maybe a lot really were but some were little farmer buggers they and their families counting their bodies piled up bodies and burning little girls and keeping on and keeping on stop stop but not stopping just watch Ken Burns watch Americans being vicious and not stopping there must be vice in that country but then a history professor says no that's not Americans being vicious that's anybody who wants to win a war being vicious that's war any war that's what it takes and if you're going to have the sayso about the future you've got to be more vicious than the other fellow who if he is Adolf Hitler is the last fellow you want to have the sayso so you keep on and keep on no matter how down you are because that monster is all vice and no virtue at all which makes me say to the history professor so then keeping on and keeping on must be a virtue because it keeps total vice from winning and some of my friends say some virtue when to exercise it you have to pile up bodies and burn little girls German bodies and German girls and I say yes unavoidable but acceptable because the side that piles up the most bodies and burns the most unavoidable girls and can bear the piling and burning of its own longer than the other side wins and gets the sayso which I am so glad we got that I say oh virtue oh my virtuous countrymen and I say to the history prof don't bother telling me about my problem I know I know just tell me more about history history and philosophy the details the details did anyone ever come close to solving it?

395. Poem: History Courses Are for Kids

 Taking history courses a kid learns what life is like man not what it's supposed to be like those courses work to what they say lower our expectations and it sure as hell worked on me man I come home from Ancient Greece I don't expect anybody to do me any favors I mean those ancients you ride in a boat with them and they see you have muscles they'll tie you up and sell your ass at the next port I mean there ain't no business that ain't slave business life is so hard and they need money so bad I mean somebody to do the work and work god work how much it took to just put food on the table and clothes on the backs of your kids so if you want more you if you want time to carve marble you have to get a slave and that's you buddy once you get out in a boat with anybody who wants more and has buddies that will help because there are no cops nobody to call and that was life in the time of Homer and so was being a guy with muscles on the shores of America when Columbus arrived because he would make your ass a slave as quick as he could slaves hell a hold full of slaves was just what you hoped for when everybody back home wanted more and the price was high and you had to pay for the trip and make Isabella happy seeing a lot more people crossing all that ocean god it better be worth it and you learn that you wonder how in the world you ever expected your ancestors to be exceptions and make sculptures and cross oceans just for good kids like you in good times like ours.

394. Poem: Baby-killing

 So I asked the terrorist why he was killing babies in New York City babies that didn't do anything to anybody and he said because you are killing babies in Muslim countries babies that didn't do anything to anybody we are doing the same thing so don't act so Western superior and I said we are not doing the same thing we are killing Muslim adults to get them to stop doing things like send rockets into Israel and we try not to kill babies but since nobody's perfect some get killed accidentally collaterally you know and if the adults stop then we will stop and there will be no babies killed but you kill adults knowing babies are there so that's not accidental and you kill everybody adults and children because they are infidels and they can't stop being infidels so you will never stop and that's crazy so you are crazy and we are not we do things for a reason and he said but the babies are just as dead and I said you miss the point and he said yes your point and I said you don't have a point you don't know a point from a hole in the ground you dumb dick I mean you are a perfect example of Eastern irrationality and he said and you you with your red face you are an example of Western rationality and I was about to call a cop hoping he was a bad cop who would put a hole in the son of a bitch but I stopped and went home thinking again how hard it is to be a Westerner.