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.