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No Triumphalism Here

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Wars Go Through Three Phases

It seems that all the wars that involved the United States after 1945 have gone through three phases:

  • “Shock and Awe” and Waving the Flag and Glorifying the Power of Our Armaments.
  • Disenchantment sets in as the carnage continues apace and our boys start coming home in body bags. This is the longest stage of the military engagement.
  • The end where we just walk away call call the mess we have created a Glorious Victory. Followed by recriminations that last as long as the war.

Here is a poem from Lord Dunsany of Ireland, who fought on the British side in the Boer War and the First World War. He is better known as the author of such great fantasy novels as The King of Elfland’s Daughter and The Curse of the Wise Woman—not to mention scores of great short stories.

A Dirge of Victory (Sonnet)

Lift not thy trumpet, Victory, to the sky,
Nor through battalions nor by batteries blow,
But over hollows full of old wire go,
Where among dregs of war the long-dead lie
With wasted iron that the guns passed by.
When they went eastwards like a tide at flow;
There blow thy trumpet that the dead may know,
Who waited for thy coming, Victory.

It is not we that have deserved thy wreath,
They waited there among the towering weeds.
The deep mud burned under the thermite’s breath,
And winter cracked the bones that no man heeds:
Hundreds of nights flamed by: the seasons passed.
And thou last come to them at last, at last!

Objective: Zero

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Can You See Three Ayatollahs in This Picture?

Oh oh, there I go again! I said I wouldn’t write about politics, and a few hundred bombs and a thousand casualties later later I got so upset that I couldn’t help myself.

I have just finished reading a book about the Second Punic War, in which a Carthaginian force under the generalship of the brilliant Hannibal Barca, invaded Italy and for seventeen years fought the Roman Republic. In his book Hannibal’s War, British Military Historian John Peddie writes:

Wars, historically, wear many different complexions: they may be ideological or defensive, punitive or vengeful. They may be fought for economic or social causes or for reasons of aggrandisement. But however they may rise, of one thing we may be certain: they cannot be successfully fought without a clear-cut, grand objective [italics mine], within which will lie other, minor, objectives, each one a stepping stone, culminating, hopefully, in victory.

Since the end of the Second World War, the United States seems to have lost sight of this simple fact. What was our objective in Korea? Vietnam? Nicaragua? Iraq? Afghanistan? In every case, we just decided it was just eating up too much in time and resources and just declared a victory. But in every case, was it a victory?

The same is the case with Benjamin Netanyahu’s block by block destruction of Gaza. What has he accomplished to date? Oh, and yes, he is with Trump in invading Iran. And how will that end?

I can just see gas prices rising so quickly that Trump will have to declare a victory prematurely. Wars used to be pretty popular, until we started losing all of them.

Talking Politics at Home

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It Has Become Dangerous to Talk Politics, Even at Home

I learned the lesson early in life. My father, otherwise an excellent man whom I loved, was a member of the American Independent Party and a supporter of Alabama Governor George C. Wallace’s politics. There have been presidential elections when my mother, my father, and I voted for different presidential candidates. I got used to loving members of my family irrespective of their politics.

Then, in 1987, I fell in love with Martine Hedges. Born in France, Martine is a typical stubborn Norman, with what the French call a tête Normande, a “Norman head.”. When Martine takes a position, there is no moving her from it. As it happens, she is a Republican who supports many positions taken by Donald Trump.

Do Martine and I talk politics at home? Not unless we want the temperature in our apartment plummet to freezing. She knows my politics, and I know hers. ’Nuff said.

As a result of traveling extensively in South America to countries which have suffered through heinous dictatorships and bloody insurgencies, I have learned not to take positions. In Argentina, there was the rule of the generals and the “disappearances”; in Chile, there was the rightist rule of General Pinochet Ugarte; in Peru, there was the insurgency of the Sendero Luminoso, or the Shining Path; and in Uruguay there were the Tupamaros.

And now the United States has become one of those countries where talking politics could be dangerous. There are guns everywhere, usually in the hands of people who are mentally disturbed. Back in the 1960s, I actively participated in protests against the Vietnam War. At one time, I was in a protest on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles that was attacked by Cuban rightists who converted their signs to clubs and commenced cracking skulls. Now I prefer to be more peaceable.

Although I have strong feelings about politics, I don’t write much about them in my Tarnmoor blog. Why should I? My readers will have no trouble finding vituperative blogs of different shades of opinion. I would prefer to write more about things that interest me.

Pirates of the Caribbean

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Move over, Cap’n Jack Sparrow, you’ve met your match! Ol’ Fuzzywig has now committed international piracy by seizing an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.

Is it full of gold doubloons? Or possibly silver from the Cerro Rico of Bolivia? No, me buckos, it is full of all kinds of grief for our Presidente, who now has to be worried about being called to the International Court at the Hague to answer for his crimes.

Every day, a new outrage!

“Affordability Crisis”

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We might not be very good at solving problems in our economy, but we are great at inventing flashy terms that keep us from facing the problem. I can express the problem with an anecdote from my past. When I started working for an accounting firm in 1992, I went out to eat lunch in Westwood Village with my co-workers. We tried and usually succeeded in limiting the cost to $5.00 or less. A third of a century later, the cost of lunch has risen sixfold to approximately $30.00.

And what makes it worse, the food is nowhere near as good as it used to be.

Politicians talk of flattening the inflation rate. But even if they do so, the damage has been done. No one talks about rolling back prices. By relentlessly concentrating on the present day, they are ignoring the fact that the problem we are facing is not “affordability,” but poverty.

And this is what threatens the Trump administration. Our biggest danger is not our borders with our neighbors, but what we ourselves do (or neglect to do) within those borders.

The President can say that he has reduced inflation over a carefully selected stretch of time, but he has done nothing to enable the people who voted for him (and, more particularly, those who didn’t) to live better. Now he thinks that cash giveaways are the answer, even when the amount stated is too low. If your costs will balloon by $5,000 over the next year, what good will $2,000 do? Will he have to repeat the giveaway next year?

And given the present administration’s known problems dispensing cash, I foresee new opportunities for fraudsters.

I know that talking about economics is boring. Just consider this: When I retired in 2018, I thought I had enough in my pension that tide me over for 10-15 years. It didn’t. Next month, I will have to look into getting public assistance.

Going … Going … Gone

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The White House in Ruins 1814

I don’t like writing about politics, but not to react at all to what is happening to my country would be to suppress my fears and my rage at the second presidential term of Donald Trump, or, as I call it, the Revenge Tour.

With the shutdown of all government functions that our president doesn’t like—in effect, most of them—our nation is being diminished day by day. Here is what I see happening until the Devil takes the man:

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
HE UNITE STATE F AMERIC
E UNIT STAT AMERI
UNI STA AMER
UN ST AME
N S AM
A
[NOTHING]

At present, flights are being delayed or canceled by 10%. Perhaps in a few days, it will be 20% How long before it becomes 100%

I am angry that ignorant voters could become a majority and unravel everything that made this country great. I can see it all now: Venezuela, Somalia, Myanmar, Haiti, and us. Ugh!

A Renaissance Man, Not!

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The Original (and Still Current) Logo of Cracker Barrel

The current occupant of the White House is a man with wide-ranging opinions and talents. (Snicker!) When Cracker Barrel wanted to change its logo, the Trumpster weighed in and set nyet! In addition to [mis]governing a large democracy, he also plans to take change of the 2028 Olympics in his favorite city (Los Angeles) and strike back at anyone who doesn’t like him.

I fully expect to go to the supermarket one day and find empty shelves which contained foodstuffs not liked by our presidente. The meat department will be all fried chicken and hamburgers. Fruits and vegetables? What are those?

Perhaps he will step in to break the engagement between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Not that he likes either of them: It’s just that they don’t deserve to be happy together. How could they be if they don’t like him? Mr. Likeability-in-Chief.

This presidency is a slow motion nightmare that just keeps going on and on and on …

Our Nero

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Roman Emperor Nero (AD 37-68)

Much as I dislike writing about politics, I have recently noticed some strange resemblances between the current occupant of the White House and the Roman Emperor Nero:

Actors. Nero appeared before the Roman public as a poet, musician, and charioteer; while our president was famed as the actor in a reality TV show called “The Apprentice.”

Wrecking. Nero purportedly burned down a large part of Rome so he could build a gigantic palace for himself called the domus aureus, “The Golden House.” Our president is destroying the institutions of government that he feels do not benefit billionaires like himself.

Praetorian Guard. Nero was murdered by his own Praetorian Guard. Our president, on the other hand, is developing his own Praetorian Guard called ICE. To date, they have not murdered him.

Low-Class Supporters. The provision of “bread and circuses” to the Roman masses made Nero popular among lower class denizens of Rome. Whereas the persecution of various minorities is popular among the red-hatted MAGA supporters of our president.

So far, our current president has not directly ordered any of his family murdered, but if I were Melania, Donald Junior, or Eric, I would not sleep well of nights.

Red Hat

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Entrance to Louisiana’s State Penitentiary at Angola

Located in West Feliciana Parish is Louisiana’s fearful Angola State Penitentiary. And within that penitentiary, by far the worst place to be incarcerated was the Red Hat Cell Block, which also contained the state’s electric chair, known as “Gruesome Gertie,” which was used for 87 executions between 1956 and 1991.

The Red Hat Cell Block was named after the red painted straw hats the inmates wore when working on the prison farm. It contained thirty cells that were 3 × 6 feet (0.91 meters × 1.8 meters), with a single window near the ceiling that was 1 foot square (0.3 meters square). Inmates slept on an iron bunk without any mattress. Temperatures frequently soared to slow oven levels; and the cells were infested with rats and other vermin. There was no toilet: prisoners had to eliminate in a bucket that was emptied each morning.

Naturally, most of the inmates of the cell block were non-whites. And, needless to say, even prisoners on death row in Angola had it better.

Entrance to the Red Hat Cell Block

Why am I describing such a terrible place? It is because I am becoming increasingly of the role that racism has played in the history of our country—a history which many Americans are trying to whitewash.

It goes all the way back to the Constitution of the United States. In an article by Steven Mintz entitled “Historical Context: The Constitution and Slavery,” it states:

The word “slave” does not appear in the Constitution. The framers consciously avoided the word, recognizing that it would sully the document. Nevertheless, slavery received important protections in the Constitution. The notorious three-fifths clause—which counted three-fifths of a state’s slave population in apportioning representation—gave the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College. Thomas Jefferson would have lost the election of 1800 if not for the Three-fifths Compromise. The Constitution also prohibited Congress from outlawing the Atlantic slave trade for twenty years. A fugitive slave clause required the return of runaway slaves to their owners. The Constitution gave the federal government the power to put down domestic rebellions, including slave insurrections.

Lest we pat ourselves on the back for not being Southerners, I have seen enough in Cleveland and Los Angeles in my time to feel a deep sense of shame. How many decades, how many centuries must pass before the blot of slavery and racism are wiped out?

The Pill of Murti-Bing

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“The Tower of Babel” by Peter Bruegel the Elder

When I used to write ads for the software company whose director of corporate communications I was, I was always running afoul of management, who always insisted that I put a positive spin on every point I made. Anything that could possibly be seen to be negative was to be avoided at all costs.

Being a bit negative is a part of my Hungarian heritage. When your country is on one of the two main invasion paths into Europe (the other being Poland), you can’t help a certain amount of negativity. It’s part of our nature.

I feel there is something wrong about always being positive. It tends to encourage the persons on the other end to be passive and accepting. Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, writing in The Captive Mind, a book about why people accepted the promises and lies about Communism, quotes an earlier Polish novel from the 1920s:

In this story, Central Europeans facing the prospect of being overrun by unidentified Asiatic hordes pop a little pill [the pill of Murti-Bing] which relieves them of fear and anxiety; buoyed by its effects, they not only accept their new rulers but are positively happy to receive them.

In an article entitled “Murti-Bing Conservatism” written for The American Conservative, Rod Dreher develops this idea:

For Miłosz, Polish intellectuals who capitulated to communism and Soviet rule had taken the pill of Murti-Bing. It was what made their condition bearable. They could not stand to see reality, for if they recognized what was really happening in their country, the pain and shock would make life too much to take.

This is why people who have no financial or status tied up in protecting abuse of corruption within an institution can nevertheless be expected to rally around that institution and its leaders. Those who tell the truth threaten their Murti-Bing pill supply, and therefore their sense of order and well-being. To them, better that a few victims must be made to suffer rather than the entire community be forced to wean itself from Murti-Bing.

In the United States, we are facing a similar situation today—all the way from the opposite end of the political spectrum. It is not Communism that is the cause, but Trumpism. Millions of voters who are either ignorant or disingenuous choose to believe that water runs uphill and that the current President is spouting truth when in actuality he is lying like a rug.

I recommend that anyone interested in what happens to this country read Milosz’s The Captive Mind. It is by far the best book about Communism I have ever read.

Oh, and the Tower of Babel? That’s what happens when our sense of reality has become so fragmented that our society begins to fracture.