Before I even get started let’s get one thing clear; i.e. I know that I’m a privileged white male.  Honestly, to use the current vernacular, that’s been a f***ing embarrassment since the 1950s when I started learning the truth from my historian Father whom I learned later had been an NAACP member since the late 1940s. Perhaps intuitively I didn’t trust the system.  I checked out everything I was taught in school with my Father. Thanks to my Father the neighborhood kids would often send me home either crying or fuming mad because I didn’t want to play ‘cowboys and injuns’.  Why were the Indians bad guys? Thank you, Dad, for teaching me the truth from a young age!  From 1952 to 57 my two best friends were a black boy and a boy from Egypt. The only knock-down, roll on the ground, punch and bite fight I ever had was when a neighborhood boy made racist remarks about my friend, which I’m sure he heard from his parents.  My black friend moved when I was in third grade. My Egyptian friend was still there when my Dad finished his PhD and took a job teaching at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA.  I kept track of him sometimes by direct mail, but, as we got older, it was mostly through “Auntie”, a lady with whom we both stayed after school.  Hamada became a fighter pilot in the Egyptian air force.  I worried about him during the Seven Days War (1967).  He survived but I lost track of him during one of the several political uprisings in Egypt. I can’t help but fear the worst.

By the time I went to Junior High in 1958, I was already catching on to the difference between school history and real history.  I already knew that we generally didn’t get the whole story, and even then it came with a distinctive WASP (i) slant which my Father was always happy to sit down and explain. I’m sure my Dad was on McCarthy’s radar but no one could argue my Father’s patriotism. By the time I was fourteen I had a fairly good idea of what was recently labeled “alternative facts” by one of #45’s press secretaries. Back then we just called it “Bull Shit”.  I like that better. I had several friends on the “other side” of town, but I really was never confronted with what they experienced every day until I was a Freshman in high school civics.  John Kennedy was elected President that year.  One of my bests friends was the son of Italian immigrants, Roman Catholic and a Kennedy fan.  He was extremely intelligent and, even at the grand ole age of fifteen, could hold his own in an argument, especially if you were talking politics.  I was actually present when the civics teacher could not find fault with his argument and ‘went off’ on him. She made totally unacceptable and disparaging remarks about him being the son of an immigrant, being a Roman Catholic and how, if Kennedy won the election he would let the Pope run the United States.  Her prejudice was showing big time. She even threatened to fail him if he didn’t keep his mouth shut.  He was a straight-A student.  Shortly after that I went to the mountains with a group of my Father’s college students for a ski and toboggan trip.  One of the students, a young black man, was seriously injured. I saw how he was treated, or perhaps I should say mistreated, in a nearby hospital emergency room.  If my Father had not been there he might still be waiting to be seen.  Speaking of my Father intervening, it was another trip with my Father and a group of his students.  This time he was taking a group of foreign students into Canada.  One of the students, a black man from Africa, didn’t have all of his papers with him.  It wasn’t an insurmountable problem but the US Border Patrol guard became very demeaning, verbally abusive and started pushing the young man around.  My Father stepped between the young man and the border guard, confronting the officer with his lack of civility toward a visitor to our country. (Oh, I forgot to tell you that my Father was a disabled veteran who survived Omaha Beach and was hit by a bomb after the Battle of the Bulge.) My Father held himself, and all Americans, to a high standard and wasn’t going to put up with that type of behavior. My Father never mentioned the young man being black to the officer, although we did talk about it later. The student was understandably terrified. Later he admitted that he had never seen anyone stand toe-to-toe with an armed police officer. By the time my Father was done the officer was apologizing to the black student and handing him the paperwork he needed for the day visit to Canada.  I can’t express how proud I was of my Father that day!  It was just one of many incidents.

Despite all of this I was still a naive young privileged white male.  I had no idea what non-whites and females confronted on a daily basis.  I had only seen what might seem like isolated incidents when, in fact, it was what they faced every day.  In college, in the mid-1960s, one of my best friends was black.  Sitting together in the dining room, we could clear a table fast. By this time I was very aware of racism and was a student activist.  I was a member of a student political organization that fought for civil rights. My black friend did his best to continue my education, but I was still clueless and realize even to this day, that no matter what we do we’ll never really know because we’ve never really had to live in fear and suffer the abuse.  After my retirement, wildlife management became my avocation.  I have had times when I’ve stood a few yards from a bear.  One time I had to stand my ground because if I let the bear get by me he would  probably end up hurt or killed.  I wasn’t going to let that happen. There is no way I could ever totally share with you what that feels like.  In the same way, I have no clue how it feels to be a black man approached by an armed police officer with a bad attitude.

It seems that my introduction has become the content of my essay, but I think it was essential to make my point.  I can’t change the fact that I’m a privileged white male. No matter how hard I try I’ll never really know what it’s like to not be a privileged white male.  I can listen intently. I can cry with the non-white person and women when they are abused and treated like second-class citizens, but I can’t really know.  My tears are real. My tears are sincere, but I’m still a privileged white male who can only do my best to understand and support my fellow citizen.  I can understand why they’re angry with and don’t trust white America. Hell, I’m angry with and don’t trust white America.  My anger is real.  My anger is sincere, but I’m still a privileged white male who can only do my best to understand and support my fellow citizens.

As I watched the outpouring of love for John Lewis at his funeral and thought about his life, I wanted to cry.  I wanted to cry for what so many of my fellow white American males put John and other black people through.  I’ve been spit on, pushed, called names and had heavily armed police watch me with suspicion, but I’ve never feared for my life.  I’ve never worried about going for a walk or having militarized police come crashing into my home with weapons blazing. I find myself amazed and in awe of people like John Lewis who could, after all that was done to he and his fellow black citizens, show love and compassion on privileged white males.

Stuart Stevens, a Republican political consultant, wrote in a piece called “We lost the Battle for the Republican Party’s Soul Long Ago” (NYTimes 7/29/2020) about how, after Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012, the RNC chairman commissioned an “autopsy” to find out why the Republicans hadn’t won the popular vote since 1988.  The results “were fairly obvious: The party needed to appeal to more people of color, reach out to younger voters, become more welcoming to women. . . . .  Then Donald Trump emerged and the party threw all those conclusions out the window with an almost audible sigh of relief: Thank God we can win without pretending we really care about this stuff.” (ii)

I’m a privileged white male who is well aware of his privilege, who feels that all citizens should enjoy those things which constitute my privilege, and am totally outraged at how our country has gone backwards over the past three years and seven months.  White males have been the scourge of world for over 500 years, and its time that we are stopped.  I very honestly find it hard to have the confidence in the United States that John Lewis had.  I was ready to give up on America, but, John, you were so much stronger, wiser and more compassionate than me. Because you believe in America, I’ll give it my best.  But please remember, non-white and female America, that try as I might, I’m still a privileged white male who will always need educated about what it is like not to be.

FOOTNOTES. 

(i)  WASP – White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.  While used as a derogatory descriptor during the 1960s civil rights protest, it is actually quite accurate. The WASP male has been the privileged group throughout US history.

(ii) We Lost the Battle for the Republican Party’s Soul Long Ago https://nyti.ms/2DawxRf

Greetings from the Smokey Mountains.
Most people who know or follow me are accustomed to reading my posts and essays that originate in the Sonoran Desert or northern Rocky Mountains. For those of you unaware, Pamela came east (western Kentucky) to help with grandchildren and I came to meet her just in time to get caught here for the pandemic. I don’t like being east of the Mississippi. In fact, east of the Rockies is about as far east as I want to venture, but our family is here.

It isn’t that there is anything wrong with the east half of the continent. It has been magnificent country with the hardwood, disiduous forests giving way, as you move south, to the Loblolly pines of the deep south. There are just too many people, towns, farms and factories. It is definitely a reflection of human overpopulation. I can’t get away from the sighs and sounds of population. Evidently it doesn’t bother others. Right now there is a park employee using a gasoline trimmer along the road behind us and a seaplane is practicing touchdowns on the lake. I find this extremely annoying. I feel like I’ve been violated.

A few weeks ago we went to the far east point of Kentucky to a place in the Daniel Boone National Forest. It was a nice road trip. As is our usual practice, we avoided interstate highways and four-laners. Even then I was painfully aware of almost never being out of sight of some sign of the human infestation that has so damaged this beautiful country. We saw the scars of old mining operations and clearcutting. Even the magnificent gorge which was at the top of our “must see” list was marred by structures, roads and railroads.

On this trip we pushed further eastward through central Tennessee toward the Smokey Mountains where the states of Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia intersect. We spent almost all of the first day on interstates and four-lane roads, covering over two-hundred miles. We are traveling in our twenty-one foot 1996 Roadtrek, pulling a 5×8′ cargo trailer. The trailer is because we’re meeting family and hauling bicycles, kayaks and their camping gear. The wise person doesn’t go over 65 mph pulling a trailer because trailer tires aren’t made for higher speed and actually rated for 65 mph or less. That works for me because I’m just as happy tooling along a seldom used two-lane road going fifty or fifty-five. When she has good maps, Pamela is a whiz at finding country roads for us to travel. That first day, however, I was almost never out of sight of at least twenty to thirty other vehicles, a visual reminder of how overpopulated most of this world really is.

We passed through beautiful country. The Appalacian Mountains are low and tree covered, but they are gorgeous in their own special way. The highest point east of the Mississippi is Mt. Mitchell at 6,800. Back home in the Montana Rockies the Belton “hills” are 6,600 feet and they are near the lowest spot in the Rocky Mountains. The Appalacians are what the Rocky Mountains will be in a few million years.

The second day of travel was almost all off the interstate and much of it through national forest. Nevertheless it was sorely damaged. This was a major copper mining area with the last mine closing in the 1980s. Pamela tells of places just near a town through which we passed that was totally barren with all life and vegetation dead. The entire area is like the coat of an animal that has been torn and scratched from an encounter with barbed wire or a bird with patches of feathers missing. It makes you truly sad.

The weather was hot and muggy that first day. You could not do anything without sweating profusely. We were worried about sleeping, but that first night we stopped at a state park where we had “shore power.” That’s electricity from a commercial source. We have solar power in our rig but it won’t run an airconditioner. Having shore power meant we could use the airconditioner in our Roadtrek.

For the rest of the week our campsite is in a national recreation area known as Jackrabbit Mountain. There is no shore power or other amenities, but we’re not accustomed to them anyway. We spend most of our time off the grid; which is how I like it best. We often stay out in the wilderness for over two weeks before we must go to town to dump our holding tanks, take on water or do laundry.

Our campsite here is right on a beautiful lake, surrounded by the mountains. We are at 1940 feet in elevation. Our eldest daughter, her husband and son, have joined us and are in tents no more than fifteen feet from the water’s edge. There is a barrier of trees between us and our nearest neighbors. That’s really nice. The folks east of us have a generator, but they’ve been very cosiderate and only run it occasionally.

We had rain the first morning here, which brought the temperature down quite a bit. It has been quite comfortable, especially for August in North Carolina. If we get a bit warm, we just walk into the lake and cool off. The kayaks have seen a lot of use. They’re in the water most of the day. Our daughter and her son are doing a team triathelon later this fall which has kayaking instead of swimming, so they’ve put on a lot of miles. They’ve also been praciticing on the mountain bike trails.

As for me I’m happy sitting here looking at the lake with the occasional fishing venture onto the lake. I like to fly fish. Some really good sized sunfish – bluegill, redear, pumpkinseed, etc. – like my trout flies. I think it is because the fly I use is black with a small white tuft and looks a lot like the bugs that swim on the surface.

My grandson is into learning to live in the wilderness and backcountry. He wants me to teach him to fly and wants to catch and clean his own fish. His firemaking and camping skills are coming along well and he has the physical strength. I remember the first time he spent a month with us living in the wilderness of northwestern Montana when he was eleven.

Pamela and I are trying to maintain our nomadic life-style as much as possible while confined by the pandemic. We have spent hours in our four-wheel drive half-ton heavy truck driving dirt roads through federal forests looking for places in the east where we can live the simple, undisturbed, nomadic life we so love. Between the pandemic and our current social/political system, that life-style is more and more threatened. The social/political system wants us to conform. But that’s another blog; viz. conformity as the birth and death of humanity.

I’ll start working on that while I’m sitting here enjoying being as far away as I can get from anything human. I’ll try to approach the subject open-mindedly. That’s going to be the challenge.

Another promise I’ll make to my faithful followers is that I’ll do my best to get away from so much social/political. In the past few weeks it has been hard to think about anything else. We can’t deny, however, that what humans do socially and politically have a tremendous impact upon our natural environment. We can not talk about our beloved wilderness and not be aware of and/or address #45’s purposeful gutting of the Department of the Interior, the EPA and other political safeguards in place to keep us from destroying our very own source of life.

For now, farewell from the Smoky Mountains. They truly are a phenomenal treasure worthy of our protection.

As citizens we have ever shrinking means of changing what happens in our country and our government.  One would think that, with technology, the reverse should be true, but our tools of change are diminishing and increasingly antiquated.  Unfortunately we have Citizens United (i) to thank in large part.  Since being able to spend unlimited funds on a campaign, large corporations are able to buy and groom legislators much easier than before. In fact, it has come to the point that politicians really don’t have to listen to their constituents. They just listen to their owners and handlers.  Nevertheless, voting is still one of our most powerful means of effecting change. We must prove that we are capable of putting a big corporate lackey out of office. It will take an unbelievable effort because big corporations will just put millions of dollars into advertising to discredit us.  We must use every means and tool at our disposal to get the message out and get everyone to vote.  It is one thing to lose an election to an honest, worthy opponent who wins because people prefer her ideas or message. It is another thing to work hard and lose because the other side had deep corporate pockets. 

 The idea that truth and justice will always prevail is something those of us raised in the 1940s and 50s were taught. By the 1960s we knew the truth; viz. he who has the most money and power wins.  In the 1978 Superman movie, Superman visits Lois Lane’s apartment. When she asks why he’s on Earth he said “to fight for truth, justice and the American way.”  Lois, being a hard-nose realist, laughed and said “you’re going to be fighting every elected official.”  And we didn’t even have Citizen’s United in 1978. They just found legal and illegal ways around the law. 

What are other tools in our shrinking inventory?   Letter writing and telephone campaigns have been a good tool in the past.  Alas, even when we’ve put the government switchboard in gridlock we have not always been successful. The last time I remember the American people shutting down the government switchboard was in 2011.   That doesn’t mean that we should stop trying.  In the 1988 movie “Switching Channels” an inept governor decided whether or not a man would be electrocuted by how many phone calls he received for or against.  In the end result he pardons everyone except the crooked prosecutor and the TV news editor said “you may not be much, governor, but you’re all we’ve got.”  Telephone and email can still be a good tool if for no other purpose than letting elected officials know that we’re coming for them. 

In our modern day of capitalism and fascism, the old saying of “hit them in the pocketbook” takes on a whole new meaning.  Fascism, by the strictest definition given by the father of fascism (ii), is the merger of corporate and government power.  That’s what we’ve got.  From this premise and definition we can conclude that if we can hurt the corporate power, then we might be able to overcome fascism and take back our government.  The only way to do that is to attack the money; deprive them of profits. While extremely difficult, the boycott is probably the easiest method. Unfortunately the US has proven time and again that it isn’t very good at anything which requires cooperation, organization or inconvenience.  If we can get organized enough and be consistent in our efforts we can tell  big corporations to back off or we will cut their money.  

Years ago I found that the best way to get the attention of a large corporation was by communicating with the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) who is responsible for maintaining the value of their stock.  Sales departments and  customer services don’t really care about an angry consumer. If it means potential damage to their stock value, the CFO is all ears.  The first time that I used this tactic was about thirty years ago when a large company, that led the world market in PDAs (iii),  gave me the royal runaround when I was trying to get service.  They bounced me around the country to service departments that all said it wasn’t their problem and sent me on to the next.  I realized that the company was fighting a tremendous battle against newcomers to the PDA market, which would soon become smartphones. I got the personal email address of the CFO; otherwise any communications would have been trashed before it got to him;  and sent him an email outlining my complaint. Of course I mentioned replacing their product and encouraging others to do likewise.  The next morning I received a telephone call from the giant corporation’s CFO.  He apologized for the lack of consumer services and soon had my problem resolved.  I have used this tactic several times since then when the issue was serious enough, and it has always worked.  Over the years I have personally spoken to and/or communicated with the CFO of some giant corporations.  Money is the only language known to corporations.  If you can convince them that you can cause their stocks to drop and/or consumers go to their competition, you definitely have their attention.  Of course, to do this you must be willing to keep any promises (aka threats).  They’re a lot bigger than you, so you dare not flinch.  If you say to Mark Zukerberg that, if he continues his current behaviors, you will leave FaceBook and encourage you (average) 330 friends to do the same, you must be willing to carry through.

Of course we can’t talk about tools for change without mentioning civil disobedience.  John Lewis called it ‘good trouble’ and was an example of its proper use.  We’re not talking about storming the White House and dragging #45 out, as exciting as that would sound to many.  We’re talking about peaceful protest.  We have to face the fact that #45 and his cronies are working very hard to take away the Constitutional  “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  There are many analyst and experts who see Portland as a trial run or dress-rehearsal for martial law and making our Constitutional right to protest illegal.  I think they’re right.  Portland is an example of fascist control.  Civil disobedience is difficult because there are always those who want to turn it violent, whether they be the government against which you are protesting or outsiders.  Taking to the street in protest was much more effective in the 1960s when politicians at least pretended to care.  It still draws a lot of attention and may, if for no other reason, be useful in getting others to join the cause. 

What I have learned over the last few years is that law suits are becoming one of our most powerful weapons.  In a normal presidency the administration generally wins in court 69% of the time.  The current administration has lost 90% of its deregulation court battles. (iv)  For several years I have recommended that people with limited funds  to support organizations look at the organizations’ court track record. Who has the most successful stable of lawyers.   This doesn’t mean that organizations who don’t use law suits are inferior.  They are still important.  I try to find some non-financial way to help as many of them as possible. The truth, however, is that most of our success in containing the disaster known as Trump has been in court. 

The bottom line, however, comes back to us being willing to face inconvenience.  Will Rogers’ famous quote makes my last point.  He said, “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a democrat.”  (v)   Liberal, progressives, or whatever you want to call independent thinkers are notoriously disorganized.  We tend to let minor differences divide us.  So you think that capitalism is a great thing and I think it is at the foundation of all our troubles, but we both want to see equality, good education and healthcare, the protection of our wilderness and environment, and, most of all, the end of the Trump administration. Are we going to let our differences keep us from working together for those things we have in common?  That, my friend, is exactly what the Republicans are counting on; viz. that we will squabble so much among ourselves that we lose sight of the big picture.  So you would prefer Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.  Joe Biden got the nomination. We all need to support him.  Even though I think the GOP has gone way to far in being faithful to the party, we can learn from them.  We can fight among ourselves, but we must present a united front and never lose sight of our goal. No matter which tool(s) we use the most important thing is that we use them consistently, with total dedication and, above all, working together. 

FOOTNOTES:

(i)    https://www.fec.gov/updates/citizens-united-v-fecsupreme-court/

(ii)   Mussolini, Benito and Giovanni Gentile. (1932). La Dotrina del fascismo.  Enciclopedia Italiana.  Rome. 

http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm

(iii)  PDA is a Personal Digital (Data) Assistant and was the forerunner to the smartphone.  The first smartphones were PDA with a phone. 

(iv)   https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/trump-has-lost-more-than-90-percent-of-deregulation-court-battles.html

(v)  https://www.encyclopedia.com/media/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rogers-will-1879-1935

I look at issues and wonder why we, as a nation, aren’t moving forward.  We obviously can attribute much of our quagmire to our current Congress and administration that definitely want to go backwards.  Which way we go depends upon who is pulling the hardest.  We seem to be going backwards, so I’m guessing that that means that those of us who want our nation to move forward aren’t pulling as hard as our Congress and current administration.  I know that sounds unfair. We don’t have nearly as much power and authority as the GOP and Administration do. They have the bully pulpit while we’re limited to blogging and social media. They also appear to have Facebook.

We can leave the discussion there if we like, but you’ve probably guessed that I don’t like such an excuse.  Excuse?  Did I just use the word ‘excuse’ as in  “an attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify.” (i)   Yes, I did.  That’s because I have noticed that we, as a nation, are great at excuses.  For example, ‘we can’t go metric because we’re too big.’  We love to use our size as an excuse.  No, we’re not too big.  We just don’t want to face any inconvenience.  Another example; ‘we can’t have universal healthcare because it’s too complicated.’  (We also use the too big excuse for that one too.)  It’s not too complicated.  We’re the last “developed” country to not have universal healthcare and we’re neither the biggest physically nor by  population.  As you can see, it is easy to establish the US as a country of excuses.  

What made me start thinking along these lines is that we have recently seen convincing evidence that Mark Zukerberg is probably going to allow his Facebook platform to be used and dominated by the GOP campaigns.  Most analyst agree that it is to Zukerberg’s benefit because he is more likely to receive favorable treatment if the current administration stays in power. (ii) Recently I have seen a great deal of anti-Facebook complaint based upon it being used by Trump,  lack of security, data mining, and other issues.  I have people reply to comments stating the desire to find another platform but no one seems willing to stand up to Facebook and leave.  

There are several other social media platforms out there, but none are as big and it is inconvenient to change.  Before I go any further, I must make a confession.  Firstly, I’m not blameless.  I’m sure you didn’t need a confession to figure that out.  My pages do very well on Facebook and my blog visits go up when they’re announced on Facebook. (iii)  To leave Facebook I have to accept that (a)  my family and friends aren’t going to follow me, (b) I’m going to lose a lot of readership, and (c)  I’m going to be pretty much alone.  That isn’t nice.  My true confession, however, is that I’ve been trying to distance, protect and/or prepare myself to totally disengage from Facebook.  What most people don’t realize is that almost all of the Facebook posts they see on my account were actually posted on some other media which shared it with other platforms including Facebook.  I’m sure that those of you who use Instagram know that it will send your posts to Facebook, among several options.  While I’m trying to establish myself, and encourage readers to follow me via some other platform, my articles, posts, etc., generally end up on Facebook in this manner. So I’m actually guilty of trying to ‘have my cake and eat it too.’  That doesn’t really work. We know that.  But enough of true confessions. 

We can complain all we want, but until we are ready to take action nothing is going to change.  We can, for example, complain long and loud about Zukerberg colluding to get #45 re-elected, but until we are ready to leave him standing alone with Facebook bleeding users as well as advertisers, he’s not going to change.  How much is our inconvenience worth?   We don’t need Mary Trump (iv) to tell us that one of her uncle’s principal characteristics is his willingness to lie, cheat and steal to get what he wants.  Anyone who has ever been familiar with #45 before his decision to run for president knew this very well; especially anyone who invested in one of his enterprises.  What are we willing to give up for our convenience?  If the Carole Cadwalladr (v)  and other opinion pieces are correct and Facebook played an important part in #45’s election through collusion, we must treat it like Fox News and boycott it.  

As much as I’d like to say that it is a simple matter of leaving Facebook, that really isn’t true.  Setting aside the ethics or legality of Zukerberg using data mining and targeting to help #45 get re-elected,  our presence on the platform could be an important counter measure.  We all know about people who stay in their occupied homeland as a part of the resistance, and the person who remains in a company or institution in an attempt to dissuade the company/institution from a wrong course of action.  In some ways we have more power if we stay close.  We are more cognizant of misleading posts, and other misinformation, and can either engage them in debate, point out their discrepancies and/or petition Facebook to remove them.  If you saw the movie, The Godfather, you heard the advice of the famous Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, who said “keep you friends close and your enemies closer.”   This could be even more powerful if we could somehow demonstrate to Zukerberg that ignoring us comes with a price.  One thing which came to my mind was a moratorium.  If Zukerberg saw only limited activity on his site he would know that advertisers would soon start to leave.  If we actually coordinated this with the withdrawal of advertisers, we could have even more power for change.  

I really don’t want to get involved in a long discussion of ownership. Suffice it to say that Facebook is a publicly traded corporation. That means that it is free to legally run its business as it sees fit and is acceptable to the stockholders. If Facebook wants to be a Trump mouthpiece, that’s its business. However, if the way it carries on business is illegal, then we have a public issue. Current evidence (v) points to Zukerberg walking a very fine legal line.

I feel that, if necessary, I could easily demonstrate how capitalism has turned us into a very complacent, easily manipulated society.  For this essay I’m taking that as a given.  We know that, as a nation we are extremely hesitant to be inconvenienced, and prone to making excuses to justify our lack of action.  I believe that current events, the looming Constitutional crisis, and the threat to a fair election should convince us that we no longer have the luxury to be complacent. It is definitely way too late to be proactive, but it’s never too late to take positive action.  I started this essay with a relatively firm conviction that we should all leave Facebook, and ended up realizing that we actually have two options, both of which have a good argument.  But that doesn’t matter if we don’t do either. 

FOOTNOTES:

(i)  Google dictionary.  

(ii)   https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/business/media/facebook-donald-trump-mark-zuckerberg.html

(iii)   I have, however, been struck by the fact that FaceBook is responsible for the second smallest percentage of visits to my website. This would indicate that, with time and effort,  I would have no other reason to stay on FaceBook other than my friends won’t leave.  

(iv)  Trump, Mary. (2020).  Too much and never enough.  New York.  Simon & Schuster

(v)   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/26/with-facebook-we-are-already-through-the-looking-glass?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_News_Feed&fbclid=IwAR0zcLV31-XBWVz4gvEauBs1Z3AM49IZITcTDZolYK7DgC6ZCVxRmbtGEaw

When I was wandering through the desert and writing essays about wild black mustard and cyanobacteria (living soil)  I had no shortage of things about which to write.  Whether it was suddenly stopping and sitting on a rock to write about what I was seeing and feeling and witnessing, or whether it was being  “inspired” by one of the hundreds of pictures I would take as I ambled through the wilderness, there was never any shortage of essay materials.   Now, here I sit confined to stick-n-bricks (nomad for “a house”)  watching the world slowly die from a pandemic and a narcissistic, pathological liar systematically destroying our country and I’m running out of things to say. Running out of things to say? 

Well, I wouldn’t say that I’m running out of things to say.  I should say that I’m running out of anything new to say.  How many times can I repeat that we are killing ourselves by our total disregard for nature, the wilderness and the environment? How many times can I talk about how we are making the pandemic worse and killing ourselves by not listening to medical and scientific experts who, despite their limits, are still way more knowledgeable than the rest of us?  Is the modern human memory as short as the lifespan of a Tweet?   I have addressed our growing fascism from several different viewpoints ranging from historic to the very direct threat to our freedom to the soldier’s oath of enlistment to the power of the corporate board room.  From how many more angles can I view, analyze and report something which everyone can easily see for themselves.  Or perhaps a lot of people just don’t want to look.  I can understand it being so difficult to distinguish the truth from some Russian or Chinese hacker that one wants to stop trying and just stop reading.  If, however, one faces the struggle for truth, one is quickly confronted by the reality that we’re in some really deep doo-doo.  Conservative or liberal, there is no denying that we are facing a significant constitutional crisis. By Mussolini’s definition; and we must remember him as the father of fascism; fascism is the merger of corporate and government power. Now conservatives can blame this on liberals, and liberals can blame it on conservatives, but in the final analysis the only driving force, and one who will benefit, is #45.  

I did go through a fairly lengthy spell where I tried to hide.  I skimmed the news once a day around noon, and avoided political posts anywhere. I wasn’t really hiding from the truth.  I was trying to escape a world where it was/is constantly in my face.  (You really need to read Jean-Paul Sartre’s “The Wall“.) It’s really tough when you know that there is nothing you can do about it at that time.  Yes, you can write a letter or email to your Congressional representatives. Their actions, financial disclosure and behavior clearly demonstrate that most of them don’t really care what you think.  I still write the letters.  Except for a very small number, they still act as if I don’t exist.  Voting; if you can get past the gerrymandering, voter suppression, and other attacks on our constitutional voice; is perhaps the most powerful thing we can do. Sadly we get limited use of that voice – twice a year at best.  We can join the protesters in the streets.  That used to be a more powerful means of social/political change, but now that politicians are bought and groomed by big corporations, politicians don’t have to listen to us. They will stay in power as long as they make their corporate owners happy. Actually, I protested back in the 1960s.  I’d do it again except for two things: (1) there aren’t any protests in easy proximity to me, which means that I’d be an outsider traveling to someone else’s home, and (2) I’m seventy-four years old, which means if COVID-19 didn’t kill me, a rubber bullet or good shove from one of #45’s Brownshirts probably would.  

The only thing I can do in my confinement is write.  There are those who make me feel good by calling me an intellect, thinker, analytic and/or writer.  I’m not really sure whether having a PhD means that I’ve developed more analytic, intellectual and writing skills or whether it is, as the joke goes a PhD – Piled Higher and Deeper. I don’t really see myself as such an intellect as some would have me think, and I’m definitely not going to brag about my IQ like the occupant of the White House.  Unlike him, I know that all those points don’t mean crap if you don’t apply them to knowledge, fact, and reality.  As a side panel, we have all joked about #45 thinking that a dementia assessment was an IQ test, but I haven’t heard anyone ask why he was having a dementia screening.  There is no doubt that Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer’s while president.  I spent over twenty-five years in geriatric psych, and I know that Alzheimer’s doesn’t just show up. It has usually been present for up to a decade before actual symptoms appear.  I tested a lot of people. Most people are in stage 4-5 out of 7 before they get tested. Even ten years ago; the last time I actively tested patients for dementia; I used methods which go far beyond #45’s “person, woman, man, camera, TV.”  Asking a patient to remember such a word sequence is generally part of what we, for years, called a “mini-mental”. Why hasn’t anyone asked why a min-mental was being administered to #45?  But I don’t want to digress too far, as intriguing as this line of thought might be.  

For some time I’ve exposed what I felt were critical issues of which we should be aware and about which we should be concerned.  I’ve found myself talking about them again and again.  It’s like a preacher who can’t get past the same chapter and verse.  How many times can I point out the most obvious mental instability and lack of social, intellectual, diplomatic, and moral skills of #45 before people start saying “yes. I see that.”   I’m just one of a tremendous number of psychological professionals who warned the US about this man long before he became president. How many times can I demonstrate that by the strictest of definition and history we are now a fascist state before people begin to accept the truth.  As long as we all continue to use base-10 math, 1+1 will always equal 2.  It isn’t an opinion. There is no such thing as “alternative fact” except in the minds of White House press secretaries and their boss.  Of course it is easy to ignore me and call me a liberal alarmist.  That’s really easy until it comes your turn to start losing your freedoms, your rights and privileges, and the things you love. Believe me. Your time will come.  I’m a privileged white male, and I’m already feeling it as #45 destroys the wilderness and environment I love and protect, and as he systematically makes my voice and vote worthless. 

Well, somewhere along the line I picked up that the person who wanted to be a writer should write a thousand words a day. One article pointed out that some famous authors write over 2,000 words a day while others only write 150.  It’s really a matter of practicing your craft.  Since I’m right at a little over 1,200 words, I’ve proven that I can write even when I’m feeling like there’s nothing more about which to write. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.  Perhaps I’m just tired of the subjects that present themselves.  Or perhaps, worst of all, I’m like the person who is disgusted by a scene of death and carnage but can’t look away.  On the other hand, however, perhaps I should be the one holding our national face toward the disgusting death and carnage of our society and our country screaming “look at it. LOOK AT IT. What are you going to do?”  

   I was reading an article by Andrew Selsky of the Associated Press after he interviewed Christopher David, the US Naval Academy graduate and “Navy veteran” who was beaten by #45’s Brownshirts in Portland.  Multiple pictures and videos show David just standing there, hands to his side, “like a redwood”. He said that he actually thought that he would be able to talk to them and remind them of their military oath. Sadly, he was wrong.  David had to have been a naval officer. You don’t go from the US Naval Academy to active duty as a seaman. From the fact and tone of Selsky’s article, David did not dwell on being a naval officer but did make a point of the military oath, which every one of us who has ever served in the United States military has taken.  I was not a military academy graduate, nor was I an officer.  In my four years my only citations of any merit were for good conduct, which merely meant that I had kept my nose clean and did my job, and a marksmanship badge.  I received an honorable discharge three months after spending 100 days being prepared by the 101st Airborne for Vietnam. The only thing I learned from them was that, if I were to end up in Vietnam, I was fairly certain of coming home in a body bag.  I was simply a young man at the height of the Vietnam war trying to survive.  Nevertheless,  I will still never forget the day that my small class took the oath of office. Like David, I found it a profoundly moving moment.  “I, ___, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same:….”  Perhaps it was because my Father was a decorated WWII disabled veteran who survive Omaha Beach and Battle of the Bulge before falling to a bomb somewhere in Germany. 

     Before I finish my story, let me point out that the oath does continue and say that the soldier promises to follow the orders of their appointed officer and the President of the United States.  If one looks carefully at the oath, and thinks about what they are saying, there are three distinct sections clearly divided by semicolons: (i) I swear to support and defend the Constitution; (ii) I will bear allegiance to the Constitution; (iii) I will follow the orders of my superiors. To pledge that you will follow the orders of your superiors is important and the President is the Commander-in-Chief.  BUT … and this ‘but’ needs to be in big, bold, underlined and italicized letters … this oath does not say that I will support and defend my officer or the President.  It says I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in doing so, I’ll follow orders.  

     This said, let’s continue with my story. My Father wasn’t exactly excited about my joining the Army.  He had become a Constitutional expert and was strongly opposed to the war in Vietnam, but he supported me. The one thing that he did impress upon me was that under US military justice no soldier can be made to follow an order that is illegal, immoral or unconstitutional.  All of the cadre under whom I served were career officers and Vietnam vets.  They also taught me that under US military justice no soldier can be made to follow an order that is illegal, immoral or unconstitutional.  This does not put orders up for a vote. They’re still orders to be followed, and if you do feel strongly enough that the orders are illegal, immoral or unconstitutional you are most probably going to face a court martial.  The responsibility to refuse such orders obviously becomes more demanding as one goes up in rank.  It is hard for an Army private to refuse an order, but a ranking non-commissioned or commissioned officer has a responsibility. It comes with the oath to support and defend the Constitution. 

     Historically we witness this in the heroic act of Capt. Silus Soule and Lt. Joseph Cramer who refused to allow their Company F of the First Colorado to take part in the Sand Creek Massacre carried out by Colonel John Chivington on Nov. 29, 1864 which killed 200 native Americans, mostly women and children.  The two officers were tried and exonerated, but their  lives were practically destroyed.  Nevertheless, they did the right thing. They defended the Constitution.  

     Totally unknown to historians is the account which my Father related to me many years after World War II when he was finally able to talk about his experience.  At one point he had a sergeant who was shooting  Germans who had surrendered.  The sergeant would walk the prisoner out away from the bivouac and come back alone with the story that they had attempted to escape. My Father, and the other men, refused to join the sergeant in his killing and turned him in. They were not there to injure or kill unarmed people whether civilians or prisoners-of-war. 

     As a psychotherapist with over twenty-five years working in geriatric psych, I heard many such accounts from Korean and Vietnam veterans. The point is that in the United States one is not expected to carry out illegal, immoral or unconstitutional orders.  It takes a tremendous amount of intestinal fortitude to disobey such orders, but it is all about “support and defend the Constitution.”  That is what Christopher David was talking about. That is what he was trying to say to #45’s Brownshirts who beat him. 

   We have entered a full-blown Constitutional crisis.  #45 insists that because he says it we must obey it.  That just isn’t true.  The President is not a king or dictator but an elected official who is supposed to work for the people of the United States.  The oath taken by the President says “I do solemly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”   To call the Constitution an archaic system that is bad for the country is not fulfilling that oath. (There are at least nine good sources that documented his statement.)  To send Brownshirts to forcefully and violently violate the  “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.” (First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.) is not fulfilling that oath.  

     Christopher David was trying to remind his attackers of their oath of enlistment.  He was trying to tell them that their orders, presence and behavior were illegal, immoral and unconstitutional and that they had both the right and responsibility to refuse to carry out those orders.  His only failing was that he was so naive as to believe that they cared.