Thinking about the time when I was in the Marines a long time ago (as you can tell looking at the photo and see what type rifle I was issued) I wonder what has happened to the country I love. There were no such things as Red or Blue states. There was the United States.
Wondering about that I looked to see when the designation of states by color first came into use. It was given to us by a television news channel back in 1976. I should have figured that. It appealed to the folk watching television by simplifying things with colors.
Back during my time of wearing the uniform I do not recall one being judged by the area of the county he came from or the political philosophy he held. Yes, I use the masculine “he”, women in uniform were heard about, but hard to find.
There were no people saying they hate libs or Democrats or Republicans like some do today or calling others Socialists without a basic understanding of Socialism. During basic training, I was assigned to a fire team that consisted of four Southerners and myself. Aside from our accents we had no differences. We worked and trained together without any difficulty. We did not have Southern squads and Northern squads. We were all mixed together to do the job which was to protect our nation.
I got thinking of that when I read these words in Thomas Friedman’s New York Times column the other day. He had gone to Afghanistan twenty years ago right after the Taliban were driven out of Kabul. After spending some days there with Joe Biden who was on the Foreign Relations Committee he was on his way out sitting at the Bagram Airbase hoping to catch a military flight out to Pakistan. Later, he wrote in his diary,
“I looked around the room at the Special Forces A-teams that were there and could see America’s strength hiding in plain sight. It wasn’t smart missiles or night-fighting equipment. It was the fact that these Special Forces teams each seemed to be made up of a collection of Black, Asian, Hispanic, and white Americans. It is our ability to blend those many into one hard fist that is the real source of our power. This is precisely what Afghans have not been able to do in recent decades, and it has left them weak, divided, and prey to outsiders.” (my emphasis)
Then noting he had written the above 20 years ago he added in parenthesis: “Reading that particular passage 20 years later I confess that I wonder if we have become more like the Afghans and not the Afghans more like us. Our diversity is only our strength as long as we can forge “out of many — one.” But lately, our parties and politics have become so tribalized it is not clear anymore that we can do that.”
Yes, that is what is was like when I was in the Marine Corps. No matter where you were from we would blend “into one hard fist” to fight for the United States. Friedman was writing about 2001. My time was back many years before that to the 1960s. Others could tell how in the 1940s during WWII that was the case.
We have a choice. Do we want to descent into the chaos of hell and become the new Afghanistan or rise up into the “hard fist” where a “collection of Black, Asian, Hispanic, and white Americans” unite together to stay as the United State of yore where we all worked together to form a more perfect union?
Matt
Still clinging to your Marine tribe as you get ready
to engage in conscious aging….
https://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/stories/myss.relationship_transcending_tribe
Transcending the Tribe
By Caroline Myss
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520299757/pacifying-the-homeland
Pacifying The Homeland – Intelligence Fusion And Mass Supervision McQuade
Rilke
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/10/joanna-macy-a-year-with-rilke-death-mortality/
The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves.
I am not saying that we should love death, but rather that we should love life so generously, without picking and choosing, that we automatically include it (life’s other half) in our love. This is what actually happens in the great expansiveness of love, which cannot be stopped or constricted. It is only because we exclude it that death becomes more and more foreign to us and, ultimately, our enemy.
It is conceivable that death is infinitely closer to us than life itself… What do we know of it?
How many stuck with America’s President Donald Trump?. Did the Media, Academia, the Deep State, the Democratic party united behind or derided the President’s supporters as deplorables, Nazis, uneducated, clones, clannish, cultish followers, not respecting diverse opinions. Leftists drove a gulf, as wide as the Panama Canal, between liberals and conservatives.
Now the Liberals who’ve acquired power, ask Conservatives to unite. At least half of Americans are not rallying behind Joe’s radical flag. He is most divisive president in America’s history.
I wrote a two-volume history, titled, “Shots Heard Round the World: Americans Answer the Call to Arms”, published in 2002. It covers America’s history from preceding the Revolutionary War to the beginning of the twenty-first century, including 9/11/2001.
The final chapter is titled,” Postcript: The Triumph of Multi-Ethnic America.” The title speaks for itself.
I have worked with and studied with men and women of every race, religion, ethnic group in Boston and D.C. I have dated/danced with and wooed women of every race, religion and ethnic group, practically speaking. I have worked with, met with, socialized with, worked out with inner city residents, from Allston Brighton to South Boston (l-Street) to Dorchester (clubs, fraternal groups), and next door neighbors of Newton, at the Y, gyms, B.C. concerts, sports, lectures. Daily I lived with folks of every race, religion, ethnic group, orientation, political persuasion, et cetera. Professors, Addicts, Alcoholics, Ministers, Blue Collar, White Collar, Tradesmen, Artists, Athletes . . .daily . . .over 40 years of inner-city social meetings, over 40 years a member of gyms, over 40 years at museums, concerts, parades, over 25 years working out daily at L-Street.
I lived in diversity up the yin yang a lifetime full. The only divisiveness I saw was from the Left, the leftists, the radicals, the elitists in academia and the media and the FEDs and Staties. I had many good friends among liberals. Interested in brain-washing? Read my friend Larry Tye’s first book, in 1998, titled “Spin” about propaganda, publicity. Larry’s a good liberal, like Juan Williams, who I like but vigorously dissent from their socio-political views. I generally liked democrat, Marine, T-man, Bartender, Billy Anderson’s opinions. He was like Steve Lynch, a pro-life, moderate politician.
In another book, “From Trial to the Supreme Court: Anatomy of a Free Speech Case” (published 1996) Walkowski and I recorded Massachusetts judiciary’s abuse of power. Paul Walkowsi was the principal writer, but Paul and I put our time and heads together equally to come up with that book, acclaimed by some.
In another book, “One LIfe: How the U.S. Supreme Court Deliberately Distorted the History, Science and Law of Abortion.” (2002) I exposed SCOTUS’S mistakes. Even the best err. Sometimes the Constitutional Law is not what the judges say. See 1889 Plessy, 1973 Roe, and 1995 Hurley, for examples
I was told as a freshman in B.C, by a professor that I had a talent for writing. I was not as good a writer as Walkowski. I was a pretty good street fighter, but not as good as Mancini, Jenkins, Eugley, Barunis, Bobby Sullivan or Jack Hutchinson, to mention a few from Savin Hill. But I learned a bit on a boxing club team, sparring in the backyards and streets, playing football, basketball, and handball, with city-kids and men of every race, religion and ethnic group.
The cause for the most divisiveness in America is from the leftists, mostly agnostic or atheistic socialists, hostile to religion; they are akin to thought-suppressing, speech censoring Marxists, who are akin to Communists and akin to Stalinists. Communism is the twin brother of Hitler’s National Socialism.
The Bidenites, Joe’s blow hard-left acolytes, say America is “doomed” unless America follows leftists’ views. We, Conservatives, Patriotic Americans, think the leftists not only are splitting us asunder they are driving America off a cliff.
I thought Jeff Davis was a bit divisive President (CSA).
wa-llahi! Bill, all Communists are Marxists, but, all Socialists are not Marxist. There are Christian Socialist political parties in Europe. The connections you articulate don’t actually exist. Wake up from that 1950’s fever dream of the leftist menace. It’s 2021, consciousness awaits.
What’s this post about, Bill? I mean, other than the same autobiographical sketch we have read dozens of times and the bigoted and totally false pigeonholing of any and all people that didn’t fall in love with Bonespurs, what’s your point?
Sounds good ,it is not the reality of 2021. No mention made of Murdoch and Fox News. Look at how the Globe and Herald cover the same topics. Great men used to put country first. Who would want to grow up trying to get elected President when you could be a high tech billionaire?The country has changed and not for the better and no one is going to be able to put it back. Desantis will beat Harris in 24 and then we will hear complaining from a new angle.
Norwood I think ticket is Trump/Desantis – Secretary of State Ivanka or Hawley – Secr of Def Gen Flynn or Cotton. Dire days ahead.