Goodbye to John McCain

So long, John!  Fare Thee Well!

Goodbye to John McCain

They’re paying their respects to the late Senator John McCain today.  I’m reminded when Trump tried to denigrate Sen. McCain, claiming he wasn’t a real war hero because McCain had been captured.  Then he added some typically idiotic remark such as “I like my heroes not captured” or words to that effect. 

Well, Mr. President, I can tell you this much: sometimes you have to accept the opinion of the majority, sir.

I mean, you think less of him as a man because he was captured, badly injured in the crash, had broken bones and tortured? 

He fractured both arms and a leg, had his shoulder crushed by a rifle butt and then he was bayoneted. 

He was refused medical treatment and served 5 1/2 years as a POW, including two years in solitary confinement. At one point during his long captivity, he was bound and beaten every 2 hours. 

Not everyone remembers this detail but in mid-1968, when his captors found out he was the son of an admiral, he was offered early release as a sign of mercy.  Indeed, “McCain refused repatriation unless every man taken in before him was also released”. 

He could have gone home and received the kind of medical attention he so urgently needed but he refused the offer.

Now you can talk about party politics all you want: what’s politically correct and what’s not. 

You can talk about nationalism, race, and language being the major way we meet and judge people.  Maybe that’s still true but not now as much as in the old days. 

We are also are free to change the tone of the conversation.  We can talk about universal traits all people share like loving their families and teaching their children what words like honor, honesty, and courage mean.

Sometimes we can admire a man for his courage and set aside for a moment those concerns about race, ethnicity, culture and all such.

Now we are talking about a man’s character and the trait of courage.  Others will pay tribute to John McCain far better than I ever could when it comes to describing his independence of spirit, his open-hearted willingness to work with members of the other party, even his cantankerous, maverick, and ornery iconoclastic self. 

We are talking only about one virtue: courage.  When other people can say with confidence that they would have endured what John McCain endured, then those people should be free to speak up and express their opinion.  They have the right. 

His comrades and wounded friends, they should be allowed to express their opinion, too.  And maybe, just maybe, the rest of us who wouldn’t there in Vietnam with John McCain and can’t imagine those prison conditions, maybe we should keep quiet. 

That includes you, Mr. President.  We want to hear the story of John McCain, and remember.

I think most of us can see our way clear to saying at least this much: the way he endured his capture, imprisonment, and torture was brave, remarkable and heroic.  Yes, HEROIC. 

He himself made no secret where he found the strength: a deep-seated patriotism that reached down to the very roots of this country and takes its nourishment from the heroic actions of the brave American soldiers of the past. 

He’s drawing inspiration from Washington’s freezing soldiers at Valley Forge, the nameless men who endured exposure, disease, and starvation because of their love for their new country and the bedrock principles for which it stands: democracy, freedom, justice, and equality. 

They gave their lives for a cause in which they believed. 

And we think John McCain’s commitment to these principles was rather HEROIC, too.

No, Mr. President, you can’t always define “hero” the way your crazy mind would misleads you, just because of you enmity for John and your bitter jealousy of a man you could never begin to equal.

You can’t engage in bitter gossip against a fallen American soldier because the American people won’t let you . . . . and the spirit of John McCain won’t let you.

Sure, I get it, you don’t want to call John McCain a hero because he wouldn’t bend the knee to a tyrant, because he was independent and principled and showed no cowardice, no crack in his ethical armor for you to compromise and exploit.  So you impugn he wasn’t a hero.  That’s you, not him. 

You wish John McCain hadn’t been captured so you could call him a hero?  Well, other people have their wishes, too.

I wake up and wish you were not the president with all my heart and soul every day . . . . but we don’t always get our wishes fulfilled, do we? 

It seems your wish is to try and make light of Senator John McCain’s long captivity and suffering but I tell you again, the American people won’t allow it. 

We have our principles, too.  We show respect when a man’s personal courage soars above all other petty labels and disputes—if that’s courageous in our eyes and if we want to call John McCain a HERO and his actions HEROIC, that’s our affair! 

I feel sorry for you, Mr. President, if you don’t know how to set aside all your bickering bitchiness to just stop and breathe, listen and reflect and say with us: Here was a man who knew courage. 

He acted, as a hero always acts, in the most heroic manner possible under the given circumstances.  That’s why he’s OUR American hero. 

You go ahead with your snide jokes and rude insults, Mr. President, that’s who you are: a mean-spirited, combative, vulgar, crafty, lying, deceitful old fool.  You go ahead and be who you are; let John be the man he was, and is.

Truthfully, Mr. President, I believe the real reason you can’t say nice things about John McCain because you are unable to appreciate him.  You don’t have the scruples or the wisdom to understand a man like John McCain. 

You are missing the best common traits that the rest of us have: of respect for honor and loyalty and that special brand of patriotism that makes one willing, almost glad, to give his life for country. 

I bet you don’t know what I’m talking about now, do you, Mr. President?

You are missing a full spectrum of normal healthy emotions like love and kindness, gentleness and tenderness and the mercy and compassion that comes from deep within one’s own heart. 

You reach behind you into your emotional barrel and you find it empty; you can’t reach in and pull out an appreciation for what real courage looks like, the trait that more than any other defines HEROISM. 

Lacking utterly this quality yourself, you can’t appreciate what TRUE COURAGE looks like in the life of another human being.  It’s too bad, Mr. President, you never got to know one of the great men of the United States Senate.

 I think you would have liked him.

Goodbye, John,

and God’s speed!

Trump and Teaching

At first glance this two-part Facebook post (8/23 and 8/24/18) may appear to be a harmless little anecdote about a misbehaving student I had as a teacher, but it's also a political statement if you follow the intended parallel between miscreant student and duplicitous president . . . .

All this craziness with Trump reminds me of a day in the classroom. 

I had a kid who excelled at sneaking out of his seat to go join other kids whenever he could.  He would spot 3-4 kids together and off he would go.  They might be at the classroom library, a learning center, drinking fountain, or the pencil sharpener waiting in line.  Wherever they were, he felt an overwhelming urge to go join them. 

The kids in the small group would be standing or working quietly together before he got there but within a minute after his arrival, voices started rising and quarrels would break out.  To this day I’m not sure what he said or how he caused so much friction so quickly but he was a phenomenal instigator! 

He was quite clever and crafty, I’ll give him that much, because he also kept an eye on me and tracked my every movement.  As soon as he discerned my intention was to walk over to his desk and have a few words with him, he took off like a rocket.  He would get there first, slide into his seat, glance up and say with an innocent look on his face “I’m not out of my seat!” even before I had a chance to say anything. 

That left me kind of stunned.  I’d walk away mulling it over.  The kid must have been traumatized in the younger grades something awful . . . or he’d been one heck of a mischief-maker.  Even though I was keeping track of his multiple infractions, he seemed to believe I had nothing on him so long as he got back in his seat before I got there! 

Well, I’ve been around the block a few times so I got to setting up the trap.  I’d walk over to another student a couple rows away and return a paper . . . and he’d go to full alert if he was away from his desk; he’d head back and slide in anticipating my intention to trick him.  

I stayed patient.  I’d talk to other students about their schoolwork before returning to the front of the room.  I’d lean over and get absorbed in the one-on-one and act like I was oblivious to the rest of the class. 

He got used to my new routine and eventually grew over-confident; he was at the pencil sharpener causing his usual mischief when I saw my chance.  While he still had a habit of keeping one eye on me, he had let down his guard for a just a second which was all the time I needed.  I moved swiftly, beat him to his desk and slid into his seat a split second before he got there! 

I left him standing there next to me for a few seconds so the gravity of the situation could weigh on him.  He only had mastered a one-line excuse and I had just taken that away from him.  Finally I looked up sweetly and asked him:  “I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re not out of your seat?” 

Boys that age don’t blush but they do blanch on occasion; the blood drains from the cheeks and they turn several pale shades lighter.  He had nothing to say . . . but I did!

I had him come in at lunch time so we could talk.  I went over carefully the events of the morning.  He had gotten out of his seat on four separate occasions, joined four different groups, and in each instance a previously quiet group started arguing as noisily as a bunch of angry bees. 

I then carefully named each group, where they were, and what they were doing.  I named each student in each group, including him.  I described how quietly they had been behaving before something or someone caused them to start quarreling among themselves. 

Then I asked him if he noticed anything unusual about the pattern?  Our eyes met and I think he knew where I was going with this but he remained quiet.  I told him, “There was only one student common to all four groups.  Do you know who that student was?”  Our eyes briefly met again. 

“That student was you, wasn’t it?”  He nodded his head. 

“Now if you were me, as the teacher, what would you make of this pattern?  Four groups, four activities, all working quietly until the same student joined them and then suddenly there was a ruckus—and that student was you each time.  Do you see where I’m going with this?”

By that time he had nothing left to say, no more excuses.  He broke himself of his bad habit, turned over a new leaf and we started a new teacher-student relationship.  He still tracked me with his eyes but now he was listening, not plotting. 

I think there were a few times I saw a wistful look in his eyes for the good old days, like he hoped I would grow absent-minded so he could go back to visiting classmates but he remained true to his word and never did any backsliding; he went straight from that day forward and he was a pleasure to have in the classroom.      

What does this anecdote have to do with Donald Trump?  Well, the pattern seems eerily similar when it comes to a miscreant acting up:

It’s Trump and Michael Cohen;

It’s Trump and Paul Manafort;

It’s Trump and Stormy Daniels;

Now it’s Trump and David Pecker. 

See the pattern? 

Just like that schoolboy from long ago, the pattern tells the story as to who the chief instigator is.  In each instance, there’s only one name that’s always present!    

              Defend Mother Earth from Dirty Donald

                              This isn’t just stupidity, it’s lunacy.

For normal people, watching Donald Trump can be very enraging and tiring.  Trying to figure out what makes the man tick is like an exercise in clinical psychiatry.  Trying to predict his next move is like joining a gambling game on the Titanic. 

Whether small detail or big picture, he gives ordinary people an awful lot to fret over.  There seems to be a cumulative numbing effect as we watch him stretch or embellish his “alternative reality” day after day.  

Sometimes it seems like he has uttered enough falsehoods and crossed enough ethical lines to provide for his own downfall.  This may be proven true eventually but that day is still in the future.

Meanwhile, people who consider themselves liberals or moderates must stand aghast at the president’s attitude toward the environment.  He is anti-science in his thinking and denies that climate change, the warming of the earth’s atmosphere, is occurring. 

He supports the dirty fossil fuel industries.  He refuses to support new clean energy sources: solar, wind, and thermal.  He is pro-business to a ridiculous extent, the “business” of exploiting natural resources without mercy for quick profits and without regard for consequences. 

He is also obsessed with carrying out his anti-Obama agenda so anything the last president did to address environmental concerns, Trump is systematically undoing.  Here are some examples:

He pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Pact.

He is rolling back standards to improve car mileage rates.

He is rescinding Obama-era coal emissions standards

He intends to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling.  This is a pristine area famous for its caribou herds and the indigenous people who depend upon them.

He is shrinking Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Escalante National Monuments (some 2 million acres) to make way for exploitation of lands adjacent to them, which will dramatically impact and destroy areas set aside for the enjoyment of the American people. Pollution and Industrial waste, sometimes toxic, will move across boundaries and negatively impact the health of national parks and monuments.

He had the audacity to appoint as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency a man named Scott Pruitt, a man who was opposed to the purpose of the agency he was to lead!

These are just a few examples but you get the idea.  In the midst of us being overwhelmed at times by Donald Trump’s narcissistic and bombastic personality, we must not take our eyes off his actions and policies.  He already represents the biggest setback to the modern environmental movement yet seen. 

I know many of my friends care about the environment for themselves, their children, and everyone  else.  Climate change is real; the warming of the earth’s atmosphere is real; and we need progressive leadership based on science to address the growing challenges regarding the health of the land, water, and air.  There are numerous groups one can join or support financially.  Among them:

World Wildlife Fund

Environmental Defense Fund

Greenpeace

Friends of the Earth

Audubon Society

National Wildlife Federation

Natural Resources Defense Council

Save the Whales

These groups provide education and suggest policies for legislators. They have many active projects to study and protect wildlife. Some will engage in direct action and several have the means to mount substantial legal challenges in court to ensure that existing environmental laws and regulations are enforced.

I encourage you to stay informed and do what you can to help protect Mother Earth from the actions and policies of the current president.  As his lunacy worsens, ordinary Americans should step up their game to oppose the president’s short-sighted, profit-driven decision-making.  

                     PLEASE HELP DEFEND MOTHER EARTH!