PBS Vietnam Series, Finale, "The Weight of Memory," 28 September 2017

Excellent project all together; for what it's worth some comments.

      * This is trivial, but they got across the green of the Vietnamese countryside: a brilliant, unforgettable green. Not as much as the earlier series, they also did well to suggest the occasional terrible beauty of the war, and to get statements from a US veteran or two on the exhilaration and community of combat. I cannot speak to that point personally, but in terms of men's behavior, the polished-up version of General Sherman's "War is hell, and all its glory moonshine" has got to be balanced, at least for some, by positives, including, with a lot of irony, beauty and community.

      * The final episode didn't make up for the previous one's unfairness to George McGovern and John Kerry. McGovern was a good and honorable man, and far more right than wrong. With Kerry, they let stand without any response the accusation that in his testimony to the Congress for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War he passed along lies about atrocities by US forces. The last word on the subject is from an American combatant who said that he was certain atrocities occurred but that wasn't what he saw, not part of his war. I believe him, but what is actually the case in terms of the war and the stories Kerry told the Congress?

      * There's a book on Vietnam movies by the PR officer for General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. He found THE DEER HUNTER mostly pretty silly but praised it for showing a small-town's friendly wellcome-home for returning Vietnam soldiers, as opposed to the usual Hollywood curses and spittle. The US is a big country, and in the Midwest outside of Madison, WI, and some other places, the party line among the Peace Movement — as opposed to "The Revolution" — was to treat grunts and low-ranking officers as (as a critic of the Wall put it) victims of the war and potential and important allies. (The VVAW were crucial for the anti-War movement.)

      * The approach of the documentary necessarily avoided the wonkish "Well ...?" Well, were US actions in Vietnam finally, on balance, right or wrong? Was it a just war, or a "mistake" that with so high a body count would be a crime? The US lost, and we're still here and doing OK, and, arguably, would be better off if we hadn't fought. Therefore no vital interests were involved, by definition of "vital"; certainly there was no existential threat to the Republic. Alternative, the US opposed the Communists with vigor, and the Philippines and Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, et al. aren't part of a Stalinist world. Indeed, the USSR fell, and the Cold War ended before World War III. All of this precisely because the US showed that JFK was right and we would (just about) pay any price — and inflict huge damage — to preserve capitalist, liberal freedom: our spilling so much blood and spending so much money proved that. The approach of this PBS series was effective, but a wonkish word or two would have helped.

     * I really do have to visit the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington,  DC. I wanted to leave a stone there that I had picked up at Kent State, but left the stone at My Lai instead. Still, I do need to see the Wall.

Address to the Nation: Terrorism

         It's not going to happen, but if we could mix together a "gaffe" by John Kerry — a politician's slipping and telling an unpleasant truth — with the knowledge and intelligence of Barack Obama and the intemperance of Donald Trump, we might get a useful talk to Americans on terrorism.

*

            As Democratic candidate for President, John Kerry was impolitic but right in his assertion that for the foreseeable future, the best we can hope for with terrorism is to reduce it to the point where, in terms of America, it is a nuisance, even as it is deadly for some Americans.

            There's a distinction there we need to get. Terrorists threaten American interests and the lives of Americans and, more so, non-Americans in war zones; terrorists are not a threat to the American State, what we have of an American nation, nor, unless we panic, to the American Republic. One of the horrible lessons of World War II is how many people can be killed, wounded, and maimed, how much property and infrastructure and cultural products can be destroyed, without even bringing down a regime, let alone destroying a State or a people.

            So get that straight: terrorists are a variety of "existential threat" to Americans — they can kill (etc.) a fair number of us — but not to America.

            That, relatively speaking, is the good news.

            The bad news is that you will die. More or less unpleasantly, you will die; your children will die; and every human, animal, and plant you know and love (or hate or have never heard of) will die. As Hamlet's mom reminds him, "You know it's common: all that lives must die, / Passing through life to eternity," or passing on to just to being dead (1.2.73-74). You will die; unless we screw up badly, human life and civilization will carry on.

            Even if you are one of America's fairly numerous homicides, however — 13,716 in 2013 — it is highly unlikely you'll be a victim of terrorism or some other exotic crime where you'll be killed by a stranger. To repeat again a repeated statistic, "between 2001 and 2013, there were 3,030 people killed in domestic acts of terrorism" in the USA, plus 350 in that period killed abroad. "This brings the total to 3,380," as opposed to more mundane "American Deaths by Firearms on U.S. soil" during that period of 406,496, although many of those deaths were suicides — 41,149 in 2013 — which you may count as you like.

            Heart disease, cancer, respiratory diseases, or just some dumb-ass accident: those are the "leading causes of death" for Americans, saith the Centers for Disease Control; terrorism is nowhere near the top ten.

            So, first thing to do, fellow Americans, is to get your figurative spines stiffened and "grow a pair": increase the size of the part of the frontal lobes that does math and risk assessment, locate your gonads, and get those adrenal glands going at a good level for courage but not panic.

            Because we are threatened.

            President Obama was correct in 2014 in saying that ISIS (ISIL, Daesh) was a junior varsity team. The varsity would be a "kinder, gentler" successor group to ISIS, one that can hold territory without extreme brutality and for long enough time to prepare for the professionals. The true threat would be a territorial entity that is the origin of a mass movement with a charismatic leader, an expanding army, and, eventually, access to air and naval power.

            Think of Muhammad, Umar, and Abu Bakr (the first caliph), but with heavier weapons and a variety of fundamentalism necessarily absent when the fundamentals of a religion are in development. Speaking of initial expansion of Islam within and then out of the Arabian Peninsula, my 1937 Thompson and Johnson History of Medieval Europe notes that it is "impossible" in the early years of the Faith "to speak of Mohammedan [sic] fanaticism, except possibly in isolated instances. Mohammed himself in his conquest of Mecca displayed a fierce enough zeal; but in general no such militant intolerance as, for example, characterized the struggle of Christianity against paganism, characterized Mohammedan expansion. The fanaticism of Islam is that of much later converts, and even so Mohammedanism has normally been marked in practice by its tolerance" (164; ch. 7, "The Empire of the Arabs").

            Such tolerance is not a characteristic of ISIS, and they threaten wars of Reformation plus a Sunni vs. Shia civil war, combined with warfare against more obvious infidels.

            The serious danger is not the relative "nuisance" of terrorism nor even guerilla warfare, but full-scale war that parallels the European Wars of Religion following the Protestant Reformation in the Early Modern period, combined with the Medieval Crusades, in turn combined with the earlier expansion of Islam that marked the end of the Ancient World.

            Except that the Modern and postmodern world has a plentiful supply of nuclear weapons, including in places in reach of an ISIS successor, like Pakistan and Israel.

            The 16^th- and 17^th-centuryWars of Religion between Catholic and Protestant Christians killed over seven million people; if we are not careful, we in our times — with more lethal weapons and far larger populations — can make such numbers look trivial.

            And such a war would be fine with the members of ISIS with apocalyptic aspirations, and with potential opponents with similar hopes: "Onward Christian soldiers," marching into literal war, maybe joined by extremist Jews and Hindus, "depending on the breaks," all in a world awash with heavy weaponry.

*

            All of which is why we must "Be of good courage" in the face of terrorism and not panic. Our fears have led to enough damage already in Afghanistan and, far more so, Iraq. Getting sucked into Syria would compound the damage. We must indeed fight ISIS to prevent wars of religion that would be an existential threat not just to the United States but to the human world as we know it; but we must fight ISIS in cautious alliances that will not start the wars we wish to prevent.

            For Americans, terrorism is a deadly but unliely danger; for America, it is, in itself, a nuisance. A real clash of civilizations — fights to the death among the armed forces of States and a caliphate — would be massive slaughter.

Sincere, Spontaneous Public Speaking (I'm Against It) [29 Nov. 2013)

         I'd like to talk a moment about sincere, spontaneous public speaking: for most people, most of the time — Don't!

            There are exceptions. For example, if you're a Baptist minister, brought up in the great oratorical tradition of the Black Church in America, then there's a pretty good chance you can be moved by the Spirit and deliver a perfectly decent sermon ad lib. Still, there's a much better chance that "I Have a Dream" it will not be, and if you want to do better than "decent" (or adequate), you'd better spend some time preparing.

            Most White folks, and just about all politicians: Yo! — write the speech; then stick to the script. If you need a moment of sincere spontaneity in your presentation, be sure it's carefully rehearsed. More exactly: write the speech, let it sit for a day or two, and then rewrite it for clarity and brevity. Then have someone edit it for you. If you can afford a speech writer, you probably aren't reading this, so let's say if in the future you become important enough to hire speech writers, first off, give them credit somewhere. There is the theory, "I paid for it; it's mine," but if we don't accept that line for essays submitted by college students, we shouldn't accept it for speeches delivered by politicians or CEO's or other people who can have others do their intellectual drudge work. More immediately relevant here: If you can afford a speech writer, work with the writer to get the speech you want, then make it shorter — and again, once you get it, stick to the bloody script.

            Further advice if you're a politician or someone else whose words should be taken seriously: Do have a question and answer period after your presentation. Have a website, though, with policy statements and hand out press kits ("media kits"?) with synopses of your positions in the simple sentences and small words suitable to American journalism in these our degenerate days. Assume just about any question you get from a reporter is a potential "Gotcha!" moment, and preface any potential sound bite or brief quotation with, "Well, ________ [REPORTER'S FIRST NAME, pronounced with heartfelt pseudo-friendly informality], there's a complete statement of my position on my website and in the press kit, but the short answer is 'Yes'" or "No," if it's a yes/no question, followed by a sound-bite/brief-quote-suitable short form of your carefully developed and nuanced position a few serious journalists will look over, but the general lot of media whores will ignore.

            This advice is free, and arguably worth every penny of the cost. In the background are, primarily, two, maybe 2.5 experiences: (1) during the 2004 US Presidential campaign my listening to Senator John Kerry make a sincere, authentic, off-the-cuff speech. In the tradition of most actually-existing Senatorial oratory, the talk was rambling and interminable; and (2) complaints that President Barack Obama depended on a teleprompter. My response to the complaint against Obama: Good for him! He got a script and followed it.

            It actually happened that in 1984 I found myself trapped in an Ohio hotel during a blizzard, in a bar, having a beer with Senator Joe Biden. The guy was a great talker: authentic, sincere, funny. I still supported Obama in 2008, the true pro with the teleprompter, who, of course, is also capable of flubbing when going ad lib.

            Now with politicians and other important, or self-important, people, the basic problem is the one classically identified in 1946 by George Orwell in "Politics and the English Language": "In our time" — politics and parts of the English language were really worse in 1946 —"political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness." In our time, many speakers in positions of power can't say what they mean and remain in power; so their public pronouncements will frequently be pretty lame.


            But they can be lame and at least presented in complete sentences, and briefly.