Wednesday, July 29, 2015

What is the only English-speaking country to be defeated in battle and occupied?

The Confederate States of America! Yes, dear old Dixie holds that dubious distinction. Losers then, losers now and forever. Not something Donald Trump would like. 1066 and all that doesn't count because England wasn't a country yet and the official language for the next 200 years was French. I've spent time in the South. Good meals, terrible climate with some OK people and some not so OK. I saw a guy on TV waving a Confederate flag and yelling, “It's not racism it's heritage”.. of what, slavery, lynching, Jim Crow? We have the zombie young man holding his gun and Confederate flag and then going into a church and murdering 9 innocent black people because “someone has got to do it”. Take down the flag, burn it and join the Union properly. The fact that the party of Lincoln prevails throughout the South shows just what an upside down society it is. Mark Twain, born in the South, lest we forget, travelled to Dixie 15 years after Lee surrendered and was shocked to feel the resentment of the people and the complete lack of industry or progress. In the new Harper Lee novel even that paragon of southern decency, Atticus Finch, has succumbed to bitterness. General US Grant said the Confederacy was “the worst cause men ever fought for.” It still is.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Is John McCain a hero or not?

Donald Trump says he's not and I tend to agree with him, but not to badmouth McCain. He was a pilot who was in the wrong spot at the wrong time in the wrong war. He was shot down and captured. As a POW he suffered. I saw him behind home plate at a Diamondback game this weekend and he looks like a nice guy, a regular guy, out with his wife at a baseball game. My problem is with the word “hero”. America has the biggest, most over-bloated military in the world and the Pentagon likes it that way. But the use of words like hero and freedom has the smell of stale orthodoxy that Orwell warned about. So what we have is a citizen like The Donald speaking his mind and getting his taste of the “Two minutes of hate” found in 1984. Samuel Johnson said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel and the Republican field is certainly full of first rate scoundrels and third rate leaders. If you are in the lobby of my old club in NY, the Yale Club, you will see a statue of Nathan Hale, a 21 year old patiot who was executed by the British in the Revolutionary War. He said, “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” He was a hero.