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Saturday, November 12, 2022

In bed at 10, up at 2, unable to sleep.  Ellis in bed with her Nona, Lilly sleeping on the carpet in the TV room, gets up and moves when I enter.  33 degrees outside, cloudy high of 38 predicted.  Winter is in place.  I gassed up and got a car wash &vacuum yesterday, noticing the windy, 40 degree temperature on exposed hands.  Wondering whether I'd truly like to be a 'snowbird', to have a warm haven to hide in until next May.  I've become such a 'hearth mouse' that I'm not sure I would want to make the semi-annual adjustment.  And where would we go?  Where in Trump/DeSantisland?  Hurricane Alley or Droughtland?

Thoughts on Episode 2 of Vietnam

Watching episode 2 was a less emotional experience than watching the first episode, maybe a case of 'emotional deadening,' something I've experienced my entire life it seems, or at least since my father returned with PTSD from the Marines in World War II.  It's a psychological defense mechanism of course and it does its job, but at a cost.  My sister and I were both affected by it our entire lives, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little.  For most of the viewers who watched the series, Vietnam was ancient history insofar as the events related occurred before they were born or when they were children.  The Truman Doctrine of resisting communism wherever it threatened stability was announced in 1947.  The communists won mainland China in 1949 and recognized Ho Chi Minh's claim of a Vietnam free of French rule in 1950, as did the USSR.  North Korea invaded the South in June, 1950 and the US got into bed with the French in Vietnam.  I was 12 when Dien Bien Phu fell, though I remember the news coverage of its fall.  Within 2 months, the Geneva Agreement separate Vietnam into North and South with elections to be held within 2 years.  Of course they never were held because the US and the South, under Diem, knew that Ho Chi Minh would be overwhelmingly elected head of state.  And we were off to the races with the Catholic tyrant Diem as our prize pony.  

A  things struck me as I watched the episode and relived the time depicted.  

1. South Vietnam was no more democratic than the North was under the communists.  The communists were tyrannical in the North; Diem and his family and cronies were tyrannical in the South.  Diem and Nhu weren't the good guys, Ho and Giap weren't the good guys, and we weren't the good guys.

2. The intersection of Roman Catholic culture and colonialism was everywhere.  Diem and his family were Vietamese/French mandarins.  They were educated in Catholic schools, spoke French and English and worked hand in glove with the French colonizers.  The Church is not a democracy.  It is a feudal strongman structure with the pope as king, dispensing bishoprics to bishops the way feudal kings dispensed land and wealth to his favored vassals.  The duty of the laity is to "pray, pay, and obey." As Pope Pius X wrote in his 1906 encyclical  Vehementer Nos:  "It follows that the church is by essence an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful.  So distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end  of the society and directing all its members toward that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the pastors."  Diem was a devout Catholic.  His brother was bishop of the old imperial capital of Hue and New York Cardinal Francis Spellman was his strong political supporter with American politicians.  As Lord Acton accurately observed: "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."  Diem's regime was corrupt as well as tyrannical and undemocratic.  Catholic culture and sensibility informed all of this.

3. I was reminded by the fecklessness of the ARVN military of the failures of the Russian military in Ukraine.  The soldiers, at a minimum, were unsure of what they were fighting for and whatever it was, they sure didn't want to die for it or lose an arm or leg for it.  This was one of the aspects in which the Vietnam War was really an American war against Vietnamese. The battle of Ap Bac in January, 1963, set the tone for much of the war insofar as the Vietnamese forces, and their leaders in Saigon, were unwilling to fight.  When I was in Danang we would very rarely have Vietnamese officers visit the Marine Officers Club at the airbase.  They were not highly regarded and were not welcome, even in those early days of full American participation in the war in 1965-66.  Ukrainians know exactly what they are fighting for and they fight vigorously and effectively, not so the Russians and not so many (not all) of the ARVNs.

4. I know it's silly, really preposterous, but I was struck by Robert McNamar's hair, the slick shiny 'wethead' look eschewed in old Gillette men's hairspray commercials, with the part strategically situated to cover his male pattern baldness.   It seemed to show how controlled and controlling out of touch he was.   I have never had the sense that McNamara was a particularly bad man.  I believe he truly suffered over the bloodshed he presided over, at least once he realized (early on) that it was all futile, wasted. unavailing and thus unnecessary.  But he was wed to his theories of quantitative analysis that he had employed for the Army Air Corps during WWII and  had been his hallmark as CEO at Ford and thus we got into the ghoulish business of "body counts" that were regularalyy reported on the evening news reports each night.  All those numbers, all those statistics, all that data, all those corpses, all those cadavers, all those dead peasants and artisans, all those men and women and children shot or bombed or burned with napalm or 'willy peter' or doused with Agent Orange,  all those body counts and statistical analyses and still those third world men and women dressed in black pajamas kicked our ass out of Vietnam.  Now instead of comparing body counts, we compare imports and exports, running a huge trade deficit with Vietnam every year.  In 2021, we exported less than $9 billion and imported almost $99 billion, for a trade deficit of almost $90 billion.  So much for communism as casus belli.

5. "Better Dead Than Red"  That was the sign over the doorway to the corrugated metal hootch I bunked in my last couple of months in Vietnam.  That was the message on signs carried by pro-war demonstrators.  Did we really believe that?  "We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas, mais je les crains,—"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless".  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.  As I grew up, it was a toss-up which source was more vituperative about the uncompromisable evils of 'Godless communism,' the politicians or the Church.  On political matters, the official Church is almost always to be found on the right, part of the power structure, the Establishment.  In the 1960s Vietnamese communism was so intolerable we chose to participate in the killing of millions of them.  Now we hire them to make our tennies and T shirts.

WTWTMW

.John McGregor dressed in winter clothes walking Armand.  Two fat crows sauntering across the front lawn to check out what all the bird action is at our feeders, easier to walk than to fly.  Beaucoup goldfinches since I hung the tall tube feeder filled with niger seed.  Nine of them on the feeder at one time, another on the suet cake above.   English sparrows pretty feisty compared to other birds. At 9 a.m., all the birds feeding like there's no tomorrow.

Running out of gas

Awake since 2, not much fuel in the tank at 11.  Got some sleep in the afternoon, Geri woke me up and announced that her wonderful pea soup was contaminated by chunks of rubber from the gasket on the blender.  She lay down and I cleaned up the kitchen, feeling sorry about the work she had put into that soup only to lose it that way.

I Always Knew

After listening to about 18 hours of this Audible book, I didn't want to hear any more but got a print copy from the library to browse to see if there might be something of interest in the closing chapters.  No luck.  A whole lot of name-dropping.  Had enough.

Endless Election Day

Still waiting on results of Nevada senate contest and Arizona governor's race.  Control of Senate at stake.  Will we have complete ineffectiveness in the federal government for the next two years or partial.  Pretty sure House will go to the crazies.

CNN calls Nevada race for Democrat Cortez-Masto, Dems to keep control of Senante.  Bed time.