Wednesday, March 29, 2023
In bed at 9:30, up at 4:50, 33℉, high of 36, windy morning ahead, followed by a sunny afternoon, a current WNW wind at 11 mph, winds during the day from 4 to 17 mph, and gusts up to 28 mph, wind chill at 25℉. Sunrise at 6:39, sunset at 7:14. 12+35.
Withdrawal from Vietnam. 50 years ago today, 'peace with honor', what a sick joke. Nixon, Kissinger, Vietnam, Chile. The democratically elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup on September 11, 1973, spurred on and supported by the Nixon-Kissinger CIA. Allende literally blew his brains out with an AK-47 as the Chilean army, led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, established a neo-fascist military dictatorship that ruthlessly ruled the country until 1990. When was it I first learned never to believe what the government tells us, always to suspect the worst in what the government doesn't tell us?
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March 29, 2018: After much urging by my college roommate and friend Ed Felsenthal, I finally enrolled with the Veterans Administration health system last year. I had avoided the VA for years because of all the bad news coverage it received, such as serious facilities deficiencies at Walter Reed, and inadequate and worse medical care at the Tomah hospital, and waiting list scandals in Phoenix and elsewhere. Now we have the VA Secretary Shulkin's junkets with his wife and his intended replacement by President Trump's White House doctor.
I need to say a word (and more) in defense of the VA. I have received services in many departments from many people at the VA's Zablocki Medical Center in Milwaukee. I have been tremendously impressed by my experiences there. The medical and support staff have been not only very competent and professional but also very caring. I usually come home to tell Geri how touched I have been by the level of helpfulness I experienced at the hospital. To say I've been "astounded" or "blown away" by these experiences would be hyperbolic, but I lack the words to describe adequately how favorably impressed, and truly touched, I've been by the health care providers and others at this VA facility. I am confident it is not the only such facility in the system. Hence my sadness to read more negative press coverage about troubles at the top of the system.
A further word. Right wing politicians despise the VA and want to privatize it. It is, after all, a classic single-payer government-sponsored health care system., i.e., (shudder!) a socialist program. Mr. Trump wanted to nominate a Fox News anchor to head the system, a guy who has championed VA privatization for years. He was thwarted in this and has turned to his personal White House physician as a second choice. We should make no mistake however about his goal of privatizing, i.e., destroying, the VA. All veterans organizations opposed this and I hope all my friends will join this opposition. The VA's mission is taken from Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address - "to care for him [and her] who shall have borne the battle" is a noble one, befitting a caring if bellicose nation. Let's hope that Trump doesn't succeed in destroying this worthy government agency.
This morning: My thoughts on the VA have not changed over the last 5 years; if anything, they have become more fixed. Those thoughts are probably more focused today because it is the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, 57 years since my leaving the country. I regularly see fellow Vietnam vets, as well as Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan vets at the VA Medical Center, most in some stage of infirmity, some of it age-related, some war-related. There is hardly a visit there without hearing the PA system activate and announce "Your attention, please. Medical emergency, Rapid Response Team needed at (giving a location within the hospital). I feel a sense of kinship with all those old vets, and the young ones too. I have the same sense while driving through Wood National Cemetery next to the VA Medical Center. It's not a sense of specialness, rather the opposite, a sense of commonness with millions of other Americans who have served in our military, sometimes in good causes, but too often in unwise, unworthy, or ignoble causes. On this solemn anniversary, I think of course of the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam, but also of the 3,000,000 or so Vietnamese who died, and of the countless Americans and Vietnamese who suffered profound misfortunes other than death, continuing to this day. I wish I could believe that at least we learned a lesson in Vietnam. If only.
Our Town In just this past week in Milwaukee, a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old were shot by firearms. Today's newspaper reports that a 12-year-old has been charged as an adult with 1st-degree intentional homicide in the shooting death of 34-year-old Brandon Felton who had refused to sell guns to the 12-year-old. Felton owned and kept at his home a handgun and an AR-15 assault rifle which the 12-year-old wanted. Though he is charged as an adult, the Journal Sentinel is not reporting his name and he is being held in the county's juvenile detention center rather than the county jail. The city's mayor, Cavalier Johnson, has called for residents to "help stop the violence" by "reaching out to loved ones to put down their guns." He also told his television interviewer that we should not ignore "the great progress" that has been made in addressing violence in the city in the last year. About 4 months ago, a 10-year-old in Milwaukee was charged with homicide for shooting and killing his mother. This latest homicide by a juvenile comes a day after the school shooting in Nashville in which three 9-year-old were killed with an AR-15.
AR-15s The AR-15 is the best-selling rifle in the United States, industry figures indicate. Almost every major gunmaker now produces its own version of the weapon, which dominates gun dealers’ walls and websites. Critics claim that the military-style gun has no legitimate civilian use — yet about 1 in 20 Americans own one. The gun industry estimates there are about 20 million AR-15s in circulation. There is no way to independently confirm that number, but polling can estimate how many Americans own them. National surveys by Ipsos in 2022 found that 31 percent of adults own guns. The Post-Ipsos survey of AR-15 owners estimates that 20 percent of gun owners own an AR-15-style rifle. Taken together, the polls find that 6 percent of Americans own an AR-15, about 1 in 20. The data suggests that with a U.S. population of 260.8 million adults, about 16 million Americans own an AR-15.
Reading Marilynne Robinson's Home. I'm reading this book because I was so taken with Gilead and the intimate friendship of John Ames and Reverand Broughton. I want to see how the author develops the character of Broughton and of his daughter Glory and also how the character of the Prodigal Son, Jack Broughton, is developed. I'm only about 10% into the novel, the beginning of which I found slow-going. The first pages of the book are devoted to providing background on Glory and her homecoming, She had been an English teacher in a high school, perhaps in Des Moines, and she was a lover of good poetry, which didn't include Kipling!. ["Why do we have to read poetry? Why Il Penseroso? Read it and you'll know why. If you don't, read it again."] Jack the ne'er-do-well, arrives, disheveled and hungover, having disappeared from the family's life for 20 years. Reading of his return and of the distance between him and his father during those years reminds me of course of the 13 years during which my father and I never communicated with each other, of our painful estrangement in 1983, and of my letter to him in 1995 when my grandmother, his mother, died. I had called him on Thanksgiving when Sarah and Andy were with me, and he hung up on me, He was hurt that I had not been supportive when he underwent colon cancer surgery and treatment. He was right about that largely because I was separating from Anne when he found out about his cancer but also because we had had not much of a relationship before all that occurred. He was a hard guy to love for most of my life. Though my mother more than once made a point of assuring me (and my sister Kitty) that "he loves you, he just doesn't know how to show it", each of us in childhood had wished she would leave him, take us away from him. Shamefully, I even wondered if he really was my father. Hard times for all of us and eventually 13 years with no ties at all. Jack Broughton's situation was very different, with Reverand Broughton doting on him as he grew up and rescuing him from his many run-ins with neighbors or the sheriff. So I'm hoping to learn more about Jack, his character, what John Ames called his 'meanness,' his scandal with the underage girl, his disappearance for 20 years, and so on. In the process, I am enjoying again Marilynne Robinson's writing, her way with words, her insight into the character of her characters, and what has influenced it.
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