6/16/24

Sunday, June 16, 2024

1858 Abraham Lincoln:  "A house divided against itself cannot stand."  

1904 Bloomsday ("Ulysses")

1944 S. Car. executed George Stinney, a 14-year-old Black boy.

1954 Ngô Đình Diệm elected Prime Minister of the South Vietnam.

2000 Israel withdrew from Lebanon after 22 years.

2015 Donald Trump launched his presidential bid at Trump Tower

His and Her's walkers; life in the 80s

In bed at 9 and up at 2:20 to let Lilly out.

Prednisone, day 35, 20 mg. day 13.  Glucose reading at 5 a.m. is 120. Breakfast consists of one serving of steel-cut oatmeal with 6 blackberries, 6 raspberries,  12 blueberries, and Activia vanilla yogurt.  Reading at 6:20 is 233 up arrow.  At 7:15, it is 239-> compared to 366 two hours after yesterday's breakfast of Raisin Nut Bran + fruit.  Lesson learned.  Tomorrow CBH and eggs.

Anniversaries.   Abraham Lincoln, speaking of the slavery issue in a speech, referred to the story in Matthew 12: 22-28 in which Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out devils by the power of Beelzebub and Jesus replied about a house divided.  Is that not where the not-United States is/are now?  Have we not reverted to the 1850s?  Isn't Donald Trump as threatening, or more so in some ways, than Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun, and the slave labor oligarchs?  Jesus said “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand."  We were warned by Jesus and warned by Lincoln, but nothing will stop our descent into desolation.  Descensus Averno facilis est.  Aeneid, Book 6.

Around the world, fans of James Joyce observe "Bloomsday," the one day in the life of Leopold Bloom related in Ulysses.  It's also the date of Joyce's first date with Nora Barnacle.  Fans will attend festivals, readings, dramatizations, and pub crawls to celebrate the 1922 novel and the man who changed literature so radically.

Is South Carolina the worst state in the Union?  It was the first state to secede from the Union and home to the first battle of the Civil War at Fort Sumter.  More recently, it has given us Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott in the U.S. Senate, the Mother Emanuel murders in Charleston, and the Murdaugh family killings that revealed the entrenched social and power structure of the state.  It flew the Confederate flag in front of its capitol until 2015 when Gov. Nikki Haley had it removed after the Mother Emanuel murders.  In 1944, it electrocuted George Stinney, a 14-year-old Black boy, for killing 2 White girls.  His defense counsel conducted no cross-examination of any witness, called no witnesses of his own, and offered little or no defense.  The all-White jury returned a guilty verdict in 10 minutes.  The judgment of conviction was vacated in 2014 because of the gross violations of Stinney's constitutional rights, but the case reminds us of South Carolina's history of enslavement and Jim Crow and supports my wondering whether South Carolina may lay claim to having the darkest history of all our states.

In a country whose population is overwhelmingly Buddhist, how did a Catholic become its first president?  His family had been among the earliest Vietnamese converts to Catholicism in the 17th century.  His father was a high-ranking functionary in the French colonial government and a daily communicant.  His brother was a Catholic priest, later archbishop of Hué, and he himself was a celibate.  After the Japanese occupation of Vietnam, he was an anti-communist and anti-colonialist activist.  He became a self-imposed exile and a lobbyist on his own behalf in Washington with Mike Mansfield, former director of the OSS Bill Donovan and with congressman John F. Kennedy to whom he was introduced by Francis Cardinal Spellman.  He lived at the Maryknoll Seminary in Ossining, NY, and Maryknoll Junior Seminary in Lakewood, NJ, during his exile. and was strongly supported by Cardinal Spellman, a rabid anti-communist himself.  Largely because of his harsh treatment of Buddhist opponents during his presidency, Diem lost popular support in his country and Kennedy, now president himself, authorized a military coup against him in which he and his authoritarian brother, Ngô Đình Nhu were assassinated.  Madame Nhu ("Dragon Lady") remarked "“Whoever has the Americans as allies does not need any enemies.  I can predict to you all that the story in Vietnam is only at its beginning.”   A little over two years later, in February 1966, when I was serving in Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson was candid about the role of the American government in the coup and the murder of Diem: “[W]e killed him. We all got together and got a…bunch of thugs and we went in and assassinated him. Now, we’ve really had no political stability since then.”  Sic transit gloria mundi.

The history of Israel's military engagements and occupation in south Lebanon is even more complex than Diem's history in Vietnam, and seemingly never-ending.  Current polling reports 62% popular support for a full-scale war against Hezbollah now, even while the Gaza campaign goes on.  

Lastly, we have the anniversary of Donald and Melania's fateful ride down the golden escalator in Trump Tower, which ties in with Lincoln's warning about a house divided and Jesus' warning that  “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation,"  I dread the coming months and years.