8/7/24

 Wednesday, August 7, 2024

1957 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

1964 US Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

In bed around 9, awake at 1:45, up and out at 2:30, unable to sleep with hip, leg, and knee pain.  I let Lilly out at about 3.     

Prednisone, day 87, 15 mg., day 9/14.  I took the 15 mg. at 4:50 a.m. with a Pink Lady apple.  I took 1300 mg. of Tylenol at 8:30.  I took my morning meds at about 5 p.m. and saw that the only meds left were for Monday.  I think I have missed taking these daily meds for at least a couple of day - not good.  I've moved the new weekly pill box to the TV room to remind myself to take them.

Text message to Sarah:  I’m ashamed that I missed your anniversary.  It’s on my calendar yet it still got past me.  I’ve been in bad shape for almost a month now.  I woke up with a nasty pain in my right hip on July 12th and it’s been with me ever since, spreading down my leg to my right knee.  Yesterday I received an ultrasound-guided injection of cortisone in the hip at the VA hospital but I won’t know if it’s effective for 2 to 5 days.  If it is, great; if not, the docs will look for a cause other than hip arthritis:  spinal stenosis, sciatica, who knows.  In any case, I’ve been unable to stand on my feet for longer than a minute or two without quite a lot of pain for the last 27 days and may have actually developed a bed sore on my butt from all the sitting.  The combination of persistent pain and immobility have me more than a little distracted from much of everything else in life, including your anniversary, for which I apologize.  I’ve been on prednisone for 3 months now and while it helped the polymyalgia rheumatica in my shoulders, wrists, and hands, it’s done nothing for the hip and knee pain and created some side effect problems of its own.  Arrghgh! but belated Happy Anniversary to you and Christian.  (And the LIVE ANIMALS ON STAGE just about takes my breath away!)❤️❤️❤️

    

Anniversaries thoughts:  The 1957 Civil Rights Act was a national disgrace.  Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, our most wicked state, led the longest one-man filibuster in Senate history, longer than 24 hours.  Lyndon Johnson was the majority leader and wanted the bill passed and to get it passed, he had all of its most effective parts stripped from it to make it palatable to Southern and conservative Democrats.  There was another civil rights act in 1960, but no effective legislation until after the assassination of JFK, the presidency of LBJ, and the strong civil rights acts in 1964, 1965,, and 1968.  It reminds me that from the time I was born and for my first 13 years, I lived in Jim Crow America when African Americans were subject to invidious discrimination in housing, employment, health care, education, government benefits, and access to public accommodations.  They were considered second-class citizens, but it would be more accurate to think of them as non-citizens since they were accorded virtually none of the rights and privileges of citizenship/  Indeed, for many White Americans, Blacks were considered not merely non-citizens, but subhumans, a lesser race or species, different in kind from White people.  Whites are reluctant to admit this, but I've long suspected it is true.  The economic system of chattel slavery reinforced this thinking over 2 and 1/2 centuries and Jim Crow for almost another century until the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.  It is still with many of us in the 2020s despite the progress made in the last half-century.

Less than a year after Congress gave LBJ the Gulf of Tonkin resolution broadly authorizing him to use whatever military force he chose to assist the former French Indochinese colonies in fighting communist aggression, Johnson sent the Marines, and then much of America's military forces, into Vietnam, the biggest mistake in his political career.  The day I left Cleveland for Japan and Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson spoke with Robert McNamara about the situation in Vietnam:

. . . it’s going to be difficult for us to very long prosecute effectively a war that far away from home with the [political] divisions we have here and particularly the potential divisions.  And it’s really had me concerned for a month and I’m very depressed about it because I see no program from either Defense or State that gives me much hope of doing anything except just praying and grasping to hold on during [the] monsoon [season] and hope they’ll quit.  And I don’t believe they’re ever goin’ to quit.  And I don’t see that we have any plan for victory militarily or diplomaticall

 How prescient.

. . . . 

IN RETROSPECT

Robert McNamara

I have heard it said about the difference between results and consequences that results are what we expect, consequences are what we get.  This certainly applies to our assumption about Vietnam in the summer and fall of 1965.  Reality collided with expectations.  We had no sooner begun to carry out the plan to increase dramatically U. S. forces in Vietnam than it became clear there was reason to question the strategy on which the plan was based.  Slowly, the sobering, frustrating, tormenting limitations of military operations in Vietnam became painfully apparent.  I had always been confident that every problem could be solved, but now I found myself confronting one – involving national pride and human life – that could not.

FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH, ch. 14

Danielle Trussoni

. . . My father had recently read Robert McNamara’s book [IN RETROSPECT].  Dad was never much of a reader; although he was quick-witted and intelligent, he had a hard time staying with a book.  That one, however, got his attention.  I don’t know if he finished it or not, but the parts he had read were memorized.  He would rattle off sentences between sips of his drink, quoting McNamara’s admission of his miscalculations in Vietnam.  I tried to understand exactly what made Dad so angry, but after a while he went silent and would answer my questions tersely.  Finally, he turned to me and said, “Do you know what this book means?  Do you know what this guy is saying?”

I didn’t know anything about Robert McNamara back then.  I had never even heard his name before.  At that point in my life – before I studied the war, Vietnam was not a historical event.  It was just something that happened to my family. 

My father shook his head, disgusted.  “NcNamara’s saying they didn’t know what the hell they were doing over there.  We were wrong from the goddamned beginning."

A thought on Israel and its enemies; the U.S. and its 'friend.  I'm still in an overall condition of emotional numbness about the state of the world and of the U.S., but I'm feeling some intellectual outrage that Biden, Austin, and Blinken are sending American warships, aircraft, and troops to Israel to defend it in a mess that it has made for itself, but which it expects the U.S. to finance and spill American blood over.    Again I think 'With a friend like Israel, who needs enemies?'

A further thought on Joe Biden's fantasy of a second term.  It's almost hard to believe, but very encouraging, to see the enthusiasm growing around Kamala Harris's anointed campaign for the presidency.  In the 2020 election, she couldn't even make it to the Iowa caucuses before having to drop out; now she is seen as the nation's savior from a second and potentially catastrophic Trump term of office.  Virtually the entire Democratic party was in a deep funk when Biden insisted on running for a second term, wanting to remain in the Oval Office until he was on death's door at age 86; now the party is energized, invigorated, donative, and almost joyous to support Harris and the Minnesota governor most Americans had never heard of.  I wonder still whether Biden can admit to himself that his decision to seek a second term was selfish, narcissistic, and blockheaded.  I'm avoiding the words "dumb" and "stupid" though, although I must admit to his legislative and diplomatic 'smarts', he has always struck me as having a deficit of smarts that accounts for his poor performance in schools, including at Syracuse Law School.  Also his inability over a lifetime of public speaking to become a better public speaker.  Also, his unwillingness to stop telling the same lies and exaggerations long after they have been exposed by the press.  I can't help thinking that there is something about the man that is, as we used to say, NTB, not too bright.  And of course, I can't forget the words anonymously and apocryphally attributed to Barack Obama: "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up."  If Harris loses the election in November, we'll long remember those words.  So will Joe Biden.

Larry Anderson's visit.  Larry was here from noon to about 2:30 and brought lunch: ham and cheese sandwiches and chips.  A very pleasnt, consversation-filled visit.  Much discussion of medical stuff, especially bone surgeries, very little poltics.  I told him I was honored that he came so far to visit.    I wasn't his only stop, but he always makes it a point to see me when he is in town and I do consider it quite an honor.  Larry is now my oldest living fired, with EGF and TSJ gone.

Sarah's coming to town.  The weedend of 9/14 & 9/15.

J. D. Vance is attacking Walz's 24 military record in the National Guard.  I'm rapidly growing to hate this guy.  Walz served 24 years in the National Guard.  He retired as a Master Sergeant E-8 two months before his unit received orders to Iraq in 2005.  He successfully ran for Congress after retiring.  His unit actually went to Iraq in 2006.  Vance accuses Walz of "abandoning" his unit to avoid service in a combat zone.  Vance and the Republicans will make every effort to smear Walz and it will undoubtedly work with many, maybe most, Republican voters.  Meanwhile, Trump keeps smearing Kamala Harris's intellignece,, which will also be accepted by many of his folllowers.  Is it possible not to hate American politics?

Boeing's Spaceliner astronauts may not return to Earth on thier spacecraft, and not until next year. From the NYTimes today:

For weeks, NASA has downplayed problems experienced by Starliner, a Boeing spacecraft that took two astronauts to the International Space Station in June.  But on Wednesday, NASA officials admitted that the issues might be more serious than first thought and that the astronauts might not return on the Boeing vehicle, after all.  The agency is exploring a backup option for the astronauts, Suni Wiliams and Butch Wilmore, to instead hitch a ride back to Earth on a spacecraft built by Boeing’s competitor SpaceX.  The astronauts’ stay in orbit, which was to be as short as eight days, could be extended into next year.

This is VERY bad news for Boeing, bad news for NASA, and bad news for America's aviation and space industry.  What kind of future does Boeing have with its record over  the past several years?  What does it say about management of aviation manufacturing companies by MBAs and consultants rather than by engineers?