11/16/24

Saturday, November 16, 2024

D+11

1957 American murderer and bodysnatcher Ed Gein killed his last victim

1961 JFK decided to increase military aid to South Vietnam without committing US combat troops

1969 The 1968 Mỹ Lai massacre of between 347 and 504 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by US soldiers was first reported

1989 Six Jesuit priests were assassinated by the Salvadoran army - one of the most notorious acts of the Salvadoran civil war

2000 Bill Clinton became the first U.S. President to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War

In bed around 10 after Bill Maher's Real Time, awake around 4:15 hearing Lilly pacing and the Everly Brothers' Like Strangers earworming, up at 4:38 to let Lilly out.  I think she never left the stoop.  She is restless and pacing.  I let her out again at 5:50 and after hesitating on the stoop and the sidewalk, she walked around the entire house, came back in, got her treat, and recommenced the pacing

Prednisone, day 186, 7.5 mg., day 2.   Prednisone at 4:55. Morning meds at 6:15.  Right shoulder is still sore but the upper back pain has improved.

A beautiful photo of two beautiful people, De and Bach Tuyet Hoang, on their wedding day in Danang, Vietnam in 1960.  They were married for 57 years and lived heroic lives, both in Vietnam and ultimately in the United States where we would become relatives by marriage.  One of my regrets in life is that I failed to pursue my wish to spend time with De, recording as well as I could, his biography from his youth in the North of Vietnam, his move to Danang after the 1954 Geneva separation of North and South Vietnam, his emigration with his family through Thailand and Camp Pendleton to Appleton where my daughter-in-law was born.  I thought of De and Bach Tuyet this morning as I watched and listened to a Holocaust survivor on a YouTube interview condemn the dehumanization and genocide of Palestinians by Israeli Jews.  He decried the weaponizing of the Holocaust to do to Palestinians what the Nazis had done to European Jews.  What reminded me of De and Bach Tuyet was what American troops did to the Vietnamese not only by using bullets, high explosives, incendiaries, and poisons against them but also by the use of deprecating terms in speaking of them as 'gooks,' 'zips.' and 'dinks.'  I don't mean that the Nazis and the Jews, the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the Americans and the Vietnamese are similar situations, but that in the circumstances of the war, the racism and dehumanization that arose was inevitable. All the Vietnamese looked alike, talked alike, etc., and were lumped together as "Others."  We Whites on the south side of Chicago did the same things with Blacks during and after the Second Great Migration.  Groupism and Othering seem to be legacies of Original Sin and result in the loss of immeasurable human potential.  De and Bach Tuyet and 6 of their 7 children were living in Danang when I was stationed at the airbase there.  For the first few months I was there, we were able to go into the city on 'liberty'; it's unlikely, but perhaps I passed one of the Hoangs on the street.  Perhaps I thought how 'exotic' they looked, how different from me and the other Americans, never imagining we would end up related by marriage 40 years later and that it would be a blessing.

I'm feeling like I'm living a nightmare.  I am having some of what I suppose is a normal human reaction (is it?) of looking for someone(s) to blame, including myself and those like me who, we're told, have become the focus of the Democratic Party, college-educated, suburban, professional elites, limousine liberals.  Trump's re-election is even worse (could it be?) than George W. Bush's re-election in '04 after the disastrous Iraq invasion.  Worse than Nixon's re-election in '72.  LBJ took himself out of a bid for re-election in '68 because his Vietnam decisions had blown up in his face, but nothing deterred Nixon, "W", and Trump and here we are: Trump claiming a mandate, Gaetz, Gabbard, Hegseth, RFK Jr., MillerMuskRamaswami, and an upcoming cast of thousands about to exercise all the powers of the federal government.  Where will J. D. Vance fit in? (Who?)  And Don, Jr. and Laura?  Bannon?  Will any Republican senator vote against any Trump nominee?  Will the Senate agree to emasculate itself by going into recess?  Will the Gaetz Ethics Committee report see the light of day?  Will Trump live out this term of office?  His father lived to age 93; his mother died at 88.  Trump will be 79 on June 14th, 2025.  How physically and mentally healthy is he?  Of couse we don't know.  How much damage can he do in 4 years?  There is no telling.  Is this really happening?  Is this what the United States of America has become?  

LTMW this morning there is good news and not-so-good news.  Good news: I'm seeing more red squirrels.  I saw a pair of them scurrying up the locust tree near our front door this morning.  Probably a male chasing a female with gene transmittal on his mind.  Not-so-good news; I've had the new niger feeder up for three days or so and no visits from goldfinches.  Whaszupwidat?  The chickadees are also staying away from it.  ?😕?

Journal entry one year ago today:  

Journaling and my 'asshole epiphany'.  It's odd the things we remember from long ago, and perhaps odder the things we partially remember.  Many years ago when I was a young professor at the law school, I drove to work one day along Lake Drive and Lincoln Memorial Drive on the lakefront.  There was to be a faculty meeting that day and I was thinking about my position on some matter that would be coming up.  I knew that my position would not find favor with my older, much more conservative colleagues, and I recall thinking to myself, "If I say such and such, they'll think I'm an asshole."  That thought was immediately followed by "Maybe I am an asshole on this issue, so what."  The words aren't exact but I recall pretty vividly the epiphanous insight that on some issues I might be an asshole, out of sync with most others, and even maybe wrong but also perhaps right and the others wrong and that I could live with that, being outé was OK.  The thought sequence occurred as I was turning from Lake Drive onto Lincoln Memorial Drive at Lake Park.  What I don't recall is what the issue was on which I would be the outlier, the asshole.  There were many issues over many years on which I differed from my older, Republican, traditional Catholic colleagues.  I'm thinking back on that experience now in connection with the practice of journaling, attempting to put in writing my thoughts on any number of matters on which my thoughts may be incoherent, unclear, perhaps contradictory, uninformed or misinformed, perhaps "tattooed in my cradle" with tribal falsities, biases, and prejudices, etc., or simply wrong.   I'm also thinking of my many thoughts of my complicities, my weaknesses, guilt, all that Yeatsian 'responsibility so weighs me down' and 'my conscience or my vanity appalled' stuff.  I realize that this paragraph itself is incoherent, without a clear sequitur between its beginning and this ending, but so be it I guess, maybe I am an asshole.

also this:

Netanyahu is Trump in a kippah, but much smarter, more politically astute, and never buffoonish.  He has led his country to disaster and chaos, just as Trump will lead the U.S. to disaster and chaos if he is returned to the White House, which now is looking more like a probability than a mere possibility.  Joe Biden provided an escape from Trump's treacheries in 2020 but he may lead the U.S. and the world to a more disastrous Trump return in 2024. (My italics)

Anniversaries today are too grim to spend time on.  How peculiar it is that two of the most notorious criminals in American history lived and committed their gruesome crimes here in Wisconsin, Ed Gein on his farm outside Plainfield in Waushara County, north of Tom and Caela's cottage on Bean's Lake, and Jeffrey Dahmer,, in his apartment on 25th Street between State and Highland here in Milwaukee.  Ed Gein inspired the book and the movie Psycho.  I drove up to Plainfield once from Bean's Lake.  It looked like a hundred other Wisconsin rural towns.  Dahmer's apartment house was demolished sometime after his crimes were discovered.  The lot was surrounded by a chain link fence and somehow became owned by Marquette Univeristy.  I wonder if it is still vacant and fenced.

On Nov. 16, 1989, six Jesuit scholars/priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter were murdered by the U.S.-backed, trained, and equipped military in El Salvador. The priests were internationally recognized scholars who wrote and spoke extensively about the need for peace and the root causes of the war in El Salvador. They were among the 75,000 people killed during this period.  I'll try to write more about this tomorrow.

I don't have enough steam to write about Vietnam.