Thursday, August 14, 2025
D+ 279/207/-1255
1846 American naturalist Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay taxes
1929 The Jewish Agency for Palestine was formed
1935 FDR signed the Social Security Act
1945 Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh movement launched a coordinated uprising against French rule across Vietnam following the Japanese surrender
1945 V-J Day, the Empire of Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, ending World War II
2018 Pennsylvania grand jury alleged 300 "predator priests" abused over 1000 children over 30 years and Catholic leaders covered it, up after 2-year investigation
2019 "The 1619 Project" produced by Nikole Hannah-Jones to examine the legacy of slavery in America was launched
In bed at 9:45, up at 6:25. 64°, high of 78°, sunny.
Meds, etc. Morning meds around 10 a.m.
Big day: Geri flies off to visit cousin Sue and Tom Clark, and visitation at Sts. Peter and Paul for Pat Gorence where I'll meet LOA and return his iPhone which he left at our house on Tuesday.
Blogger failed me. This is my second attempt to make journal/blog entries today. On the first attempt, I got into a "right align" format somehow and couldn't get out of it. I ended up deleting the whole document and starting over again. The one persistent problem I have with Blogger is formatting. It's sure not Word Perfect 4.2 (showing my age😊, or Microsoft Word.
My Facebook post this morning: Today's date is historic. In 1935, FDR signed into law the Social Security Act, the first law to create a "social safety net" for the nation's elderly and other needy Americans. Ten years later on this date, Japan unconditionally surrendered and ended World War II. My earliest memory is of the celebration on that day on Emerald Avenue on the south side of Chicago when I, and other children of servicemen were paraded down the street in red Radio Flyer wagons decorated with red, white, and blue crepe paper bunting. I was 10 days shy of my 4th birthday. My father was still in the Marines, still in the Pacific, and wouldn't be discharged for another three months because of his PTSD after Iwo Jima. But on this date, the entire nation, indeed the entire world, celebrated the end of the most devastating war in human history. Much of Europe and most of Japan lay in ruins after the war. America, with its industrial power strengthened rather than ruined by the war, was the world's sole hegemon, or superpower. We were on top of the world economically, militarily, and ideologically as a flawed but working democracy. I grieve when I reflect on what we have become over my lifetime.
Pat Gorence's visitation. After dropping Geri off at the airport, I drove to the East Side Library at North Avenue and Cramer Street for a pit stop, then up Cramer to Sts. Peter and Paul church, our old parish when Anne and I and the kids lived on Newberry Boulevard. I arrived at about 1:15 for the visitation which was scheduled from 2 to 3. I was able to park in a handicapped spot on the church/school grounds, escaping the long walk that late walk from the car to the church that arrivers had to deal with. I entered the church at 1:50 and there was already a long line down the center aisle of the church, where Pat's open casket was placed and where John Bach and the children formed a receiving line. I was pleased that John recognized me (after I introduced myself) and remembered out first meetings when Pat started law school and our shared experiences in the Dominican Republic in 1997. Christine Wilzynski-Vogel from the law school's alumni relations office was in the line ahead of me and we had a nice chat as we approached the receiving line. I spotted LOA at the back of the visitors' line at about 2:10 and returned his iPhone to him. We were able to chat a bit before I left for home. I opted not to wait for him to get through the line so we could chat some more or get a cup of coffee because the wait promised to be quite long, longer than my bladder could tolerate.
Cliff Bergin Plumbing called when I got home. They were able to send a plumber over this afternoon if I was willing, which I certainly was.
Among the benefits of journaling is looking back on what we were doing one, two, or three years ago (in my case), or longer, for those who have journaled longer. I looked back this morning on this date in 2022, 2023, and 2024, and found journal entries worth reviewing, worth thinking about again. In my first 2 years of jounaling, I did most of my writing early in the morning, sometimes in the middle of the night because of insomnia. The 3-ring binders where I keep the printed copies of each day's thoughts are labeled "Morning Musings" followed by the date range for the printouts. Sometimes my brain is muddled or mushy and my thoughts are incoherent, but sometimes I write stuff that makes sense, at least to me. Sometimes I write stuff that is worth reading and thinking about, though I know nobody does either and that basically I am talking to myself, trying to make sense out of my thoughts. Sometimes I include lyrics of favorite old songs. Sometimes I include favorite poems. Two years ago on this date I included Christina Rosetti's Who Shall Deliver Me and Gerard Manley Hopkins' I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, not Day/. Last year I wrote a reflection that rang true to me then and rings true to me today.
American Respect for the Rule of Law, except at Guantanamo Bay. “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.
The military judge in the case involving the 9/11 defendants Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two others accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks has ordered the lawyers in the case to submit briefs on whether DOD secretary Lloyd Autin on August 2nd violated the law in reversing the plea deal worked out between the lawyers. Austin's purpose in scuttling the deal was clearly to keep the death penalty on the table which raises a substantial issue of unlawful command influence in the case, i.e., the chain-of-command superior of the trial judge, military attorneys, and court/commission members letting these subordinates know the result he wanted and presumably would approve. In other words, has he rigged the outcome? Resolving that question could take years and end up at the Supreme Court, leading to the hope of some that the defendants will die of old age in custody and moot the legal issues. But the Guantanamo cases illustrate our government's selective respect for the Rule of Law. The prisoners are tried by military commissions rather than in criminal courts - perhaps illegally. The defendants were interrogated under torture by agents of our government - illegally. They were captured by "rendition" overseas - illegally. They were kept secretly in prisons in foreign countries - illegally. Did Austin have the legal authority under the rules governing the Guantanamo military commissions to step in and reverse the plea deals already approved by his appointee?
This respect for the Rule of Law that we hear so much about is a canard. Our government respects the Rule of Law when it is convenient to do so, i.e., when the Rule of Law will produce a result that the government desires. For most of us, there are two most fundamental Rules of Law. First, the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. Second, Thucydides: The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. In America, "the strong" = the rich. Consider Donald Trump and all that he has gotten away with over the years, including the years of his presidency and thereafter. He has spent tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars on very talented lawyers to ensure that he is not subject to the Rule of Law while he lives in luxury at Mar-a-Lago, Bedminster, and the Trump Tower. Consider all those pardoned by Trump. Consider the plight of the American citizen who, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, made a median income $59,288 in the first quarter of 2024. That American also had a median net worth of about $122,000. Broken down by race, the median net worths are: White, $189,100; Hispanic, $36,050, and Black, non-Hispanic, $24,100. For many, the net worth figure includes the illiquid equity in a home. How many Americans can afford to hire a lawyer, much less teams of lawyers? One of the reasons I was never comfortable in the private practice of law was the realization that my family couldn't afford to hire my services. If they were to receive services from my firm, they would be charity cases, or pro bono publico, as we lawyers put it. Most Americans can't afford to hire a lawyer unless they have suffered a significant personal injury which will support a contingent fee arrangement with a PI firm. Usually, the PI firm finances the case out of its own financial resources. "One call, that's all!" If you need legal help with a consumer problem or an eviction, good luck. The Family Court judge who taught Domestic Relations at MULS used to tell his students that the only people who could afford to get divorced are the very rich and the very poor. For those in-between, the real costs are devastating.
On the national and international level, what does the Rule of Law, or the 'Rules-based international order' mean? What did it mean when we invaded Iraq in 2003? What does it mean to our 'great ally Israel' in the West Bank and Gaza? And what does it mean in Guantanamo? What did it mean to Ronald Reagan in 1983 when he invaded and occupied Grenada? Pass me the basin, please!
The first item on my anniversaries list today is Henry David Thoreau's going to jail for refusing to pay taxes to support the government. In his anarchistic essay On Civil Disobedience, published in 1849, he wrote:
[W]hen a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is that fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.
The essay is not long but it is painful to read because his points are so clearly made, especially the point that we are complicit in the evil acts of our government. It's impossible to deny my own lifelong complicities.
There are thousands who are _in opinion_ opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for other to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give up only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them. . .
I meet this American government, or its representative, the State government, directly, and face to face, once a year--no more--in the person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it . . . (He refused to pay taxes to the unjust government and was tossed in jail leading him to write:) Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less despondent spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not _with_ her, but _against_ her--the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.
I look back on my formal education and wonder why it was that I was never assigned On Civil Disobedience, nor was I assigned any reading nor did I participate in any discussion of the political philosophy underlying democracy, the idea of 'majority rule,' or the problem of 'the tyranny of the majority' and minority rights. I remember no lecture of discussion of anarchism or fascism nor much about democratic socialism versus communism. My education, so good in some ways, was grossly inadequate in others, especially in fostering critical thinking about the society and culture I grew up in, America in its triumphalist, post-WWII, capitalist, militarist, sole superpower role. We learned something of George III's despotism and the unfairness of taxation without representation and suchlike, but we learned little of political philosophy. We learned next to nothing about how the very stingy 'democracy' created by the Founding Fathers meant little to the Founding Mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, and nieces and meant nothing to the 1/6th of the population who were held in chattel slavery. It is no surprise that during the Revolutionary War, many escaped slaves fought for the English against their American enslavers. England abolished slavery in 1933 whereas in America it required the Civil War.
As I so often do, I have drifted far from my opening thoughts about the Guantanamo prisoners and the Rule of Law but the meandering thoughts are at least related and center on my belief in the centrality of the 2 Big Rules: He who has the gold makes the rule and the strong do (get away with) what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
No comments:
Post a Comment