9/5/2025

 Friday, September 5, 2025

D+304/229/-1233

1906 Saint Louis U. quarterback threw the first legal forward pass in the history of American football for a TD at Carroll College, Waukesha, Wisconsin

1960 Cassius Clay [Muhammad Ali] beat the 3-time European champion Zbigniew Pietrzykowski to win Olympic light heavyweight boxing gold medal at the Rome Games

1972 Eleven Israeli athletes were taken hostage and later killed by the Palestinian Black September group at the Munich Olympics

1922 Jimmy Aquavia moved to Alexandria

2023 Former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarriio was sentenced to 22 years in prison, for seditious conspiracy in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol

In bed at 9:30, awake at 5 something, up at 5:20, thinking of and feeling sheepish about exchanging phone numbers with Tom Gray at the VA yesterday.  54°, wind chill 42°, high of 62°

Meds, etc.  Morning meds and Trulicity injection at 6:15 a.m.

Long day at the VA.  I left at 7:50 this morning for my urology appointment and then waited around for my 12:30 p.m. eye appointment.  I spent most of the intervening time between appointments on my laptop in the VA library on the 6th floor, my first visit there.

Department of War. Pete Hegseth can now call himself Secretary of the Department of War.  At least it's more accurate since the only war we have engaged in since the end of World War II that might legitimately be called defensive would be the war in Afghanistan, at least until Al Qaida were defeated.  Thhe rest of the 20 year war was a war of choice, like Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, the Balkans, and Iraq.  We can be sure that this stupid move by Trump will do much to warm our relations with other countries. 

Yesterday's posting on Facebook:

Charles D. Clausen shared a memory.

I was there again this morning, on my way to the VA Medical Center.  I can't count the number of times I have visited Milwaukee's National Cemetery.  I always have a sense of reverence when I am there, passing by the uniform headstones of thousands of U. S. military veterans, some from as far back as the War of 1812.  Those interred there represent the past tense of the thousands of vets, like me, who receive care at the Medical Center, each "as common as a field daisy, and as singular," none more or less special than any other.  I grieve that our military men and women are now being used to patrol the streets of our own cities at a cost that could be used to increase civilian police forces and to address the root causes of urban crime.  If the practice continues, it will corrupt our military's understanding of mission and the republic itself.  I fear too that the use of the military to blow up and sink boats on the high seas, on the claim that they are drug traffickers, will lead to mistakes and worse, to corruption of the military's sense of mission.  Each such attack executes the death penalty on the occupants of the boat that is blown up and sunk.  With our sophisticated weapons systems, it's like shooting fish in a barrel: no contest.  Some of these "fish" may be asylum seekers rather than drug traffickers, but we'll probably never know.  Neither will the pilots of the planes.  What will that do to a pilot's sense of personal righteousness, a difficult enough issue even in a war or combat setting?

5 Years Ago

Charles D. Clausen is at Wood National Cemetery - September 4, 2020

Jimmy left for Alexandria 3 years ago today.  My journal note that day was almost funerial: "Geri and Steve cooperate wonderfully in getting Jimmy packed up, taking care of his apartment, and of him himself.  No signs of anxiety in Jimmy, only a little regret.  He is comforted and supported by the presence and assistance of both Steve and Geri.  We told each other  -truthfully - that we would miss the other's company and friendship.  After lunch, we all half-watched Biden deliver his Labor Day Address at the Summerfest Grounds to a crowd of union supporters while we enjoyed a warm conversation.  As 1:30 arrived, Steve got up and asked his Dad whether he needed a bathroom stop before they headed out.  Jim asked if they were leaving and where they were going.  When told they were going to the airport, he said "Me?"  and was surprised to hear that they were leaving for Washington.  He had forgotten.  We  shared hugs, good luck wishes, and they were off, hoping not to be delayed by Biden's motorcade on the freeway.  I went outside to fill the bird feeders with Lilly following to take up her post at the northeast corner of the house where she can look down County Line Road to Geri's return.  I felt grateful and sad, an emptiness and fulness at the same time."  I miss him and fear for him as he becomes more "difficult" for the staff at his Silverado facility.  "Difficult" means he won't do what they want him to do, i.e., he exercise agency, autonomy.  When space is available on the second floor of the facility, he will be sedated and moved.  Why am I thinkinng of 1984?

Trump's threatened occupation of Chicago.  There is a frightening op-ed in this morning's NY Times. "Chicago Could Be a Powder Keg" by University of Chicago political science professor Robert A. Pape.

  Even if an occupation starts out with apparent success, it typically leads to chaos and generates defiance in the local community.

There is reason to worry that Chicago is poised to head down a broadly similar path.

For one thing, many of its residents oppose the presence of federal forces. In June and July my research center, the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, conducted a representative survey of more than 1,100 residents of Chicago to gauge their attitudes on federal military deployment to U.S. cities. Sixty percent said they did not “approve of the way President Trump is handling immigration enforcement, including deportations.” Twenty-eight percent said they “would attend a protest against the Trump administration’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants, even if it became violent.” Thirty percent agreed that “immigrants targeted by the Trump administration for deportation are justified in using force to defend themselves.” Thirty-seven percent agreed that “the use of force is justified to remove Donald Trump from the presidency.”

In a city that has more than 2.5 million residents, those percentages represent significant numbers of people willing to endorse or participate in violent resistance.

In addition, to achieve the administration’s stated objective of drastically and lastingly reducing illegal immigration and other crime, a deployment of federal forces would have to be very large and last many months. Consider that there are, by some estimates, nearly 200,000 undocumented immigrants in Chicago. It takes time and effort to deport people: Across the United States, by August, federal forces were deporting not even 1,500 undocumented immigrants a day. So removing just the 71,000 people with pending cases in immigration court who reside in Cook County (for which Chicago is the county seat) would be an enormous undertaking, requiring many thousands of agents and taking many months — and involving invasive operations throughout the city.

Suppressing crime more broadly in a lasting way would, of course, require even more resources and time and be similarly invasive. The longer federal forces stay and the more expansive their operations, the more the local community will perceive a loss of political power to determine its future. This perception would be exacerbated in Chicago because of the approaching state elections in 2026, which many perceive Mr. Trump as trying to influence through these actions. Note, for example, that Mr. Trump spoke of the need to “liberate” Chicago in a fund-raising email on Wednesday.

I am not the only one worrying about this.  Perhaps I am the only one seriously wondering whether Trump, or some of his key advisors like Stephen Miller, is hoping for it to happen and comparing it to the burning of the Reichstag in 1933, but I doubt it.  There should be no doubt that Trump and advisors like Miller air for a radical transformation of America's form of government.  Steve Bannon has been candid about his desire for 'the deconstruction of the administrative state,'  Russell Vought, Trump's Director of the Office of Management and Budget has a  detailed plan for fundamentally reshaping the foundations of American government.  He has stated "“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,  When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.  We want to put them in trauma.”  Let's not forget the antitax activist Grover Norquest and his ackowledgment that "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."  What I most worry about is not the Trump apparatchiks who are outspoken, but the ones behind the scenes, the one we don't hear from, the ones who quietly work toward a totalitarian dictatorship.  They need a modern Reichstag fire, just as Hitler did.   One way to get it could be to have federal or federalized troops killed by criminals on the streets of our cities.

Gratitude thought today.  I'm supposed to keep a gratitude journal this week as my "homework" for the Aging from the inside out group I'm participating in.  I ought to do it every day anyway, and for quite some time I did.  I'll start with an easy one.  I'm grateful for my wife, who gives me a reason to live each day.  We have partnered for almost 40 years, the last half of our lives.  She gives me daily lessons on how to live.  While I tend to live in the past and to fear the future, she lives each day as it comes, each moment.  While I tend to keep a distance from other people, even friends, she forms friendships easily and no day goes by without her talking on the phone with one or more of her friends. The older and the more hobbled I get, the more I depend on her, and the more she carries the load of keeping us going.  I am a lucky guy.

Steve Marino was here looking at our basement mold situation this afternoon, as well as the stump grinding guy getting rid of some bushes, and the Poblocki lawn repair guys.  Busy, busy, busy.