12.7.2025

 Sunday, December 7, 2025

1941 Imperial Japanese Navy with 353 planes attacked the US fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, killing 2,403 people

1965 Roman Catholic Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously lifted the mutual excommunications that led to the split of the two churches in 1054 during the Great Schism

1972 Apollo 17 was launched, the final manned lunar landing mission during which the crew took the famous "blue marble" photo of the entire Earth

2015 Time Magazine readers named Bernie Sanders their ' Person of the Year

In bed at 9, up at 5:15.  24°, wind chill 14°, high 25°.  Snow, sleet now, and mostly sunny after 8 a.m.  

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at  a.m.   

The Blue Marble photo was released as America was concluding its disastrous war in Vietnam.  Harry Truman, the first president that I can remember, was dying.  The Watergate scandal was intensifying and the involuntary conscription or 'draft' of American males was terminated.  The UK, Ireland, and Denmark were joining the European Union, and we were deep in the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the ever-present threat of nuclear warfare.  Are we better off now, worse, or are we in a permanent state of serious and perhaps existential peril? 

My FB post this morning: Good guys and bad guys.  I was born in 1941, a few months before the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked America's Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.  I grew up after the war in the pre-TV era in which the main sources of popular entertainment were the radio at home and movies at our local movie houses.  Movies then were black and white in more ways than one, meaning you never had to guess who the good guys were and who the bad guys were.  Many World War II movies were made between the end of the war and the mid-50s.  In all of them, the good guys were the Americans and Brits, and the bad guys were the Germans and the Japanese.  In the countless Western movies made then, the cowboys were the good guys and the Indians, stagecoach robbers, and cattle rustlers were the bad guys.  The good guys were all good and the bad guys were all bad.  White hats vs. black hats.  Cowboy hats vs. feathered war bonnets.  

    In the war movies, the bad guys were occupiers and oppressors, the good guys - us - were liberators.  Their political leaders and generals were aggressors and murderers; our leaders and generals were heroes.  They had Tojo and Yamamoto; we had MacArthur and Halsey.  They had Himmler and Heydrich; we had Eisenhower and Marshall.  As children, we never wondered about the righteousness of our national causes or the moral and legal integrity of those fighting for us.  

    Those days are long gone.  They ended in Vietnam where we intervened in a civil war to aid the side that our government had installed, financed, and otherwise kept in power.  We falsely claimed that we intervened to support democracy.  In fact, our government prevented the holding of the 1956 democratic election required by the 1954 Geneva Accords because our government knew that Ho Chi Minh would have won decisively.  In 1965, when the side we supported was about to lose militarily to the side we opposed, we invaded the country in force.  The Russians invaded Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022 because they did not like the government supported by the majority of the Ukrainian people.  We did a very similar thing in 1965 in South Vietnam.  And, in short order, we were not the good guys anymore, at least for most of the world, and even for a good portion of Americans.  "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?", was a chant heard in Washington, D.C., and on college campuses across America.  For a good number of Americans, their own soldiers and Marines became the bad guys.  LBJ, McNamara, Westmoreland, Nixon, and Kissinger became objects of contempt and scorn, as did American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen.  I was one of them, torn between pride in my service and shame.

   In 2003, we became the bad guys again when the United States invaded Iraq on the claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. None were found. Worse, there was no workable plan for stabilizing the country after the invasion. The resulting chaos helped fuel the rise of ISIS and shifted regional power toward Iran. The human and financial costs were staggering: hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed, more than 4,000 American troops lost and tens of thousands wounded, millions of Iraqis displaced, and a long-term U.S. price tag estimated at $2–3 trillion.

    Now, Trump, Hegseth, Bondi, and Admiral Bradley have made us the bad guys again.  Operating under the supposed legal authority of secret opinion memos from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and with the certain concurrence of the White House Legal Counsel, we are blowing up boats in the southern Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean and killing their occupants.  The boats are not warships and the occupants are not hostile foreign forces or mercenaries.  They are, allegedly, drug traffickers, "mules."  They ae said to be members of South American drug cartels, but there has been no public evidence of that.  For all we know, they could be fishermen hired to deliver cargo to Caribbean islands, but even if their cargo is cocaine, there is no right under American or international law to kill them summarily.  What we are doing is murder.  The issue is - at long last - coming to a head with Admiral Bradley's order to kill two survivors of an American attack on the boat they were riding in.  They were clinging to the still-floating bow of the boat, waving at a passing aircraft for help, and probably praying to God for help, for survival, when Admiral Bradley, with the support of Pete Hegseth, ordered them killed.  After World War II, several German and Japanese submarine commanders were prosecuted for killing survivors from the ships they had torpedoed and sunk.  We should not ignore it: Admiral Bradley, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and Donald Trump are the bad guys.  And we are the bad guys if we are OK with these killings.

Micaela kindly returned this painting I did 30 years ago (?).  It's a knock-off of Berenice Abbot's famous photo portrait of James Joyce.  I had it hanging, unframed, in my law office for quite a while until, at some point, Tom asked me if he could have it, and I gave it to him.   I admit to a stingy donative intent; I wasn't very happy to lose it, but Tom had it framed at placed prominently in their home's entryway, which surprised me but made me sort of proud of it.  At some time - I can't remember whether it was before or after Tom's death - it was moved up to their third floor, and I worked up the moxie to ask Caela if perhaps she didn't want it anymore and, if so, could I have it back.  I was delighted when she agreed to return it, "on long-term loan," which also pleased me since I suspect my 'masterpieces' are destined for a landfill when I kick the bucket.  Another painting that I gave away on request I titled "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid", a 1987 British film directed by Stephen Frears, with a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi. about life in Britain during the Margaret Thatcher era.  I very much liked the film and very much liked my painting and wish I could get it back.  My attempts to reach Deirdre Keenan to see if she had tired of it were unsuccessful.  She had a very direct way of asking for it: "If you loved me, you would give it to me."  It worked.  I gave it to her and have missed it ever since.  It would be altogether too much to suggest that my paintings and drawings are like my children or like old friends, but it is certainly true that I have formed a relationship of sorts with them.  If I like one enough to keep it, I want to put it where I can see it, with all its imperfections.  Each one reminds me of the enjoyment I had drawing or painting it.  I've long wondered how professional artists, those who sell their artworks, feel about parting with their works for money.  Are there pieces that they can't get themselves to put on the market?  

Birdfeeder business.  I waited until 4 o'clock to add seeds to the tray feeder and to spread some on the ground.  It doesn't take long for the mourning doves and cardinals to show up and chow down in the crepuscular light after I replenish the seed stock.  Last night, a white-tail buck showed up in the dark and filled up on the seeds I spread at twilight.  I'm wondering whether he'll show up again tonight.  I'm going through quite a bit of sunflower and safflower seeds since it turned cold.  

Geri shoveled both driveways while I was at MetroMarket this afternoon.  I wish Rustin, our snow guy, had shown up to plow the driveways and shovel our sidewalk, but it appears there wasn't enough snow.  It was a close call.  More snow is expected Tuesday and Wednesday, and I'm not happy about it.  I'm fearful it's going to be a long, challenging winter.  It makes me wish I could be a snowbird from December through March, or even  April, but I can't imagine leaving the house empty and untended that long, nor can I imagine being away from my many doctors at the VA that long.

Geri is trying out a new (old) recipe for a blueberry pie this afternoon.   She got it from her college buddy and lifelong friend Kate Donovan.  We are feasting again on the leftover baked ziti she made last night.  Fresh homemade pie for dessert.😋