Saturday, July 11, 2016
1798 US Marine Corps was formally established as a distinct military branch by an Act of Congress signed by President John Adams
1863 1st draft lottery in New York City; exemptions are offered for $300,
1955 Congress authorized all US currency to say "In God We Trust"
1995 More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred by Bosnian Serbs after they overran the UN "safe haven" of Srebrenica on directive of Radovan Karadži
2025 Israeli settlers killed two Palestinians near Ramallah in the West Bank. One of the victims, identified as a Palestinian-American, was beaten to death, the other victim shot in the chest.
2025 Donald Trump confirmed plans to sell weapons to NATO allies to be provided to Ukraine after the Pentagon previously paused weapon shipments
In bed around 9:15, up at 5:40; 0555 203.8 144/80/58 118, 0605 144/78/57; 64/78/61, mostly cloudy
Morning meds at 9:30 a.m., and Eliquis at 7 a.m. and p.m. I'm wondering about the blood pressure readings again - will decide tomorrow whether to 'secure message' cardiology and NPs Maggie and Kali.
Some thoughts at midday near midmonth and midyear and nearing my endtime on a near-perfect summer day when I'm more interested in reading and napping than in writing.
1. The Dutch House. I'm really into it, chapter 9, page 143 of 344.
I was struck by a passage about the role of chance in our lives, the protagonist speaking of how he met on a train the woman whom he would eventually marry:
In you lived in Jenkintown in 1968 or went to school at Choate, chances were good you'd cross paths with most of the people there evenually, even if just to nod and say hello, but New York City was a wild card. Every hour was made up of a series of chances, and choosing to walk down one street rather than another had the potential to change everything: whom you met, what you saw or were spared from seeing. In the early days of our relationship, Celeste loved nothing more than to recount our original story to friends, to strangers, and sometimes to me when we were alone. She'd meant to be on the 1:30 train from Penn Station that day but her roommate wanted to take the subway together as far as Grand Central. The roommate that then proceeded to dawdle with her packing so long that Celeste missed her train.
"I could have taken some other train," she said, putting her head on my chest. "Or I could have taken the 4:05 and ended up in a different car. Or I could have picked the right car, but ended up in a different seat. We could have missed each other."
How often I think of the role of Chance in our lives, in the relationships we form and the choices we make. And of the role of Fate, Kismet, or determinism vs. free will.
2. Geri spent most of the morning watering and otherwise tending to her new grass patches where the two tall spruce trees used to be, weeding and otherwise tending to the marginal gardens bordering the backyard.
3. I noted the killings on the West Bank because we Americans are so complicit it them. The settlement movement is driven by religious zealots who believe, or purport to believe, that Judea and Samaria were promised to them by GOD, and by nationalist zealots hellbent on expanding the borders of Greater Israel. Our government has tolerated and encouraged the settlement movement by not effectively opposing it, either under Republican or Democratic administrations. By continually providing billions of dollars of military and other support to the Israeli government, regardless of its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank, we have greenlighted years of atrocities.
I so often note Israeli crimes against Palestinians in my daily anniversaries listings not because of an anti-Israel animus or, worse yet, anti-semitism, but because America is so complicit in it, unlike the crimes in, e. g., Myanmar, China, Somalia, Sudan, or Haiti. We have enabled these crimes for years, while publicly engaging in pearl-clutching and hand-wringing. I recall all the public wondering about "Why do they hate us?", after 9/11. Our complicity in Israel's crimes is one reason.
5. Not all conspiracy theories are false. Some paranoids are being followed. Trump's firing of the last two commissioners on the Election Assistance Commission is just the latest and most visible evidence of the conspiracy by Trump and his myrmidons to steal the midterm election in November and the 2028 general election. Joseph Stalin: "Those who vote decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything.
6. I write these journal entries in bits and snatches, starting in the middle of the night or early morning and continuing throughout the day. They are often discursive and perhaps incoherent, in part because they are done 'on the run' and are not edited. So it goes with writings that are not intended for publication (other than the daily unedited blog) and are not edited, but it reminds me too that if I were not writing down my thoughts but rather just thinking them as they dart around my brain like minnows in a bait bucket, even more unorganized and random than my journal jottings, my thinking would be even more fortuitous, erratic, scatterbrained.
7. Anniversary thoughts. l First, it is always the case that our wars are fought by the poor and powerless and profited from by the rich and powerful. "The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must." Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. This is why Trump called the dead Marines and soldiers at the World War I Aisne-Marne American cemetery in France and the 1,800 Marines killed at the battle of Belleau Wood "suckers" and "losers" because, in a tragically real sense, that's what they were, suckers for falling for the propaganda that urged them to fight and die pro patria mori, and losers of their young lives. How many politicians and wealthy draft-age men served in Vietnam with my fellow Marines and me? John Kerry. Who else? George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Trump? Were my buddies and I in the Marines suckers and losers? In a sense, we were. Trump was at least partially right.
Second, the anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, ordered by the Serbian genocidal war criminal Radovan Karadžić, reminds me again of how barbarian Europe history is. And they claim to be Christian and civilized.
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