Chad Comello

Tag: history

  • Sylvanus Cadwallader

    Part of the Cool Civil War Names series.

    Probably my favorite name thus far. A true journalist during a time when mainstream journalism consisted of BRASH, HYSTERICAL HEADLINES!!! and Limbaughesque vituperation, Cadwallader began his newspaper career in Milwaukee before joining the Chicago Times and later the New York Herald as a war correspondent embedded with General Ulysses S. Grant. (He wrote about this time in Three Years With Grant, an acclaimed postwar memoir.) He followed Grant for three years through critical campaigns in Mississippi and Tennessee, during the advance on Richmond, and was present at Appomattox for the peace treaty signing.

    He’s also the source of the hotly debated claim that Grant was drunk during the Vicksburg campaign in 1863. Embellishment or fact? Who knows. What we do know is Grant sent Cadwallader a letter in September 1864 commending him for his reporting. Clearly “Unconditional Surrender” Grant wasn’t too upset with him.

    After the war, Cadwallader served as a public official in Wisconsin before retiring to California to write his memoir. I haven’t read it yet, but the scant information about him that’s available tells us his journalism was exemplary simply because he wasn’t a fire-breathing partisan like many of his colleagues. A low bar, it seems, but he passed it.

    Up next in CCWN, the churlish CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM.

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  • Leonidas Polk

    Part of the Cool Civil War Names series.

    Leonidas Polk was many things: a West Point graduate, founder of The University of The South (Sewanee), the second cousin of President James Polk, and an Episcopalian bishop. He was also a terrible field general. He was a typical example of a Civil War “political general”, a man who had little or no combat experience but was given (or demanded) a political appointment from someone in power, who in Polk’s case was the Confederate’s big dog himself, Jefferson Davis.

    Polk didn’t demand the job; he just offered his services to Old Jeff, who dispatched him to the Tennessee Valley. He hopped around Tennessee and Mississippi, all the while butting heads with General Braxton Bragg, who called Polk “an old woman… utterly worthless” but knew he couldn’t shake him because Jeff Davis loved him. Didn’t matter for too long, though, because Polk was killed in June 1864 when General William Tecumseh Sherman (of The March to the Sea fame) spotted him hanging with other officers and shelled them.

    It’s important to note that while Polk, despite graduating from West Point eighth in his class, was not a good battle tactician, he was loved by his troops. His nickname was “The Fighting Bishop” for obvious reasons, and to one Confederate private his loss was second only to Stonewall Jackson. I’m sure there are many other examples of clergymen becoming soldiers, but Polk was one of the more controversial ones.

    Next in CCWN, the sagacious SYLVANUS CADWALLADER.

    (source: 1) (Image credit)

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  • Cool Civil War Names: a preamble

    Awhile back I read James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, the sixth volume in Oxford University Press’s ongoing series of American history. (The full series list is worth checking out if you’re ever in the mood for thousands of pages of U.S. history—and who isn’t?) I learned a lot of things from McPherson’s tome, but most salient was that the men who fought the Civil War had really, really cool names.

    I noted my favorites from the book, found a few more, and decided to write a little about each of the men they’re attached to in a miniseries called Cool Civil War Names. Many are soldiers, others journalists or public figures. Together, they tell the story of the era that gave this nation its most fiery trial—and its most fantastical facial hair.

    The Names

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  • Here And LeClaire

    I spent part of the weekend in Iowa with my dad. We made a pilgrimage of sorts to Antique Archaeology in LeClaire, the home base of the antique-scavengers featured in the show American Pickers. Didn’t end up selling anything, but it was cool to see their place, which, as my dad reports, is much smaller than it looks on television.

    We also got to tour the Mississippi River Distilling Company, a local spirits distillery. They explained the distilling process for vodka, gin, whiskey, etc., and how their “grain to glass” process is one of only a handful in the U.S. Every step of the process is handled using locally-made products, from the corn and wheat to the wooden barrels and glass bottles. They took pride in their unique flavor, which was the result of putting the drink through the distilling process only once rather than multiple times, as is the case with most other vodka manufacturers. They’ve only been in business for three months, but it looks like they’re doing well.

    LeClaire is also the childhood home of Buffalo Bill Cody, so we toured the museum in town, which ended up being less about Buffalo Bill and more about the town itself. With its strategic placement on the Mississippi, LeClaire saw a lot of riverboat steamers pass through back in the day. They have one on display in the museum – the Lone Star – which is the last remaining, fully-intact example of the wooden-hulled riverboat design typical of that era.

    Finally, we drove the half-hour down the river to Davenport to see the Titanic artifact exhibit at the Putnam Museum. The exhibit integrated the artifacts with the story of the ship’s creation and first and final voyage. Most eye-opening was the wall of survivors and perished. They divided the passengers list by class – 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and crew – and the percentage of 1st class passengers saved compared to that of 3rd class and crew was stunning. At least 60-70% of first-class passengers were saved, while the reverse was true of the lower classes. Class status, generally speaking, really did determine whether they would live or die.

    I’ve never actually stayed in Iowa, but I thoroughly enjoyed the stereotypical yet still very real Midwestern small-town charm. I also have a recharged desire to go to more museums and historical sites. Can’t get enough of those.

    (Photo: Matt Heeren)

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  • The President Of My Youth

    I remember just a few things from the Clinton ’90s: Kosovo, Elian Gonzalez, and impeachment mostly. But most of the decade flew by under my radar as I concerned myself with more important things like the world champion Green Bay Packers and what colors I wanted for my braces. It was seventh grade when I finally paid attention to something that adults cared about: the 2000 election.

    My social studies teacher, like every other at the time, had us involved with the election. We learned who the candidates were, what the Electoral College was, and how many votes you needed to win. My friend Ryan and I made up nicknames for the candidates: “Gush” and “Bore” were the favorites. We even got to “vote” on Election Day in our very own school-wide election. As my classmates voted I acted like a TV journalist gathering exit polls which I reported to my teacher. Then, I went into the booth and voted for George W. Bush.

    It has been a little over eight years since that day. Times have changed and so has my vote; it went for Obama this year. Yet as I watch our 43rd president fade away into the background, I have mixed emotions. Sure, the country has gone to a tame version of hell, but my last eight years of life (my entire adolescence) were never without Bush in the White House. And in that time, I’ve gone through a plethora of feelings about the man.

    First was apathy. I remember the 2000 election debacle vividly because my name was in the news every night thanks to those old voters in Dade County who couldn’t manage to push a paper dot hard enough. But once it was decided, I didn’t really care. Even after the terrorist attacks and Bush’s subsequent popularity surge, I was too young for him to make an impact on me.

    In the meantime, everything bad happened: Katrina, the Iraq debacle, Guantanamo Bay, the Abu Ghraib scandal, Alberto Gonzales. Then the 2006 midterm elections went for the Democrats and I started to pay attention. I began to lean left. (Living in the ultraliberal Madison, Wis., certainly helped.) I read the Huffington Post and watched Keith Olbermann a lot, relying too heavily on their liberal outrage to dictate my political beliefs.

    Their opinion of Bush was becoming mine too: I became increasingly convinced he was a scheming far right hawk hell-bent on jailing all dissenters and propagating through Fox News, all the while fleecing Middle America and laughing while major cities flooded and foreign countries burned. Arianna Huffington and Keith Olbermann continue to think this and said so throughout the 2008 election. It helped get Obama elected and Bush became a lamer duck in the process.

    But ever since the election, my righteous anger has settled. I now think Bush is not evil but flawed, a tad misunderstood and, dare I say it, underappreciated. Sure, his “Bring it on” braggadocio and “Mission Accomplished” banner were mistakes. He dropped the ball post-Katrina and did not speak candidly about Iraq and WMD. His No Child Left Behind Act was misguided and his economic policies exacerbated an already growing problem.

    Yet, despite all that, I don’t hate him. There was a time when I would have refused to shake his hand if I met him simply because of our differing political views, but I’ve moved on from that. Perhaps it’s pity, seeing him roundly crucified by the left for his mistakes large and small. Perhaps it’s because of our common Christian faith. Perhaps it’s because I’m beginning to get annoyed with liberals.

    If I were to meet not George Bush the president but George Bush the father and family man, I think I would really like him. He’s a laid-back straight shooter who probably holds a conversation at a barbeque much better than he does at a press conference. He obviously doesn’t take himself too seriously and can withstand a brutal bombardment of criticism much better than most.

    “George Walker Bush is not a stupid or a bad man,” writes Ron Suskind in Esquire. “But in his conduct as president, he behaved stupidly and badly.”

    Because he behaved stupidly and badly, Bush will leave with comically low approval ratings. He has said repeatedly that history will hold his unpopular acts in higher regard than they are today. He’s right, to an extent. Presidents Lincoln and Truman made grave and consequential decisions that ended the Civil War and World War II, respectively. Bush is no Lincoln (far from him) but both men stuck to their guns. Bush has always stuck to his guns, no matter what. Even when things got bad, he “stayed the course.” It was simultaneously honorable and maddening.

    History in fact will reveal if he was right to do so, but judgments of Bush cannot be written today with a clear head. The old wounds are still fresh and the animosity still potent.

    Now we’ve got a new president to love or loathe. Let us learn from the last eight years to separate the man from the mission. Obama, like Bush, is a good man who will have to make tough decisions and live with the consequences forever. If we can discern the policy from the personal, I think we will all have fairer views of the people who take on the toughest job in the world.

    George W. Bush may be crossing the finish line with a limp, but at least he finished the race. You’ve got to give him props for that.

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  • Lovin’ Lincoln

    I finally went on the most important pilgrimage a history buff must go on: to Springfield, IL, for the loads of Lincoln lore there.

    First, I went with my dad to the Old State Capitol where Lincoln worked as a state legislator. Though mostly recreated, the building smacked of authenticity.

    But the biggest and best place to be in Springfield is the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum. Packed to the brim with memorabilia, the museum had a traveling exhibit of campaign gear from presidential elections past. The exhibit also displayed one of the three cameras used in the Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960.

    Next, a recreation of Lincoln’s early life locales: his log cabin home, the general store he owned for a bit, and the law offices in Springfield. My favorite part, however, was the walk-through of his White House years, where we saw Mary Todd’s dresses, a tableau of the famed “team of rivals” in the Cabinet room debating the Emancipation Proclamation, and finally the assassination at Ford’s Theater. Outside of that section was more memorabilia: locks of Lincoln’s hair, personal letters, and one of his three trademarked stove pipe hats which had two worn spots on the brim from when he would tip his hat to passersby.

    I repeat: I saw Lincoln’s stove pipe hat.

    Later we visited the Lincoln home. We walked where the man walked and touched the same banister. I know I’m nearing idol-worship here, but I appreciate the man more having been through his life a little bit. We also visited the Lincoln tomb, which was very solemn and reverant experience.

    I’ve started reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. I’ve been meaning to get to it for a while, but now I actually have some motivation to delve further into the man’s life, having now been through it (albeit superficially).

    With Lincoln’s 200th birthday coming up in February 2009, I’d highly recommend checking out Springfield, if only for a day. Make sure to get to the museum and the Lincoln home. They far exceed the worth of the drive.

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  • The War by Ken Burns

    I’m still working my way through it, but I’ve already come to appreciate Ken Burns’ seven-part 2007 miniseries The War.

    Burns explains in the making-of feature that he wanted to show the war not through historians but through average citizens, men and women and children from every corner of the country who endured the front lines abroad or did their part at home. He focuses on four towns—one in California, Minnesota, Alabama, and Connecticut—and uses interviews with the veterans and their families from those towns to make the enormous scope of World War II more intimate.

    It’s a great historical record of the American involvement, delving deep into topics that are not often discussed like Japanese internment and the segregation of minorities in the Army. Burns employs his trademark use of photos, footage, and interviews in each scene. Some photos we’ve seen before, but most are new and show us a different view of what has become a very familiar war.

    Norah Jones’ “American Anthem,” the series’ theme, is very good, though not as good as the theme for Burns’ The Civil War, called “Ashokan Farewell.” And while I really love David McCullough’s narration in The Civil War, actor Keith David’s here has quickly grown on me.

    So if you have 15 hours to spare one these days, fill them with The War.

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  • Forty-One

    I’m watching the video tribute to George H. W. Bush at the Republican National Convention. It reminded me how great a person and American he is. World War II fighter pilot, Congressman, Ambassador to the U.N., envoy to China, Director of the CIA, Vice-President, and finally, President — there are few public servants with such a record.

    Seeing him at the ripe age of 84, he reminded me of my grandpa Cliff, both by his appearance and by his resume. Grandpa Cliff served as a lieutenant in Patton’s Third Army, trudging through the Battle of the Bulge, then through decades of service in the FBI. Both men are decorated members of the Greatest Generation.

    I watched the Bush Sr. episode of American Experience a while back and it explained that regardless of some of Bush Sr.’s decisions in office, he held true to his own code of honor and dignity. That code guided him through some tough times and hard decisions. Even when the decisions were unpopular. Perhaps we’ll be thinking the same things about 41’s son Dubya one day. Or not.

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  • The Things They Carried

    “A true war story is never moral,” writes Tim O’Brien in his book The Things They Carried. Indeed, if there ever was a hard lesson learned by the United States, its citizens and, most importantly, the soldiers during the Vietnam War, it was that war was without morals, no matter how Hollywood depicted it. The stories that came out of the war, therefore, could teach no uplifting lesson nor create heroes without being a complete farce.

    O’Brien’s collection of short stories about his war experience that became The Things They Carried has no unifying purpose, no gallant protagonist, and no respect for the fall-back traits of a ‘war novel’; he simply tells his story as he knew it. Whether his stories of war and its aftermath are factual realities makes no difference. But when thinking about what effects the Vietnam War had on its veterans after they returned home, one must first understand how it affected them even before they arrived in the dense, sweaty jungles of Vietnam.

    To the millions of young American men in the late 1960s, a draft notice seemed imminent. Some readily accepted their conscription as a patriotic duty; others vocally and violently protested it. But all of them—the doves and hawks alike—feared it in some way. The teenage Tim O’Brien was no different. However, in his youth and naïveté, believed that “if the stakes ever became high enough… [he] would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage that had been accumulating inside [him] over the years…in preparation for that day when the [courage] account must be drawn down.” It is a common belief among young men, which for O’Brien, sadly, did not hold up.

    In the chapter “On the Rainy River,” O’Brien describes in fascinating detail the deepest and darkest secret he had kept completely to himself until he wrote it down. He received his draft notice in the summer of 1968, during the height of the Tet Offensive, and was thrown into a moral and psychological whirlwind; should he flee to Canada or resign to his conscription? “It was a kind of schizophrenia. A moral split. I couldn’t make up my mind. I feared the war, yes, but I also feared exile.” Already, before he had picked up a gun and shot at another human being, he was at war with himself.

    He lists off every reason why he thinks he shouldn’t have to go to war: he was too smart, too compassionate; he hated camping out and the sight of blood. Though, in reality, the secret account of courage he thought he had was short on funds. This becomes evident when he decides to bolt for the border, eventually making it to a small motel in the wilderness directly across a lake from Canada. He stays there for nearly a week with the innkeeper, stuck in his very own purgatory.

    He gets the chance to jump from a boat and swim to the Canadian shore, to live a life of physical freedom but moral handicap. But he can’t do it. “[It was] a moral freeze. I couldn’t decide, I couldn’t act, I couldn’t comport myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity.” He tries to force himself to jump, but the thought of embarrassment overtakes him. He would go to war.

    O’Brien acknowledges up front that he waited so long to tell this story simply because of the embarrassment of not being able to act heroically when it mattered. It was a coming-of-age moment in his life, which reflected the same process the country would go through during its decade long engagement with Vietnam. The classic heroics and sturdy platitudes of World War II—that America was inherently good and right and honorable—faltered because of Vietnam. O’Brien’s personal crisis, a crisis of moral confliction rather than simple cowardice, embodied every other fighting man’s.

    The Things They Carried could be considered a post-modern novel. There is not one main character that the reader follows throughout the book, nor a single narrative arc that connects each character and each plot point, and no chapter is necessarily dependent on another. It is important to consider this style of writing because the way O’Brien chooses to write about Vietnam reveals how he values and what he feels about his Vietnam experience.

    Writing about his pre-war life, O’Brien stays more or less on a clear, singular path. But when he describes the war itself, the writing structure becomes disjointed, like fragments of memory mashed together. In this way, the content informs the structure. His pre-war days were smooth and straight. Then, he enters Vietnam, and his life’s structure and path are blown off course. Once he leaves Vietnam and continues his life, things slow down and take form again, but not without bumps in the road.

    With that idea in mind, the stories from the war zone make more sense. Everything O’Brien knew as an ordinary young man was scrambled in with the chaos of Vietnam. The personal crisis he fought through before he became a soldier was nothing compared to the deeper dilemmas that soldiers experience. He describes his reaction to killing a man: “I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty.” He didn’t weep softly or have a nervous breakdown after killing the man; he wasn’t so mentally disturbed that he couldn’t function as a soldier; he simply slips into a vast, unquantifiable gray area.

    Within this gray area, what really happens becomes jumbled with what seems to happen. This is why, O’Brien explains, war stories should never be trusted with the truth. “The angles of vision are skewed…there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.” Because of this dichotomy, O’Brien admits to a loss of firm, absolute truth in war stories and, consequently, the war itself: “Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate…and the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity.”

    The veterans carried this feeling with them from the swamps of Vietnam all the way back home to America. This disillusionment with the old ways—the eternal truths taken for granted—defined the era. The lives the soldiers lived before the war, before their draft notices, was black-and-white, but no more. The overwhelming ambiguity of war became the controlled chaos of civilian life. O’Brien writes about Norman Bowker, his comrade in the war, who returned home and found that his life had no particular purpose. Bowker drove aimlessly around a lake as if he was caught on a broken record. He was idling, literally and figuratively, between his former life as a soldier and his uncertain future. He wrote O’Brien to describe the feeling: “[T]here’s no place to go… My life, I mean. It’s almost like I got killed over in Nam.” Whatever part of him Bowker felt was killed in Vietnam was soon joined with the rest of him; he hanged himself a few years after returning home.

    O’Brien had a different post-war experience. He wasn’t driven to suicide, but the over-whelming ambiguity he described stayed with him. When he returned to Vietnam with his daughter about twenty years after the war, he visited the place where his best friend Kiowa died —the one event that haunted him and that he blamed himself for. He waded into a lake and dropped Kiowa’s moccasins in the place he thought was where Kiowa died. He was trying to find some sort of emotional solace, and found it: “In a way, maybe, I’d gone under with Kiowa, and now after two decades I’d finally worked my way out.” O’Brien found the peace Norman Bowker and many other Vietnam veterans could not find.

    The pre- and post-war experience of Vietnam veterans like Tim O’Brien and Norman Bowker were intrinsically linked by the war itself. Like a magnet, Vietnam pulled those young men away from their home, willingly or not, to battle; likewise, Vietnam in the theoretical—the lifelong physical and mental battle scars—kept its unbending and unseen hold on the young men as they returned home. They, along with the rest of the country, would not be able to shake off the uneasiness of the times. Everyone from the shores of Maine to the streets of Los Angeles, in a way, carried the same weight O’Brien and Bowker and countless other veterans carried through the “ghostly fog, thick and permanent” that was Vietnam.

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  • Standing Tall: Comparing ‘High Noon’ and ‘On The Waterfront’

    Published in the North Central Chronicle on Jan. 25, 2008

    “I have here in my hand…” said Senator Joseph McCarthy in February 1950, effectively hoodwinking the country into a hysterical anti-Communism era known as the Red Scare. McCarthy claimed the list identified 200 Communists within the American government, so he and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) spearheaded a movement to eradicate Communist spies and sympathizers from the government.

    The most infamous consequence of the Red Scare was the blacklisting of workers in the entertainment industry. Ten Hollywood screenwriters and producers refused to admit to HUAC that they were Communists or Communist sympathizers and in doing so were barred indefinitely from working in Hollywood. These “Hollywood Ten,” plus one hundred more working professionals, struggled to find work for many years following their blacklisting.

    Loyalties within the industry became fiercely divided, and soon writers and directors directly affected by the blacklist voiced their opinions through their films. The two most notable films that resulted from the blacklisting gave sharply contrasting, yet oddly similar views of the ordeal. These films were High Noon (1952) and On the Waterfront (1954).

    Fred Zinnemann’s tense Western High Noon tells the tale of Sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper) defending his Kansas town from vindictive criminals hell-bent on killing Kane. It’s a simple task, complicated by the fact that his new wife Amy (Grace Kelly) is a pacifist Quaker trying to talk him out of it. Plus, the deputies who were once loyal to him choose not to fight with him out of fear and cowardice.

    Kane tries to rally support from the townsfolk, who cower in the shadows and resent his presence. Amy then threatens to leave him because of her pacifist principles (so much for “‘til death do us part.”) Ultimately Kane decides to take on the bandits alone, despite his wife’s wishes and despite knowing that if he left, the bandits would probably leave as well.

    High Noon is the classic American Western. But unlike the traditional Westerns of the time, it takes place in almost real-time, heightening the tension for the viewer as we watch Kane desperately try to defend his town and his pride. Like Rear Window, not much action happens until the final act, when the boiler-pot full of despair and helplessness finally explodes. More importantly, it is an allegory of the fight against blacklisting, which I will discuss shortly

    In Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is an ex-prizefighter-turned-longshoreman who works for a gang that controls the New York City waterfronts. Terry inadvertently helps the gang kill a police informer, who happened to be his best friend, and his conscience starts to take a toll.

    Terry is indicted by the police but refuses to testify against the gang, fearing deadly retribution. His friend’s sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint) and a local priest try to convince him to work against the mob, but it’s not until Terry’s brother Charley, a mobster who is ordered to kill Terry to stop him from testifying, is killed when Terry decides to become an informer. Terry eventually testifies against the mob, breaking the waterfront code of not ratting out one’s friends and earning the scorn of his fellow dock workers.

    On the Waterfront won eight Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor for Marlon Brando. His performance is widely regarded as one of the best in history (you might recognize his “I coulda been a contender” speech), while the film itself placed eighth on the American Film Institute’s all-time list.

    Another key reason for the film’s greatness is its symbolism: a train whistle blows as Terry “blows the whistle” on the death of his friend; Terry carries a hook on his shoulder after he is beaten up by the mob to signify a Christ-like suffering. The allegorical nature of this film elevates it from a by-the-numbers melodrama to a thoughtful masterpiece.

    These films can stand alone as two classic and important American films, but they, as well as a few other films at the time, share a unique purpose in their making. Carl Foreman, the writer of High Noon, was a former Communist who was called before HUAC to identify other Communists in Hollywood. Foreman refused and was blacklisted, so he went into exile in Britain, recognizing a lack of motivation among his colleagues in Hollywood to combat the spread of McCarthyism and to speak up for their blacklisted friends.

    With this in mind, the subtext of High Noon becomes clearer: the townsfolk (people in Hollywood) are afraid to support Kane (the blacklisted) when the criminals (McCarthy and HUAC) come to town. You’ll have to watch the film to see what happens, but rest assured, Foreman felt that he would survive the national nightmare, and did: he co-wrote the Academy Award-winning The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) with a fellow blacklisted screenwriter.

    On the Waterfront tells the same story through a different lens. Director Elia Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg both named names at the HUAC hearings – like Terry did in the film –and their peers condemned them for it. By portraying Terry as the hero when he testifies against the villains in the film, Kazan and Schulberg justify their own real-life actions.

    Since these films tell essentially the exact same story, which view is more justified? Both have a strong central character defying the persuasive masses to do what they think is right. Is the man who exposes injustice justified in his revelation, even if it means betraying his friends? Or are the masses, who refuse to help their leader because they don’t agree with him, more justified? It’s the job of the viewer to decide.

    Fifty years later, these films are no less relevant today than they were back then. If anything, these films defend the right of art to give voice to a momentarily unpopular opinion that would have otherwise been ignored. They also demonstrate the power film has to launch new ideas into the public consciousness, ready or not. New and unpopular ideas abound in our culture, regardless of how many people vilify them (I’m talking to you, Bill O’Reilly), and it’s important for filmmakers to capture these ideas for humanity’s and history’s sake.

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  • Where Are Our American Heroes?

    Published in the North Central Chronicle on October 26, 2007.

    The Declaration of Independence. The Emancipation Proclamation. The Wright brothers. The fall of the Berlin Wall. These are great pieces of our nation’s history.  They represent the importance of American freedom, ingenuity, and strength.

    Slavery. The treatment of Native Americans. The atomic bomb. Vietnam. Watergate. These are shameful chapters of American history that we continually try to forget.

    And now, in our post-9/11 world, the shame seems to keep piling up. Abu Ghraib, Blackwater, Alberto Gonzales, a weak Congress and an absurd president—none of these things seem worth fighting for.

    Now, flashback 40 years. Our parents had the unique opportunity to live through the most turbulent and revolutionary times in our country’s recent history. They saw an America on the brink of disaster fight through great injustices, assassinations, radical racism, and an unwinnable war. But they also lived to see one of our country’s greatest political figures: John F. Kennedy.

    JFK met many obstacles; some he overcame, some got the best of him. But regardless of his politics or his personal life, JFK led. Arguably, one of the most consequential and defining choice he ever made was to lead this country into the Final Frontier and get a man on the Moon.

    It’s hard to put into context now, but at the time this idea was Earth-shattering (pun intended). NASA had already been conducting space missions for a few years, but the Moon was still a long way off. After the Russians launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth, and effectively pulled ahead of the United States in the “Space Race,” President Kennedy had to convince the country to get to the Moon. And after a string of humiliating moral defeats, America was ready for a victory.

    Eight years and billions of dollars later, we made it. A human walked on the Moon. Just think about that for a second. It’s incredible. Anyone over 40 will tell you exactly what it was like to witness Neil Armstrong step foot on the face of an uncharted, untamed celestial force of nature. Even Walter Cronkite, the most stoic and professional news anchor ever, could not contain his astonishment and joy at such an incredible feat.

    But the greatest thing about the Apollo 11 moon landing was not that America was the country to do it, it was that America shared that epic achievement with the whole world. It wasn’t an American that landed on the moon; it was a human being. Like Armstrong famously said: ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

    Mankind did it together, with America leading the way. That was the sentiment that the whole world shared.

    Now, decades later, instead of banding together with our fellow man and setting the example for peace and freedom, we’ve alienated most of the world with our unilateral policies, our government has failed time after time to be honest with us, and we’ve abandoned all the moral authority we earned in the past. So who can we look to now? Who among us can take us back in the right direction?

    We cannot rely on another event like the moon landing to inspire the world to co-exist peacefully. Life is too precious to be left in apathetic hands. But if another 9/11 comes along, when the world joins together, if only for a moment, we’ve got to seize that moment to do some good. We’ve got to raise the bar high, like we did with the Marshall Plan after World War II and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

    We’re nearing another fork in the road as we approach the 2008 election and turn the page on a tumultuous and unstable episode of history. The biggest issue I’m judging the candidates on is their sensibility and devotion to the restoration of true American dignity and leadership. So far, I’ve yet to be impressed by any candidate. Again, who will lead us into the abyss that lay before us?

    Where are the George Washingtons, the Lewis & Clarks, and the Rosa Parkses of this generation? Is there no one to help clean up cities destroyed by hurricanes, to stop genocide, to eliminate hunger? I’m searching for someone or something to believe in, someone that unites rather than divides and actively pursues truth instead of obscures it. Does such a person exist?

    I’m looking for the heroes, the pioneers, the events that will capture the heart of our nation and inspire true patriotism. Not patriotism limited to American flag lapel pins and bumper sticker slogans, but patriotism that is shown through action and truth rather than empty words and partisan bickering. It may be a lofty goal, but this is America, the Land of Opportunity; let’s take the opportunity set before us to become great again.

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  • A Loathsome List

    I linked to a list of the Most Loathsome People in 2007 in an earlier post, but I want to repost a part from that list because it’s so freaking true. Check out the rest of the list for a gut-shot of truth.

    The Founding Fathers

    Charges: Lionized as moral pillars and demigods ad nauseam without the slightest hint of irony. Can’t be judged by today’s tandards. Electoral College? Dumb f*cking idea. Invoked by every a*shole in the last two hundred years to support every stupid idea ever. The original liberal elite. Able to withstand lightning strikes and the British military; unable to fathom poor people voting.

    Exhibit A: Owned wigs, Africans.

    Sentence: Depicted as cartoons on rapidly devaluing currency; beaten at effective democracy by former monarchies.

    You

    Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism — it’s nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears’ children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you’re going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques.” You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can’t spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don’t want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy’s doing well. You’re an idiot.

    Exhibit A: You couldn’t get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.

    Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn’t cover. You deserve it, chump.

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