Within A Historical Novel, An Omen

I'm reading more historical novels nowadays. It's a good way to brush up on some of the stuff I taught in a way that keeps you from feeling that you're plowing through something.

Sometimes, though, you run into things that serve as an omen. Such is how I'm approaching Winter of the World by Ken Follett.

Not only is Follett a good story teller, he does his homework. He has a way of drilling down into details that pure historians might find unnecessary to convey the story. Follett understands that history happens to real people and affects them in real ways. That's how you not only perceive what happened, you feel it.

He makes the reader feel, for instance, what happened inside of Nazi-controlled Germany in the years leading up to World War II. It was a slow, gradual strangulation of civil liberties with a ratcheted-up program of domestic terror. Follett helps you understand how that could happen anywhere.

Like here, very soon, if the wrong person gets to be president again. The ingredients are out there and in perfectly noticeable operation right now. All it will take is the will to manipulate them together, and you will have a police state. We are creeping closer to it right how, in fact, but certain safeguards remain in place. They will disappear starting on January 21, 2025, if the country continues to lull itself into somnolence.

Certain concepts must be reinforced:

• Certain designated peoples really are superior to others and deserve to be treated that way.
• Power is seized, not earned. Its possession defines its own justifiability.
• Force is the only thing that makes people controllable.
• Law does not matter. The leader's whims only do.
• The truth is only relative to what the leader wants to be true. It need not be challenged.

Such is the way Nazi Germany was run. Such is the way the United States of America will be run if the election goes the wrong way.

To fulfill the above corrupt values, the leader needed mindless minions to carry out his wishes. He found them in the Sturm Abltielemung, or the S.A., the Storm Troopers, who intimidated and injured (and worse) thousands of those people of conscience in the early days, when the Nazis struggled slowly to gain power. They conjure uniforms to confirm their paramilitary dominion, dared anyone to challenge it, and gained the loyalty, passive or otherwise, of local police.

That's not here already? Au contraire. It's here and ready to "stand by," as ex- told them in one of the 2020 presidential debates. May I remind you of the:

• Proud Boys
• Oath Keepers
• Three-Percenters
• Those sad specimens who follow Q-ANON
• And other fringe groups

all waiting for the signal that it's time to enforce whatever their leader wants. They will join together and, after some kind of internal squabble about who will run it--with murders likely--they will vow their loyalty not to the Constitution (though they may say so in a feeble attempt to detract from their true goals), but to ex- personally. You will see them carrying out acts of terror, very noticeably, so that others get the message. You will see also them at the offices of MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others who really do believe in the freedom of speech and the press, carrying out warrants for arrest from a corrupted Justice Department.

Expect people like Rachel Maddox, Jake Tapper, Bill Maher (yes, you too, Bill) and Lawrence O'Donnell to be arrested, as well as genuine political rivals like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden. Charges? Well, there will be some, but their substances will not matter. Quickly, almost imperceptibly, protests will disappear, too.

Are you watching what is happening in Russia? What Putin is ruthlessly doing to those to stand up to him? Count on it. Even more thoroughly, because there will be more resources at hand.

This is not to mention how we might fare economically, with crushing tariffs. Think inflation will somehow end? It will explode.

Or how we will sour on religion, which will be a cat's paw to drive compliance amongst enough of the populace to reinforce obedience. This betrayal of an otherwise good thing to download the bad is likely to make people ill. If the congregation's devotion is to the Almighty first, though, its tax-free status will be attacked and possibly eliminated.

Climate change? Fossil fuel control? Forget it. Ex- has already promised oil magnates much less (read: none) production safeguards if they provide him with $1B worth of support. That's one of his tens of thousands of lies, of course, but he'll do everything he can do toward that end.

Social Security? Medicare? Count on, at the very least, less service than you've ever had. Administrative functionality will come to a near halt. If the programs aren't actually trashed--if the Republicans take control of Congress, it will take them oh, ten days or so to bring that about--the programs will be rendered helpless by massive neglect.

The IRS, too. I received, finally, my 2020 income boost a month ago--spring of 2024. And that's with an administration that means us well, cleaning up more neglect of the previous one.

If this scares you, sorry not sorry. The Atlantic and The New Republic have also run whole issues specifically speculating what would happen if ex- takes over again. The feature articles are written by people much smarter than me. Yet, it is not what he has in mind: It's the ability to carry it out, the efficiency with which his fascist tendencies can be unleashed. The above mentioned groups will be only too happy to do that for him, establishing a paramilitary bulwark from which to suppress any and all who would merely be declaring these acts to be unfair, unconstitutional and unconscionable.

People are not exactly up on Joe Biden. But they must be persuaded that the alternative would be worse than any president we would ever have had, worse by miles and miles. Get them to vote, while you can still do so.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

There's A Stand on Israel Out There Somewhere. I Just Know There is.

I don't know. What the hell would you do with Israel?

Would you finally give up on them and refuse support? Really? How could you do that and not deny the Holocaust and its effects? Or have time and tide pushed us beyond it?

Is there someplace in-between where you could take a stand? You know, kind of a situation-by-situation position? Could you map out some kind of rhetoric which would clarify that?

How about: If Israel were threatened to the core of its very existence. Okay, let's go there.

You mean, then, that October 7th did not represent that? You could only say that in retrospect, now couldn't you? Because October 7th itself was a vicious, murderous, completely destructive attempt by Hamas to--I guess--take out Israel once and for all, as ridiculous a goal as that was and is.

Or, maybe Hamas received what it believed to be a signal from Hezbollah or Iran itself that the time was ripe to strike, that they would garner military and logistical support to bring Israel to its knees. Did that ever have a chance without an actual declaration of war?

Regardless, there's no doubt Israel was under threat. You mean, American support was not appropriate? That Israel should have been left alone to figure out what to do?

Okay, it was, pretty much. And it responded by invading Gaza and leaving it to ruin, subjecting its denizens to total destruction and starvation that it has done little to address. American military hardware has already been established there long ago. No doubt it played a major role in the counter destruction that as ensued.

You mean Israel had no right to do that? Really? Then what was it supposed to do? Wave the white flag and negotiate? Uh-huh. His people would have gone for that about as far as they could have thrown Benjamin Netanyahu, whose popularity was at a very low point when all of this began.

Finally, though, President Biden has had enough. He can't watch all this and take responsibility any longer. So he's cut off American bombs meant to devastate Rafah.

Well, that's nice. He wants to mollify pro-Palestinian activists and make the campus tents go away. Except for two things: It's a little late in the game, with Gaza already in ruins; and I highly doubt that withdrawing these bombs will do nothing more than delay the inevitable, and total, destruction of Rafah. Israel will stop devastating Hamas until it is sure Hamas is rendered helpless about as much as it will stop snowing atop Mount Everest.

But it won't work. It. Will. Not. Work. If there are just a few Hamas fighters left, a few who fled and found refuge somewhere else, who might have disappeared amongst the thousands of refugees, they will re-form and recommit themselves with even greater zeal. Wouldn't you? If neo-Nazis have managed to reconnoiter and begin a new surge--and they have, name the country--what's to stop the sons and daughters of present-day Hamas fighters from doing the same? 

Israel must know this. Yet, the devastation continues.

If it takes another ten or twenty years, another generation for Hamas to recover, so what? It took 30 years for Ho Chi Minh and his cohorts to rid Vietnam of foreign domination, which includes, of course, some 58,000 Americans. To true revolutionaries, time is irrelevant.

I see where the U.N. has voted for Palestinian independence. Vastly outnumbered, the U.S. and Israel voted no. So much for the two-state solution. So much for any solution, besides utter destruction. 

I suppose we have another plan for the situation. Let's see it. I want to see anything that makes any sense at this point.

Because I can't think of anything. While writing essays, one gets to a point at which it's time to quit, to remove oneself so that things don't drag on. When I considered that, I thought it apropos because nobody knows how or when to withdraw from the Israel-Palestine situation, either. Nobody knows when or if it will come to a place where things will finally settle.

Think I'd come up with something unique and brilliant so we can move on? Sorry. Neither have some pretty smart, crafty, politically wise people. Henry Kissinger couldn't. Or Jimmy Carter, though we all thought he had. Nor Anwar Sadat, murdered for his diplomatic courage. Nor Bill Clinton. Nor Yitzak Rabin, who met a fate similar to Sadat's.

So I might as well stop now. Just as it has been since 1948, someone will pick up the banner and keep fighting. All they need is an excuse. The more they fight, the more excuses are ready-made.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Just A Moment. But A Moment Is All It Took.

I have a bumper sticker on my car. It's been on any car I've had since 2017.

For it was then that this pestilence, this ugliness, officially descended upon America. You know what I'm talking about.

The whole societal discussion turned nasty and ridiculous. It has remained that way since. It has even gotten worse. Who in the world thought we would be discussing the value of shooting one's dog, to name a for instance?

But most of us on the side of decency, of propriety, of politeness, saw what was coming a full year before. We cruised along, though, secure in the false knowledge that the country wouldn't actually go where these people were heading--toward abject racism, endless insults, and incredible irrationality.

We're here, though. And it threatens to once again take over.

So I ordered the bumper sticker from a group called Common Dreams, and got a few for some political allies of mine. After I sent them out, I kept a couple, which was fortunate because in 2020, I got rear-ended by some fool who was paying attention to his wife and slammed me while I and a number of folks were stalled on the freeway (and never asked if I was all right--I was--never, in fact, made any comment). That car had one, too.

It reads:

Not Normal

RESIST 

Back in 2017, there were few people who wouldn't immediately know what that was referring to. But as in most things, normalization creeps in like the fog. We know in 2024 that this subterfuge of real political give-and-take will be with us for the foreseeable future. It is not a quick surge of emotional trash, like a garbage can that has been blown over by a sudden storm. Oh, no. It is more like garbage that has been forgotten, has been strewn and remained for weeks, if not months, and rats have visited and maintained their presence.

If nothing else, there is even more reason to display the bumper sticker. It still isn't normal out there. It's still terribly damaging to where politics should be taking us, but unless you've been hiding in Carlsbad Caverns, you get this by now. The destruction of any rational discussion is exactly the point of it, exactly the prelude to its cancellation. For without rationality, power can dominate anything, assume anything, put anything out there that makes no sense. Which is what's continuing to happen from one side and will completely happen if it wins again.

But you know the effects of bumper stickers; small, even negligible. People see them at stoplights or quickly passing you on the highway and don't bother to react. There is no real confrontation. No one has, to be best of my knowledge, beeped their horns and either have waved in agreement or flipped me off in dissent.

Until yesterday. I was dropping off a bill I had to pay, including the check with which I was paying it, at the Whitefish Bay Post Office, en route to another trip I had to take. Based on reports of some idiot locals breaking into corner post office boxes, opening the envelopes to steal the money within, I have since taken to go directly inside the buildings and drop the mail into the slots provided. I had pulled up to a parking place, and so had someone else.

The man was dressed in a button-down, dark plaid shirt with what might have been Dockers-kind of slacks: the kind of understated style that frequents that town with its understated but endless stream of old money. He wore glasses. He was clipped nicely. I wondered if he owned a sweatshirt. But he was neat, clean, and appropriate.

As I came to the door, he took a look at the bumper sticker and asked, "What's that all about?" It was the first time anyone had taken the bother to notice.

"(-----)," I said, mouthing the name of the main perpetrator, the dominant liar, for a rare moment. You will notice here that, consistent with previous practice, I do not print his name, and in conversations, I try to refer to him in an indirect yet obvious way. So it shall ever be, whether he tricks the country into re-electing him or not. I do not advance the names of rapists, of criminals, of otherwise disgusting maladroits, especially if still alive. I will have to come up with a new nickname for him should the country make another enormous mistake in November, but oh, there are so many possibilities.

Then I added, "There's nothing normal about him." It was, admittedly, a mild comment compared to many others I could have made, summarizing my intense loathing. But he really wanted to know. He really was mystified. I wondered whether he was another victim of the country's normalization of a hoodlum. 

I stood for a moment, wondering whether he would like to comment. He didn't. He looked stunned walking past, shaking his head gently and very slowly. He didn't want to take me on.

Lucky for him. I was in the kind of mood that I don't get into much anymore, in which I wait in the tall grass for someone to say something really stupid and leap on them like a panther. If he would have invited elaboration, I would have been too happy to oblige. Go ahead, I would probably have said, tell me any good he has done anyone, including himself, seeing as how he's been dragged to court in four different ways now. Tell me it's a conspiracy. Tell me it's so unfair. Be an ersatz victim, just like him.

Would he have agreed with the sticker's sentiment, I would have heard so quickly. I wondered if he thought I meant that resisting ex- was, in fact, not normal. But once he understood, he couldn't gather himself to put up a meaningful objection. I couldn't blame him. What else is there to say about this venom-filled snake? On the other hand, he has his money. What does he care?

It has boiled down to this, this in seven years: We all know where we are. There seems to be little discussion left. That takes only a moment, but a moment, and a glance, is all it took; a realization that the ruin that he has brought the country is still being noticed. In the meantime: This is not normal. Resist.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Facts. He Looked at the Facts. And Changed His Mind. A "Profile in Courage" If There Ever Was One.

Mike Johnson changed his mind about supporting Ukraine. He did it while supporting his own principles, too. But he added something: Facts.

The word is that when Johnson read intelligence reports about the disgusting Russian attempt to conquer an independent country that's adjacent to it, he concluded what anybody else would: that a victorious Russia wouldn't stop at Ukraine. As a famous diplomat, George Kennan, was fond of saying, Russia has always been and will always be an expansionist country, and will be inclined to add to its territory in the name of protection or empire-building: Take your pick.

And Russia has plenty of options. There are plenty of relatively small, relatively defenseless countries nearby: Be it in the Balkans (Hungary, Serbia), the Baltic (Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia), or right next door (Poland, Slovakia, Moldova). It hardly matters. It's already extended its sphere of influence over Belarus, from which it can stage various invasions; the Ukrainians already know this.

What Johnson must have learned he can no longer do--at least, without taking direct responsibility for it--is pretending that the present war will be self-contained, that Russia isn't interested in anything beyond it. And the United States, as the crucial linchpin of NATO, would be called into the melee' sooner or later in a very real, very crucial way: To send American troops. And some of them wouldn't be coming home.

Then the tensions would become all too real. Russia is warning of a big-power confrontation, but it has no moral standing to do that other than further propaganda and lies it could conjure (and of course it would). But send the 82nd Airborne to defend Warsaw, say, and you have the ramping up of the possibility of slaughtering millions upon escalation.

That would include anyone presently reading this. That's what stared Mike Johnson in the face. That's what made him stand up to the crazies in his own party, who believed that he had been victimized by the same emotional hijacking that they've been subjected to, from people who have been made afraid of wildly imagined chimeras and wouldn't dare deviate from whatever nonsense they've been told.

Not so. As the titular leader (perhaps not the actual leader; that's been abrogated to a crazy bully presently on trial) of his party, he stepped up and faced the real facts. The real facts, not vague generalities that can no more be disproven as proven, cleverly disguised as wisdom or quasi-brilliant, horribly wayward predictions.

That it's taking enormous courage to do this reflects the cockeyed times in which we live. Johnson may indeed be removed as House Speaker because he's saving Americans from dying in Eastern Europe, and our country from the agony of another, wider war. Being as deeply religious as he says he is, perhaps after huddling with his God, he cannot justify sending young Americans to die in far-off lands. Maybe in a twist of logic, religion has become an ironic reason he made a good decision after a long line of bad ones.

Regardless, the cover has been torn off fundamentalist Christian nationalism, masquerading as righteousness but grandstanding as slavish loyalty to a coquettish fool. Where this goes from here is anyone's guess. But for now, Ukraine will have the hardware (at least) to continue to resist newly re-developing Russian imperialism, eating up Russia's resources and confounding its twisted, arrogant, disgusting leader.

This does not insure Joe Biden's re-election, of course. There are more issues than just this, some that Biden cannot shake off. And Russia will throw new and hopefully more damaging propaganda at him in support of his twisted, criminal opponent. But Biden can also claim that standing strong against the nonsense machine will, in the end, prove justifiable--that facts, when put to the test, cannot be denied.

Neither can it assure that Ukraine can hold off the Russians and gain back ground. The delay fomented by the wicked Republicans has taken its toll. But Ukraine has also hung on with ferocious determination, and this latest investment might just buy enough time for Biden to rally and win--if his major opponent is indeed convicted and people actually do change their votes (as they said they would) if confronted with that ugly truth.

Meanwhile, I hope Caroline Kennedy is watching. Mike Johnson deserves serious consideration for the Profiles in Courage award. No, I don't like his views on other things, either. But when it comes to sticking one's neck out despite all threats to remove his power, he's done what the award requires--to "do the right thing," as he said, "and let the chips fall where they may." 

That very inclination has allowed our democracy to move forward and, for the most part, thrive since the Constitution was ratified. Sometimes, it's just hard to do. But that's why people of conscience step up and get with the program. Say what else you want, there's a lot to admire there.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

No, No: It's Not Unfair. It's the Market.

I've seen it several times now, and it's another example of left-wing overreach. Sorry, but it is.

On Facebook, some people are making a big deal out of the salary that incoming WNBA basketball star Caitlin Clark signed for: $76,000 or so. And they compare that with the minimum that a men's NBA player makes: $1.2 million.

And they cry: What's up with that? Implying that this is some kind of conspiracy to diminish women, parallel with all the other unfairnesses that have been offered up through the years.

To which I respond: Stop it. Stop it. That's not what it is. It isn't time to feel sorry for Caitlin Clark and her compatriots. It's time to face reality. And, in fact, celebrate a little.

And here it is: the number of people who enjoy watching women's basketball, college or professional, are far viewer than the number of people who enjoy watching men's basketball. Once again: Sorry. But that's the truth.

Were it otherwise, Caitlin Clark would be earning somewhere north of seven figures for her initial salary upon entering the WNBA. And so would a whole slew of her fellow players. As in most of them if not all.

This is not a worldwide plot to undermine women athletes. Or at least this isn't a part of it. It's the simple acting of market forces. To wit, and I know there will be outcries and accusations, but here it goes: They're not as much fun to watch as men.

They're not. They're not as fast, they're not as big, they don't jump as high. While some of them--some--can dribble and pass the ball as well as men, they do so against opponents that are not among the best athletes in the world, like NBA players are.

The WNBA has just completed its 27th season, plenty of time to develop talent, which it has. Matching that with the men's NBA, that would take us back to about 1973. The NBA champs that season were the New York Knicks. Let's name some of the players on that team: Walt Frazier. Willis Reed. Bill Bradley. Earl Monroe. Dave DeBusschere. Jerry Lucas.

If we were to somehow magically transform that team onto the WNBA and insert it into that league, I assure you that the Knicks would go undefeated and by many, many points with each game. Each player mentioned above was a standout in college and played brilliantly in the NBA. Together, they were formidable in a league with other incredibly talented players: Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wes Unseld, John Havlicek, Dave Cowens, Rick Barry, just to name a few.

And that was fifty years ago. Are the players better today? You can bet big bucks they are. They have to be. They wouldn't survive if they weren't. And many of them don't have long careers, either.

But what about Sabrina Ionescu of the WNBA's New York Liberty, shooting 3-pointers against Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors, one of the top names in the men's league? Seems that she did very well.

Sure she did. Unguarded. The next time you get to see Curry--not until next fall, since the Warriors were eliminated from the playoffs quite early--note how he has to shoot from very far with defenders, many of them taller, hanging all over him. That's what makes him so great: They know he's trying to bury those long bombs and manages to do it anyway. Note how quickly he has to get those shots off, too.

If those same players guarded Ionescu, I assure you she would rarely, if ever, get off a shot, much less make one. Against other women, she has plenty of chances. But everyone knows that. They know the bar is lower. They respect it, they admire it (as I do), but it can't compare.

A very good WNBA team is certainly far better than a very good college team, but a very good women's college team can compare only to a very good boys' high school team. Watching that isn't all that exciting for the casual viewer. Yes, tickets for the women's NCAA Final Four were more expensive than those of the men's, in a reversal of what the market normally yields.

Let's see what happens next year, though, when a phenomenon like Caitlin Clark isn't there. If the quality of the women's game was that good, the tournament would have demanded tickets just as expensive last year--and would next year, too. The men's Final Four is a cultural stand-by, like the Super Bowl or the World Series. People, normally men, consider it a privilege or incredibly good luck to get tickets to those events.

Consistently, those monetary revenues--including, of course, the television contracts which swell them--are what allow the men's salaries to explode through the roof. Maybe one day the women can claim that, too. But not now.

And yet, and yet: Caitlin Clark's getting plenty of exposure through television ads. And she's making up in endorsements what her salary can't: She just signed with Nike for more than a million dollars. But she's still a unicorn, and few other female basketball players or other kinds of athletes are featured on such ads. It's improving, yes, but there's a long way to go. Why? Once again, market forces. You have to be recognized in the media. Your exploits have to be discussed widely. Not happening yet, at least not to the extent that the men are.

Here's hoping it will. But to put the women's salaries in the same place as those of the men, at least in basketball, is naive at best. It's not like soccer, where the women are at least as well known and have campaigned hard for equal recognition which they deserve. The differences in talent aren't as noticeable in that sport, either.

In the meantime, don't make yourself look silly by pretending that women basketball players have reached the same level. If they would have, you'd have memorized the names of the teams, at least, and two or three of the best players on each. And you'd probably have attended a game by now. You would have helped to provide the market for women's sports in an appreciable way, not just throw a useless comparison out there.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Note To Joe Biden: Thanks. I Needed That.

It feels like a new world. Joe Biden outed himself.

He stood in front of a schizophrenic Congress Thursday night and told off his naysayers and those who would already have buried him, dazzling them with both his presence and delivery. His State of the Union Address last night was an eloquent call to battle.

It revealed a man who's grown in the job, one who's tired of the nonsense directed at him and his administration. From the very first sentence, it projected a ferociousness heretofore leashed.

A man too old for this enormous, all-encompassing job would not have been able to do what he did in the way he did it. He is spoiling for a fight. More, he wants his supporters to know it and join him.

Given the opportunity, once a year--if you remember, some of this attitude was a repeat of 2023's address--to face his opponents and detractors, he gladly welcomed the chance to take it on. He threw some of their comments right back at them, then, when they groaned, dared them to refute him.

Above all, Biden projects the Nice Guy image. He tries hard to put the best face on darn near everything. Republicans have taken full advantage, taunting him and his friends, knowing that their bullying will carry them through to victory in November and drag the country into a vengeful ditch beyond.

Until last night. He proved that when pushed hard enough and long enough, he has plenty of energy and nerve to push back. In doing so, he certainly provided me with additional spine. I've no doubt he did so for millions of others.

Until last night, I had concluded that voting for him was the maximum that I could and should do. I never thought that I could be sufficiently energized to do any work for him. He would lose anyhow, and the country would be driven off the cliff by the awful forces that Republicans have kowtowed to.

Now, I'm not sure. His job performance has certainly been good, given the forces arrayed against him. He was handed a world no longer sure of American significance, largely thanks to his predecessor, who simply doesn't care about that.

But now I've been shaken awake. I'm not sure what I'm going to do but I'm going to do something. The fate of Western civilization hangs in the balance. America is the spoke of that wheel. The disaster that awaits failure, which might still happen, won't because I sat and watched.

Okay, he's old. So is his opponent. But old with integrity sure beats old without it. And his bearing, his presence, suggested one who is clearly in command, not one who stumbles and withers beneath the pressure.

It was Mike Johnson, fill-in Speaker of the House, who looked dithered last night. He even applauded some of Biden's lines. I'm sure he'll hear about that.

Biden has changed the complexion of the whole campaign, too. He will probably have to resort to defiant blasts again and again now. Once will not be enough. 

I wonder: Will this lead to a debate? Or will it cancel out the possibilities? Ex- loves to prey on presumed weakness. But Biden took that image away last night. Before, I cringed. Now, if this is the kind of president we now have, I'm almost wishing for it. Ex- will probably run away from it now. He will run away from someone he used to dismiss with cheap shots.

Biden is decent, but firm. Friendly, but principled. I'll take it. In fact, assuming he stays healthy, I'll gladly take four more years of it. The taunts of "sleepy Joe" will no doubt continue, but they will be empty and pointless.

Substance carries only so much for so long in American politics. It must be balanced with appearances designed to project competence and confidence. Joe Biden put that out there last night. Instead of breathing a sigh of relief, I found myself energized and yelling at the TV screen in glee.

State of the Union addresses are largely filled with bromides and policy statements. There were a few in there, too. But instead of declaring himself above the fray, Biden rolled up his sleeves and joined it, transmitting his willingness and talent for a political tussle, a crusade for the maintenance of democracy itself. He even got after the Supreme Court for its abrogation of women's choice.

Yes, he stepped across an ethical line. But his opponent knows none. He sent out notice: I'm ready. Come and get it.

Still eight months to do, so plenty can happen. But now I'm engaged. I'm no longer just watching with descending enthusiasm. I'm ready to join the battle.

Thanks, Joe. I needed that.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

This Book Is the Finish, the Last Word, on the Vietnam War

If you're a baby boomer, hell even if you aren't, you need to read a book I've just finished. Because if you don't, you aren't finished with the Vietnam War yet.

Nope. Not by a mile.

Bet you haven't thought about it for a while, have you? Understandable.

The country brushed it under the rug. Or we tried to.

We never did. Not by another mile. It haunts us still. It always will.

It began our descent from world dominance. Some tried to say we bounced back from it at some point. We didn't. We couldn't. We kept trying to do make-up calls, and everybody knows what happens then.

There are about as many books about soldiers in Vietnam as there are plantations there. Lots. They say the same thing: It was about as fucked up as anything anyone had ever seen. Horrible, too, as war always is. Time goes on and another vet-turned-writer tries to tell people that the whole thing was a mess from the get-go, and what the hell did anybody expect?

I read a bunch of them. I had to teach it where I worked, and I did my best. No one, though, quite nailed the total experience.

Until now. Novelist Kristin Hannah has written the tour de force of Vietnam books, called The Women. It's probably the ultimate irony that the total, encompassing story of that awful experience has to be told by a female who was never there, about females who were.

She takes you through the peak of the war, from 1967-69, when hope and casualties were at their highest. Perhaps most importantly, she takes you back home after the service of those who gave of themselves, too--the nurses--and details the fictitious, and not so fictitious, experiences of trying to "get over" the experience, as if one ever could.

She does it through the eyes of Frankie McGrath, a good Catholic girl who eventually finds that all she's ever been taught to stand for has dissolved into bitterness, chaos, paranoia, regret and the all-consuming anger. She is left with absolutely nothing to hang onto because not even the male vets who came back acknowledge her very existence, not to mention her service on their behalf. Plenty of them never knew how she and other nurses helped wounded and dying comrades because they were lucky to get away without serious wounds.

She is failed by the military system, by a government she trusts, by a lover she adores, by the health care system, and by her parents, who swell up with pride with the memory of their son, killed in Vietnam, yet can't bring themselves to be proud of their daughter, who watched many of her brother's comrades die as well. The totality of it all proves too much to bear. In Vietnam, she becomes a all-enduring rock of Gibraltar, depended upon and admired by many. Back in The World, she dissolves into a complete wreck. Two pals she makes in Vietnam are all she has to buttress whatever sanity she has left.

But reading this leads one to get it: The nightmares. The PTSD. The feeling of inhumanness, of no longer fitting in anywhere. The lack of credit paid for what she had a right to sincerely believe was devoted, courageous service to her country, created a burden that left her alone--the one status that she couldn't maintain, yet couldn't find a remedy for. The men weren't the only ones who carried all that around.

A fraternity brother, now a retired psychiatrist, told me back in the '90s that he was still treating men who were roaming the streets of Chicago with weapons, believing that Victor Charlie was still lurking nearby. I thought that to be on the fringes of craziness. Now I wonder how many others couldn't shake that off, either. But now I know why, too.

There is recompense of a sort, symbolically centered on the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Wall in 1982. More than 58,000 names are on it, including eight nurses. What people forget is that one of the additional statues, built a few hundred feet behind the wall, depicts a nurse treating a wounded soldier. I never totally understood that until reading this book. Now I know that that statue completes the wall, gives it a wholistic meaning. And that it is absolutely necessary.

If you've never been there, you ought to go. There are several other important monuments nearby and easily within walking distance, too. But that one will undeniably catch your eye. People still bring flowers and memorabilia that they drop beneath the name of someone who never came back. You don't need to be a history teacher like me to be drawn to it. You just need to be an American.

The Vietnam War encompassed the zenith and beginning of the downfall of the United States as a force for good versus evil in the world. We learned that life and war aren't so simple. We are learning still, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Ukraine, in Gaza. 

Meanwhile, read The Women. It describes an era we'd love to forget, but can't and shouldn't.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark