The Best I Can Do Right Now

Well... how far behind can one get?

I'm about to bounce Mom out to the grocery store so's she can get started on making canoli. She is swinging right along, although the walker is still present because she's training her knee, now, to new geometry. The walker will be going away, though, and so with the cane. We can see this because of how she's attacking the pain, and her gait and posture are now already far better than I've seen in about three years. This is not quite up to my original optimism, but it's still splendid. Really, the only thing she's not doing is driving, and that's her stated goal: to be able to get out there and go on her own. That's coming, soon enough.

I'll be stringing guitars later for the Coots' show tomorrow night. I'm thinking the 355 and No. 67, but I'm not quite sure yet. A lot of that will wring out in a practice session later. New parts and lyrics ("Life In The Fast Lane", "Flaming Telepaths", etc.) and reviews of a lot of other stuff get bagged tonight.

~~~~~

{sigh...}

Observe the following correspondance, in e-mail:

"Mr. Beck, a long time ago I asked if I could e-mail you with some questions... You were cordial, so I am taking advantage of that. I am not really sending you any questions, in this e-mail, but I am calling out to a rational voice, probably one of the last of the few left.... You see, I came here from Russia... More than that, after I left the USSR, and REALLY abandoned it in my mind, I chose to make my living defending the American Dream, by becoming an Army officer... Now, I see my beautiful America becoming a communist shit-hole. It is frightening but there is still something I can do. If shit ever hits the fan, there is no question whom I am going to be defending, and it will be people very similar to you.

I would never tell my platoon to turn their guns against civilians defending their homes.Even if it costs me my life, I will die on the right side of history.

Sir, what you have done for me is more than even a mother could have: you have opened my eyes and compelled me to re-think some things I took for granted. Damn you for that. And thank you."

'...Against all enemies, foreign and domestic...'

Oh, dear. Look: first; I appreciate your writing to me. You can do that any time you want, although I hope that I let on to you that I can be a rotten correspondant. You always take your own chances with me.

More to the point, though: I wonder if you would let me publish that. I think I could maybe work up a good rant on that: A Man Who Was Deceived With A Noble Dream Gone Rotten.

...something like that, maybe. Depending on how it hits me.

It's heartbreaking and outrageous. It's fucking outrageous. I know an Army officer out there of whom I might ask, "Now what? Are you going to tell this man to go vote now that his heart's broken, or what?" He was once a good friend of mine, but I can't stand his "moderation" now, and I miss him but there is no choice. He is simply not facing what's happening, to include men like you.

I don't know what could be more tragic than a story like yours. I might be an orphan, but you are betrayed, sir, and in the name of my country and our ideals, to boot. I don't know what could be worse.

"Sir, you are welcome to publish that e-mail as you see fit.

It really makes me laugh, bitterly, when I am advised to 'get out and vote'. Please! Just as my grandfather laughed out loud at the TV when the monkey-circus of Politburo 'elections' was televised in the old country, I am laughing here."

~~~~~

Tell me what I should write about that. That's been on my mind for days now, almost like a debt that I don't know how to pay. I don't know how much more clearly one could see what that man is writing about, and I feel like I could write all the time for the rest of my life and never help anyone see it. Certainly not to any degree that could alter the alterable that must be altered. None of this is ordained. It is merely happening, but what is happening is a necessary matter of cause and effect, and that is a matter of human purview.

It is also a matter of requisite consequences. Paul Krugman's socialized medicine will eventually necessarily come to armed force laying on the populace, in the very nature of how it pretends against every sort of fact. It will only be a cornerstone of what the man who wrote to me can see. That is because socialized medicine is only exemplary of an ethics -- a way of values -- to be applied much more generally than that, and it will eventually take a lot of force as this way of values destroys far more than it ever produces.

In private discussion of this letter, I hear from responsible, thinking and informed people, retired military officers among them. This is sensible:

"There has never been a threat of the military turning their guns on the civilians in this country (except maybe some of the Civil War goings on like Jayhawkers and Quantrill’s bunch). Conversely there has never been a credible threat such as dramatized by 'Seven Days in May' or even 'Dr. Strangelove.' The somehow minimized, yet often repeated, campaign promise to 'create a civilian defense force' sized and armed in equivalence with the military is tacit recognition of the counter-balance that the officer corps maintains to the politicians. Without that force, the imposition of an equivalent of martial law seems remote."

I can't help it: it leaves me cold. I think my Russian friend is looking farther than my American friend. Every falling culture has had its embers of honor glowing as the darkness gathered around them, and they weren't enough. In fact, that's why they are remembered. Wherever they are in this country now, they all need the hot fan of history across their faces right instantly, because the Russian is right about this:

"I see my beautiful America becoming a communist shit-hole."

He knows what he's talking about, and so does everyone with whom I've spoken about this. That is an urgent fact, and the young officers' honor won't stop it, or what it will eventually require. Look at it this way: they can be disposed of, too. Don't even think that it couldn't happen here. Lots of things are happening here that untold generations never dreamed for America. That's because principles really matter, and you don't have to be a genius to see the new ones.