After a year of contentious budgetary sparring and dyslexic priorities, Congress recently passed funding for the Pentagon to the tune of over 800 Billion dollars just a few days before this year’s Christmas season went into full swing. Given the obvious need for other budgetary considerations that could have helped actual People in desperate need during this time of year, they chose instead to ram that legislation through the halls of Congress like crap through a goose, and wait until next year to hold the rest of this country’s domestic spending hostage in a budgetary war of attrition over border fences, abortion rights and funding for political retaliations.
After having read that bit of disgusting news and given this time of year, I found myself transported back in time 38 years ago, vividly recalling my opinion of things "Pentagon” on that gray 1985 Christmas Day morning in Washington, D.C., just before I finally left the East Coast for good. I had mustered the gumption to visit the (then new) Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. figuring that nobody would be there. I was right... it was bitter cold; that kind of humid, icy cold in the low teens that slices through your sinuses and burns the lungs with each breath. As light snow flurries slowly began to fall from the gray morning sky and while the rest of the city was opening their presents, sipping their toddies and enjoying their morning festivities, I leisurely trudged toward the monument, trying to kill a few hours before my early morning flight for California took off from National Airport.
I wasn’t entirely sure how I'd react - a part of me wanted to turn around, get back on the Metro and wait in the warm comfort of the airport terminal, but something - something dark and heavy - drew me there anyway. I couldn't have anticipated what would happen as my shoes left footprints on the light dusting of snow.
Actually, it had taken me quite some time to arrive at the point where I thought I could handle it; I'd been out of the Navy for over 6 years by then and I'd lost several shipmates in that particular conflict - performing tasks that by today's standards were distinctly "non-Naval" in character. I found a few of them on that wall - traced each engraved name with a finger and hoped that they were in a better place. Then as I turned around to leave, I spotted an unexpected name out of the corner of my eye- and that's when I lost it. I knew he'd enlisted right after he got out of high school in ’70, a year before me - he joined the Marines because that's what his dad did during the Korean war in '51. There always seems to be something about the genetic predisposition of people who have Corps blood in them: I dunno... but I always wondered what had happened to him. I'd imagined he'd done his tour, was discharged somewhere else, gotten married to some hot, curvy redhead, found a job and had a bunch of kids like he always used to daydream.
What made this one particularly hard to stomach was that Tommy and I had been in a band together in high school, pimping folk music for cigarette money at local taverns and coffee houses. We were great friends and shared several classes - and when I needed a date for his grad night, he conned his kid sister into going with me and we wound up having a lot of fun together that evening - four friends having a blast. We were as close to being family without biological ties as people could get. But to see his name up there carved on that black granite — another casualty in that senseless, contrived "police action"— and realize that someone with whom I had a personal history during our all too brief period of innocence had wound up as just another sacrificial meat offering to Nixon, Kissinger and his brass-hat jackals in the Pentagon was the final straw.
Two hours later the L-1011’s landing gear were retracting into the wheel wells and as we gained altitude and vectored westward over northern Virginia, I felt an extreme need to take a shower and cleanse myself of the sorrow, pain and anger that was washing over me. Instead I gulped down a couple of gin gimlets to help deal with it until my arrival in San Francisco 5 hours later- thanking God for first class perks. I never looked back, and to this day I’ve never returned. Over 38 years later, it’s still too damned evocative. Once was quite enough.
Much has been said about patriotism for the last several decades in this country. The ones in our government barking the loudest who perpetuate our brand of insanity called "Homeland Security”, border walls and “foreign policy” have never sighted in a weapon against an enemy of our country or served a single minute in her defense. The definition of the word "patriot" frequently shifts during nation-changing events; however history continues to demonstrate that wars - if they’re required to directly protect our people and their way of life - are won and kept mercifully short by implementing practical strategy, wise use of resources, cunning and well-trained skill instead of singular protracted brute force. As a nation we've been both the implementers and the victims for over two decades of horrifyingly expensive “shock and awe” brute force - and, in the process, the perpetrators in D.C. have drained our nation’s treasure, sullied our image as a people abroad and weakened our moral compass. By allowing ourselves to relinquish our liberty for security we have become financially "broke" and philosophically "broken". To this day we still can't seem to find the resources to properly care for our living, surviving veterans who were mutilated in the myriad conflicts our so-called “leaders” have sent them to fight in for no other reason than cultural or racial enmity and political “purity”… or, for that matter, even fix the damned potholes in our streets.
Given this country's track record of international policy going back to 1948, it should be obvious that rabidly conservative capitalist interests have squandered our resources in the pursuit of doctrine instead of vanquishing our enemies in the preservation of our quality of life. As a nation, given the damage we’ve done to both other nations as well as ourselves, we should have no business spending another dime of our tax money or spilling another drop of our warrior’s blood until all of our own people are educated, fed, healthy, employed and well-represented in the halls of our government through unrestricted voting for everyone in this country. We’ve even had direct warning of the consequences: anyone who takes some time away from the teevee to study the history of 20th century Europe will recall the results of what 15 years of corporate fascism did for Italy and how it ended in Milan on April 28, 1945. How long it will take for the people in this country to arrive at that same conclusion is anybody's guess; but the longer our current obsession with fascistic politicians is promoted and the more desperate it becomes for our people, the more likely the outcome here could be the same as it was at that gas station. No revolution in human history has ever been bloodless.
That said, an unimaginable amount of blood has been spilled throughout the history of this country to enable every United States citizen to pontificate their opinions on thus and so. Some of it is thoughtful, instructive and insightful; some of it is sophomoric and idealistic - still others are vulgar and regressive... but all of it has been bought and paid for by some citizen-soldier, airman, marine or sailor's blood. The fact remains that until the day arrives when Americans come to grip with the realization that the politicians who manage to get elected under false pretenses, the “justice” system, the banks, the insurance companies and the lobbyists who pander for all of them are playing us all for fools to perpetuate international conflicts so that a few shadow financial emperors can amplify their already- unbelievable wealth, the very principles for which the men and women who gave their last full measure will continue to be at grave risk of having been sacrificed for nothing. Just like our 21st century version of Christmas, those graves in military cemeteries have become shallow monuments to the perpetuation of unchecked capitalism instead of what they truly represent.
My flight from D.C. to San Francisco was smooth and uneventful that Christmas day so long ago, and my brother greeted me in the terminal as I got off the aircraft. With that, my new life in the Bay Area began with the best Yuletide present I could have ever received back then after 5 hours in the air and with much introspection: a renewed deep appreciation for life, sacrifice and compassion in a new place.
Happy holidays, everyone… try to remember those that helped make this day even possible. And for the love of all that’s good in this troubled, weary world, don’t ever forget to vote against fascism.
(Semper fi, Tommy. Your voice, your chops and your courage are not forgotten. May you not have died in vain.)