Needs of Many

Needs of the Many

As of 10:00 AM (EDT) this 20^th day of April in the year of our Lord 2020, John Hopkins University has officially notched 40,683 human deaths attributed to the Novel Covid-19 virus since the first known death on February 29^th. Eleven out of every 100,000 Americans having died in 52 days – a number which certainly is in same league with scourges of my childhood.

I do not pretend to know the needs of the many.

I do not propose to know any answers, or if they exist.

I do know my own needs have not been particularly impaired by staying home. It is what I’ve been doing for some time. Uncomfortably, I seem to have become too comfortable with quarantine.

Based solely on observations of an old man in an easy chair who has absolutely no voice in the matter, this is what I observe concerning events happening beyond my personal stay-at-home need:

First, to quote Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Or, as Al Jolson more simply put it in 1927 movie The Jazz Singer, “you ain’t heard nothing yet”.

     It is going to get worse,

     it will never be the “same”,

     ‘get used to it’.

Second, we are where we are – and are going where we are going – primarily because of a dearth of national leadership. In every human crises there has arisen a leader who takes command with coherence and credibility whom others therefore follow, even if only for the moment. Such a leader gives clear direction; delegates line authority; and, in victory or defeat, accepts responsibility. If such a leader does not arise, only mayhem prevails.

     No such national leader has arisen,

     or at least none has been allowed to arise.

Third, I observe a generation which has never had to sacrifice all for the good of the many. Yes, we owe a great deal to the few who sacrifice themselves when thrown unprepared into the fight; and to the many of good heart who have done what they could. But tragedy, if it passes our way at all, touches only the few it touches.

     My parent’s generation understood what it meant to sacrifice the one for the needs of the many: Although basically a pacifist, my father left his family and joined unknowable millions in fighting World War II. My brother bought War Bonds and made ‘bandages’ to help the War effort. My mother took in boarders and lived on ration stamps. Because that long-gone generation sacrificed the few, the many became “great”.

     We born after WWII have no such universally shared calamity which called forth national sacrifice. For us personal sacrifice has most often been for the benefit of the few, and largely transitory. And, solely in this observation, we have become largely a people unprepared to sacrifice the needs of the few, of the one, for the needs of the many.

God Save the United States of America

Ice Cream Politics

Brazil Times Blog of July 13, 2010 (edited for relevance as of April 17, 2020)

Ice Cream Politics

“All politics is local” -- former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill

Our favorite son-in-law and now official candidate for Congress Steven Skelton will be proud of us. Saturday night [July 10, 2010] we went to something billed as a “Stars and Stripes Ice Cream Social”. The announced purpose of which was to promote interest in the political process by conservative church folk such as we. We don’t go to meetings all that much, not being social gadflies as is our son-in-law; nor nearly as interested in the political process. The result being I’m not sure what I expected, but this probably wasn’t what I expected. The main reason I went was the free ice cream.

Two candidates for State Representative were in attendance. Personally I’ve always had a kind of awe of anyone who serves in state office: There’s not a lot of money, little glory, and you have to stay around for a very long time to gain any power.

There was the mandatory Q & A session. The questions were mostly what you’d expect from a conservative, church-going audience: Schools, taxes, right to life type things. The answers proffered indicated no great ideological chasm.

The question which seemed most germane to myself was how the current anti-incumbent atmosphere in the nation will affect local and state elections? This is an issue to which I have given a bit of conservative political process thought.

The quandary is that we really don’t want politicians, so there is always the urge to throw the bums out. On the other hand, there are certain things we want our representatives to accomplish, which require they learn to be political animals. The result being we elect some well-meaning, qualified person to a given office; then by the time they have actually figured out how to play the game, we’re looking around to replace them because they’re “politicians”.

What I propose is a new political movement which I’ve named [insert fanfare here] The Ice Cream Party

Our platform would be “Two-Twenty-Plus”.

2 Nobody could serve in any one political office more than two terms. It usually takes the first term to learn the rules of engagement, by the second they become a dreaded “politician”. After two terms, having gotten their political footing, they have developed something of a “fiefdom” mentality.

20 Nobody can serve in elected office for more than 20 years. There has got to be a point in everyone’s life when they have done their bit for God, Country, and the American way. At some point there must be something just as worthy that intelligent, well-qualified folks can do with one’s life beneficial to their fellow man.

PLUS No political meeting could be held without free ice cream.

Pesdential Leadeship

PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP

“Warfare creates neither leadership nor cowards, it simply reveals them”

(source unknown)

My obsession with history, as with most things, began with my father. My interest in ‘leadership’ dates back to my most basic of Air Force basic training. In pursuit of these interests I have observed and studied both successes and failures of leadership on many levels of authority and in varieties of situations. These are some observations regarding Presidential leadership in other times of national and worldwide cataclysm.

Following the disastrous 1961 failure known as the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, President John Kennedy quoted: “Victory has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan”. He had inherited the invasion plan from the prior administration, and it was presented to him as a fait accompli by “experts”. As President of the United States of America Kennedy accepted responsibility for failure. This is what Presidential leadership looks like.

In October 1962 President Kennedy faced the greatest crisis in human history, the Cuban Missile crisis, which threatened 30-million first-wave deaths. Among other acts of leadership he personally spoke to the Captain of the ship at sea whose guns would fire the first salvos of World War III. The President of the United States personally ordered the Captain he was not to fire except on the direct voice command of the President. If western civilization was to end then and there, the President would accept responsibility. This is what Presidential leadership looks like.

In this observation, if President Kennedy had not had the courage and integrity to accept responsibility for the Bay of Pigs, the nation might not have united behind him in our hour of greatest crises.