Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
There are iconic images of World War II. The Marines raising the flag on Mt. Suribachi while the battle for Iwo Jima continues to rage on. The devastated American fleet at Pearl Harbor after the Japanese attack on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. And perhaps the most ominous, the mushroom cloud forming over Hiroshima in a photograph taken by George Caron, the tail gunner on the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the bomb.
I prefer other images, ones that depicted the good in American GIs and Marines throughout the war. There is a poignant photograph of a grizzled American Marine passing a chocolate bar to a little boy on the island of Tinian, through a barbed-wire fence. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of other photographs of American soldiers feeding starving children in Belgium, France, Italy, and Germany. Often giving up their own rations to help a child in need.
That’s my America.
Finley Peter Dunne, a satirical American writer who was compared favorably with Mark Twain in the first third of the 20th century, shared this gem: “Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” Amen.
We live in an era of unparalleled corporate greed, of equally blatant corruption at the highest levels of government, and a general sneer from our elected officials for the needs of the people who put them in office.
Americans are a strange people. On the one hand, we can literally give someone down on their luck the shirt off our collective backs, and without blinking an eye, can support fat cat politicians as they rape and pillage the public treasury for their own benefit.
How many times do you donate to a cause? Whether it’s a child in need, a family who has lost their home, or some community member battling a dread disease, Americans, especially small-town Americans like everyone we know around her, rally to the cause.
But in the same instant, these same people will vote blindly for politicians who care little if at all about the needs of their constituents.
The defining issue between left and right politicians for many people is the pro-life/pro-choice debate.
The problem is that so many “pro-life” believers aren’t really interested in a child’s welfare; they’re not pro-life, they’re pro-fetus.
No one I’ve ever met thinks abortion is a viable method of birth control. Yet, the same people who disparage sex education, the free distribution of condoms, and do everything in their power to ban abortions, refuse to support the child after they’re born.
How is that supposed to work?
I used to support the death penalty and still do in cases where a pervert molests a child or traffics underage children. Yep, plop, right behind the ear. But for capital crimes, it now costs so much in legal fees and other associated costs to navigate a murderer through the system that it just doesn’t make sense.
As of 2010, the cost of executing a capital criminal was 37 times the cost of imprisoning them for life without parole.
A few things that the public shouldn’t pay for out of our taxes. One is private, for-profit prisons.
The USA once held the top position in per-capita prison population. We’ve recently dropped to fifth behind El Salvador, Cuba, Rwanda, and Turkmenistan. Don’t fret, we’re still number one in total number of imprisoned people, with 1.83 million Americans behind bars. The Chinese, with five times our population, are second at 1.7 million.
Something to be proud of? Not really, America changed from rehabilitating to punishing criminals four decades ago, and now the recidivism rate is at an all-time high. Equally, not something to be proud of.
The disparity between rich and poor in the United States is also at an all-time high. Not just in terms of American History, but worldwide.
The French Revolution, with all those guillotines busily chopping off the heads of royals and the wealthy, was much more equitable than the disparity between the working class and the CEOs.
The average CEO in the United States makes 285 times the salary of an average worker in their organization. Do they really do that much? The answer is no, but they’re part of the new, landed gentry, the 21st-century aristocracy that rules the country by owning senators, representatives, and administration branch executives.
The American way was once something reserved for Superman, i.e., truth, justice, and the American way… but now it just means you’ve greased the skids with some copious cash, and, along with a nudge and a wink, you rule the world.
Disturbing, disparaging, and depressing, isn’t it? (I could add more Ds to the alliteration, but that’s enough)
The great-grandsons of those World War II GIs and Marines still feel the same way about kids in war-torn countries. Many veterans of our endless wars in the Middle East tell me of their connection to young Arab children.
As in Vietnam, those youngsters can still carry a grenade or an IEP and blow up a squad, but few do. Most are just frightened children trying to make sense of a world turned topsy-turvy around them.
We live in a land of individual charity and collective, corporate greed.
If you don’t agree, that’s fine, this is still the USA, at least for a while, everyone has a right to an opinion.
At Utah Beach in June 1944, a soldier, noticeably much older than the 19- and 20-year-old men storming the sand under heavy German machine gun fire, moved steadily forward with a cane in one hand and a 1911 .45 ACP in the other. It was Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the son of the Rough Riding, trust-busting hero of the opening years of the 20th century.
In the words of Creedence Clearwater Revival in “Senator’s Son”:
Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Hoo, they’re red, white and blue
And when the band plays “Hail to the chief”
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no senator’s son, son
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one, no
Only this time, it wasn’t a senator’s son, but a president. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. served in World War I and then again in World War II as a brigadier general. He was the only officer of his rank to go ashore in the first assault wave.
You won’t find this fervor in modern America.
President Franklin Roosevelt said it best, “War is young men dying and old men talking.”
Theodore Jr.’s distant cousin was almost right. Theodore died of a heart attack a few months later in France. He was too old for the rigors of war.
In a strange twist of fate, our young men are sent into battle by a five-time draft dodger in chief. It makes no sense.
Our young men deserve better than this. We deserve better than the economic disparity that only gets worse with each passing day.
“Let them eat cake?”