The Aspirations of Patriotism

The latest blog entry of Washington’s blog has to do with how ignorant many Americans are of the meaning of the Fourth of July.  The least of the errors was was “It’s when we WON our independence”.  Someone else said “When we won our independence from the South” and there were a lot of other crazier answers.  Not to be sexist of anything but the majority who gave really stupid answers were girls.  They were interviewing at perhaps a Southern California beach on a pier.   John Kennedy in speaking of the Communists said how secretive they were and how their whole goal was deprive us of our liberty.  There were ex Marines saying that they swore an oath to the constitution and not these secretive relations with corporations and “the system”.  I think I can recite the oath of office.  It goes something like this.  “Do you promise to well and faithfully discharge the office on which you are about to enter?  Do you promise to support and defend the constitution against all enemies – foreign and domestic, and bear true faith and allegence to the same?  And do you take this oath without reservation or purpose of evasion?  Jim Webb went on at length about how both the military and law enforcement were about “command structure” and adherence to “the mission” while maintaining fairness.  The speech soon proved too dry for me to listen to.   Many military schools see their mission as one to “weed out the weak”.  Perhaps.  But the overall thrust of this second blogger video was to resist and not to fight for “the system”.   But of course it was an RT production, so they’d be a little biased.

On C-Span just now there is this George Cobol guy who led a fortuitous life as a spy.  He started off in the University of Iowa and then went to Moscow and got educated some more and then was sent to the US as a spy.  The US picked him out from your usual draftee grunt sent to the front, and gave him more education and sent him to Oakridge and then to Dayton where he had access to the most guarded of atomic secrets.  But they say he only sped up the process of Russia getting the A Bomb by eighteen months.  He went to more college in Manhattan and then was called back to Moscow in 1948 and Russia had the Atomic Bomb in 1949.  By the way he was a Jew, and Stalin had a program to voluntarily send Jews to Siberia as kind of a Jewish homeland.  And there were other turncoat spies that fed Russia other atomic secrets.

Chris Matthews is turning right wing now.  They are “coaching” the Republican party on their best way to win.  They say they can win by taking down Donald Trump.  They don’t like people like Ted Cruise or Carley Feurina or Bill O Riley defending Trump for his remarks on immigration.  Bush attacked Trump in Spanish.  Matthews would say “Oh these aren’t the real Republicans; these are the extremist who don’t represent the view of the average conservative, which is of course calm, reasoned, and non threatening.  We democrats need to portray the Republicans as the opposite of all these things.  Trump is now in second place behind Jeb Bush at the lofty figure of 17 percent.  But they are all saying “It’s a foregone conclusion that Trump will flame out because three out of four republicans report to pollsters that they will never vote for him.   Also Chris Matthews is talking about the threats of Al Qaeda and ISIS for this Fourth of July saying that security is being beefed up everywhere, including here in Los Angeles where a lot of events are planned.  At the same time Matthews is leading the cheer that “Of course Bernie Sanders isn’t a real candidate.  Nobody can imagine Bernie Sanders as commander and chief answering that 3 AM phone call.   Of course “everybody” said the same thing about Ronald Reagan in 1980 and we know how that turned out.  There was also a segment saying that “Aren’t we glad Obama didn’t go for the sort of economic austerity they had in England”.   It would seem that Chris Matthews is pro “comfortable” candidates that don’t rock the boat.  I bet there is a higher percentage of Republicans that wouldn’t consider voting for a third Bush in the White House as opposed to not having Donald Trump in the White House.   David Corn has been down to Cuba and claims Cubans like Americans.  Chris Matthews is skeptical at this optimism. Now there is cultural shock- - when the people of Cuba learn about things like I phones. 

They opened the dining room doors at eight after eleven, which is rather early.  But there are no illusions about lunch starting either early or on time.  In fact it was ages before we got served so much at one thing.  I got a diet Pepsi- - which means it didn’t profit to drink it quickly because my sugar level wouldn’t go up anyhow.   There was all the usual patriotic stuff with veterans standing up and giving speeches.  Sarah places great value in “Out troops- defending our liberty”.   But the thing is in the past seventy years- - the meaningfulness of the wars the United States has gone almost on a progressive bee line downward.  From WW III, to Korea, to Viet Nam, to Gulf War I, to Afghanistan, to Iraq 2003 - - each time the cause for war was weaker than the one before, and also the amount of good the war did us also dropped.  At least with Vietnam we were able to rescue a lot of Vietnamese who were looking for and obtained freedom.  You sure can’t say that about Iraq.  All of the usual kirioke songs were sung.  Sarah didn’t have it plugged into the big speaker.  Augustine did that, and also stopped the humming.  Bruce sang Adelvise- - but his dedications are getting so long he’s missing a lot of the song.  Then after he was done he stood there silently breathing into the microphone.  Marcia sand two duets.  We had boneless grilled breast filet of chicken, with improved Spanish rice, and a good green salad with onions, grapes and tomatoes.  We skipped the soup.  We didn’t get served till after we’d been sitting there forty minutes- -or ten to twelve.   After we were done we had to wait another good fifteen minutes for dessert, which consisted of coconut ice cream and white cake with blue icing.  I left at the first opportunity right after twelve thirty.  I was surprised at heck that Winbelton was not on today.  They must have canceled their contract with NBC or something.  Sonny has this theory that it’s his fault because Will Horton wasn’t ready to get married and settle down.  Interesting point.

As far back as August of 2008 I refer to Obama’s campaign as a “plastic, sell-out campaign” and compare him to the losing Dukakis campaign.  Any time a posting lists questions about Christian credibility, it’s worth reading.  I posted a blog tonight.  I didn’t want to put “The right wing hate machine” on the title heading because I didn’t want to be inflamitory.    The difference is back in the sixties, political extremism was portrayed by the media as just that- - right wing Extremism.  Barry Goldwater wasn't as extreme as the "main stream" republicans of today, and yet the media portrayed him as a kook.  Liberals were routinely portrayed as the good guys by the media.  When I wrote that blurb about Obama doing a "plastic, sell-out campaign" there were people like Thom Hartman who were saying "Well, Clinton campaigned to the left and won with what he said as a liberal, but then he moved to the political center once he took office".  Somehow Hartman thought Obama would do just the opposite.  He was living in a fool's paradise.  I would only say that sometimes liberals, too, get caught up in their own rhetoric of optimism and somehow they never quite catch up to reality.  The quickest way to lose in any fight- - is not to fight to begin with.  Therefore Bernie Sanders comes out swinging, which is just what John Kennedy did during the 1960 campaign.