Note: This post was intended for Memorial Day, but then BLOGGER.com hiccupped and ATE the better part of it, @#*@! , and then life got in the way, as it usually does, to keep me from re-writing it until now. -JJR
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"...It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."
ATTRIBUTION: Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910), U.S. author. Following the Equator, ch. 20, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar,” (1897).

Just when I think I've read all the best Mark Twain aphorisms, I find another gem like the one above that I'd not yet heard that makes me laugh out loud. Ambrose Bierce is up there, too, with good American witticisms. H.L. Mencken goes without saying--he's proudly touted by anyone trying to sound clever, either from the Right or Left, sort of the way Tocqueville (Alexis de, 1805-1859.) is similarly touted by both the Left and Right, for different reasons. Neil Postman's writings are similarly ecumenical in this respect. I already mentioned Dorothy Parker below. There's so much more to Mark Twain than Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He's justifiably "The Lincoln of Our Literature", as Hemmingway put it, based solely on those achievements alone, but there's so much more, the best of Mark Twain, I think, that our English teachers either don't know about or are afraid to talk about or don't like to talk about. Mark Twain the anti-Imperialist, Mark Twain the Freethinker. Reminds me of the way Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy is whitewashed, mainstreamed, and made "harmless". Montgomery Bus Boycott, Civil Rights, nonviolent disobedience, I Have A Dream--all well and good. Opposition to the Vietnam War, "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world--my own government", etc, all that is quietly airbrushed out of the "official" histories. Three years ago on another Memorial Day weekend I was in Washington DC with my then wife to attend a wedding of an old High School friend. While there we did some moderate sight-seeing in Washington; we spent an inordinate amount of time at the Library of Congress, of course, but we also saw the other major government buildings and monuments. I had the courage to put on a tie-dyed
t-shirt with a big peace symbol on it and walk up to the Lincoln Memorial. I got a lot of ugly looks, angry stares from people, some of them veterans, some not. Some snide, sarcastic comments behind my back. But no one confronted me, or threatened to hit me, though my then wife said there were a few men who looked as if they wanted to.

The Lincoln Memorial has a gift shop off to one side, where you can purchase all manner of patriotic Americana mementos. I was most disturbed by a little flip out card thing that purported to tell a “short history of the Vietnam war” that was so deceptive, so one-sided, so…full of shit…that it was downright embarrassing. Even as a young Reaganite conservative in High School, all it took was this book:

Eyewitness History of the Vietnam War (Paperback) by George Esper
· Paperback
· Publisher: Ballantine Books; Reissue edition (September 12, 1986)
· Language: English
· ISBN: 0345342941
· Product Dimensions: 0.2 x 9.2 x 12.0 inches
· Shipping Weight: 1.95 pounds

…to turn me firmly against the war, and smash all the Reagan-era cinematic mythology that I had been exposed to growing up. I still remained a young conservative after reading the book, still stayed in NJROTC, but it was the first real crack in my conservative edifice. It helped me to develop what Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner call, echoing Hemmingway, my “bullshit detector”. Just in time, too, since Gulf War I was just around the corner. The second crack in my conservative edifice was George Bush senior openly embracing the Religious Right anti-abortion crowd.

But this little thing on sale at the Lincoln Memorial was nothing like Eyewitness History of the Vietnam War. It was a travesty; it was selective, deluded bullshit for sale, and I was appalled.

My then wife and I did treat the Lincoln Memorial with solemn respect. It is a very reverential place, after all. The text of Lincoln’s speeches (including the Gettysburg Address) rang with a special resonance that all Americans assembled under Lincoln’s stony gaze could take to heart (and spoke with a painful bitterness to those, like my wife and I, who were opposed to the ongoing carnage overseas).

If any Right-wing vet had confronted me over my shirt, I would have pointed to the ominous black granite wall that is the memorial for that conflict and stated simply that if it weren’t for hippies who dressed like I am dressed, and countless other ordinary Americans who opposed the war, there would be many more names on that wall over there, and the war could have dragged on into the 1980s…Ever hear of the 30 Years War? The 100 Years War? Vietnam was America’s longest war, and yet compared to what Europe has known, it was still a comparatively short conflict.

On a positive note, as I worked my way back down the National Mall, passing the Smithsonian and approaching Grand Central Station, I noticed more and more civilians reacting with smiles of approval and even some thumbs up and winks in reaction to my “Peace” shirt. My then wife and I cleared out of DC and headed for home on Memorial Day 2003 itself, before the Official Nationalistic Bombast had reached its orgiastic red-white-and-blue crescendo. I also wore a tie-died shirt with Peace necklace all day Memorial Day 2006 this year, too. Yes, we put out Old Glory, but I really wish we had a US “Peace” flag…or if I were more cynical, a US “corporate logos” flag. Truth in advertising right there, boy howdy.

My cousin has been accepted into the United States Naval Academy, and I for one have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, of course I’m proud of him. It’s not easy to get into USNA. You have to be very smart, and/or very well connected. I was neither in the Fall of 1989, which is why I attended Texas A&M and became an Aggie. My cousin, by contrast, is a diligent student, studies all the time, and is very career oriented. His daddy is an Air Force medical officer—a full-bird Colonel. I had just assumed my cousin would be going to the United States Air Force Academy, but the Air Force Academy is experiencing a lot of problems right now, not the least of which too many of the leading officers who run the place are virulently evangelical, fundamentalist Christians and the cadets who share their worldview have been accused of harassing Jewish, Atheist, even Catholic cadets, pressuring them to convert to their brand of fundamentalist Christianity. These are the folks that will one day have their finger on the BOMB, people—remember that. If that doesn’t scare the sh*t out of you…

Anyway, my cousin opted not to go to the United States Air Force Academy, and his Dad agreed, making vague mention of the Academy’s “current problems”, but not specifying what he meant. My cousin made everyone nervous when he expressed a strong interest in West Point. He was deeply impressed with the campus. It looked for a time like he really would attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY. But ultimately, he opted for the United States Naval Academy, which made me whoop for joy and breath a big sigh of relief. The Navy is still a dangerous job, no doubt, but not as directly dangerous as Army life (and Air Force bases get mortared and ambushed and sometimes strafed and bombed just like Army bases do in “hot” zones—in fact probably more often). I don’t think my cousin is crazy enough to go Jarhead out of USNA (Marine Corps Option), so I expect he will come out of there as a regular SWO…Surface Warfare Officer; though if he has the smarts to do it, there’s nothing wrong with being a Submariner, either…SSN or SSBN. Navy nuke school is not for people who suck at math, that’s for sure. Unfortunately for him, his vision isn’t perfect (thought it’s way better than mine was at his age), so he’ll never become a Naval Aviator nor a backseat Navigator.

As a graduation gift, I sent my cousin a gift card from Barnes and Noble, with a copy of Hermann Melville’s face on it. The author of Moby Dick is appropriate enough for a Navy midshipman I thought, though on second thought, I probably should have picked the gift card with Mark Twain’s visage.

I also sent him a personal letter of congratulations, and, more provocatively, a copy of Michael Parenti’s short but excellent recent book Superpatriotism, with an admonition to my cousin to just focus on being a plain ol’ good patriot, and avoid the temptations of “superpatriotism”, because he would be exposed to a lot of “superpatriots” at USNA, especially the Marine officers and Marine Corps option upperclassman cadets. I don’t know if the message will take, if he’ll even read the book or not. He’s going to have a busy, very grueling Plebe summer, and I wish him the best of luck. I want to get his mailing address so I can send him regular postcards from the “outside”, which, as I recall from my own Texas A&M Corps of Cadets days, is very gratifying, especially your freshman year. Letters from outside give you something else to think about, lift you up and out of your current woes, etc. I want to be there for him. I’ll send him jokey cards with images of women in bathing suits from Galveston, Texas images galore.
I know now that I must be feeling what my own older cousin on my dad’s side of the family must have felt when I first started at Texas A&M, headstrong committed to a career in the US Navy. My older cousin grew up and came of age in the 1970s, even studying briefly in the then Soviet Union for a year, learning Russian. As he grew older his youthful enthusiasm for Europe faded, and he went off in search of a more humane, more genuine American mode of life that was anti-imperialist, anti-authoritarian, backwoods, down-home, democratic, ecologically friendly, grass-roots, etc. He even became a Buddhist of sorts, along the way. We communicated amicably enough, but he knew (as I did not) that if I stuck to the military road, we would never be able to fully connect with each other. He was much relieved when I turned my back on the National Security State after having lost my Navy Scholarship, turning instead to more humanistic pursuits. We’ve kind of lost touch over the years since he remarried, and since my divorce, and I feel I’ve lost connection to a kindred spirit I could really use in days such as these.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good long weekend this past Memorial Day and spent it with family and friends, with a good backyard cookout and ice cold beer consumed responsibly, if that’s your preference.