The mishandling of classified materials is a serious matter that transcends any political ideology. Persons who mishandle classified materials must be held accountable.
A plan to address the current classified materials mishandling:
-DOJ investigates Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence.
-Joe Biden and Mike Pence found guilty of mishandling classified material.
-Donald Trump found guilty of mishandling classified material and obstruction of justice.
-Joe Biden resigns as President of The United States.
-Kamala Harris grants pardons to Biden, Pence, and Trump contingent on them never running for public office again.
-Kamala Harris announces she will not run for President in 2024, her place in history being already secured.
-Democrats find a presidential candidate who is less than 65 years old.
-Republicans find a presidential candidate who is not a racist, pathological liar, or crook.
-The American people vote out the conspiracy theorists, wing nuts and cranks running the Republican party.
-The country moves past the hateful culture of the last six to eight years.
-Improved procedures for handling classified material established under the new administration.
Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million of the approximately nine million Jews across German-occupied Europe; around two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population. The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through labor in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.
As the Allies were closing in on Germany and German occupied territory, Nazi officials instituted evacuations from the camps – death marches. Prisoners were forced to run, poorly clothed, some without shoes, with minimal rations. Groups of prisoners were forced to follow the columns of misery with wagons picking up the dead and burying them.
One survivor relates, “We had to pick up the dead bodies and put them on the wagons. When the wagons were full, we had to bury them and then start picking up bodies again. I reach down to pick up the body to put it in the grave and the man called my name. He was from my town. I offered to help carry him. The SS man put his gun to my head and said we would both be buried. I buried him. I’ll never forget his face.” During these marches Jews died of starvation, frost and shooting when they lacked the strength to continue.
We know these years of mass killings as the Holocaust or The Shoah. The lessons we learned about the terror of hate and bigotry need to be relearned in every generation.
Unfortunately, a coordinated effort to erase the history and lessons of the Holocaust from our memory is gaining strength, fueled by hate, in our country.
The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center in Maitland, Florida is one place remembering and teaching the history of the nightmare of The Holocaust. The museum was founded by a survivor of the ‘Final Solution’, Tess Wise who died October 23 last year. She dedicated her life after escaping from a Nazi labor camp to fighting antisemitism and the ultimate consequences of hate.
The Holocaust is understood as being primarily the genocide of the Jews, but during the Holocaust era (1933–1945), systematic mass-killings of other population groups occurred. These included Roma (Gypsies), Poles, Ukrainians, Soviet civilians and prisoners of war, and other targeted populations. Smaller groups were also victims of deadly Nazi persecution, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Black Germans, disabled people, communists, and homosexuals.
The Museum is on the grounds of the the Jewish Academy of Orlando in Maitland, Florida, surrounded by security fencing and armed guards patrolling the property. These two facts themselves speak accusatorily to the hate gaining strength in our country.
I stopped at the Academy office to show my I.D. and was directed to the entrance of the museum where I was met by Jackie the volunteer hostess. During my ninety-minute stay I revisited the thought that two gentiles (myself and Jackie) were hanging out together in the Holocaust Museum. That thought struck me in an odd way. Both of us grew up in mostly white communities (she was adopted by an Army career family) raised on a Euro-perspective of history. Our understanding of the whole story of history began to dawn on us in our adult years creating, in the two of us, a strong desire to continue to educate people about the complete history of the human race.
Allowing the displays in the Holocaust Museum to wash over me was a painful reminder of the inhumanity of humankind toward humankind. Transporting into the photos causes my heart to cry out against the hate and bigotry that is being advanced by Florida’s governor and Republican legislation in the 21st century. Surrounded by the pain, hunger and suffering of the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s I want to end the same rhetoric and legislation today leading to similar pain, hunger and suffering.
We need to experience history with all its ugliness, so we do not travel down similar pathways today. As Elie Wiesel (a Holocaust survivor and author) prophetically uttered, “Whoever forgets, becomes the executioner’s accomplice.”
Life does not become better by eliminating that which we disagree with. Life becomes better when we live together with disagreements.
Life does not become better when we ban and burn books we don’t like. Life becomes better when we explore different understandings.
Peace doesn’t come with the elimination of other understandings, heritages, races, ethnicities, or choices. “Peace is an environment and a climate in which our best instincts are given expression.” (Tess Wise, Holocaust survivor and activist)
The action most harmful to humanity is the action that attempts to erase historical blemishes and broken bones.
There is much more to experience in the museum to increase the discomfort of experiencing The Holocaust. Discomfort is an important ingredient in the mix that moves us toward a more compassionate, accepting humanity.
The next blog continues my experience in the Holocaust Museum with a visit to Richard Johnson’s Weapons of Choice artwork.
See you next time.
(Much of the writing in this blog was taken from the displays in the museum. All the photos are displayed in the museum.)
Mom died today at Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community where she has ‘lived’ since her arrival in October 2007. For six to eight of those years she has not known who she was or who was in the room with her. My brother, Chuck and his wife Mary Jo have been the champions of caring for Mom during these years of constant decline in her mental faculties. Chuck and I said ‘good-bye’ to her many years ago recognizing that she no longer resides in her earthly vessel.
Dementia is the worst disease; stealing your personhood and leaving nothing but an empty shell needing to be cared for. It is a terrible disease.
Mom was a girl who lived a full life with church, family and friends. She played the piano, organ and cello all through school and her adult life. In her senior year in high school, her father uprooted her to a new school in the last month of classes. The music person in the new school made her the accompanist for the choir upon her audition.
Mom and Dad did a radio program in Kittanning where Dad preached, and Mom would accompany him when he sang. When she was not accompanying someone there were always more notes being played than were printed on the music. She was active in women’s groups and was elected president of a group in New Holland, PA. After Dad’s death she worked at a bank and became secretary in the guidance counselor’s office at the High School while serving as a church organist.
At the age of 59 she finally earned her bachelor’s degree in Professional Studies from Elizabethtown College.
After graduation she became a music therapist in the activities department of first The Brethren Home in Cross Keys, PA then at Country Meadows in York, PA. She was greeted as ‘Mom’ by the residents as she carried her keyboard around on her visitations.
She and her ‘baby brother Ed’ enjoyed taking trips together. The pleasant surprise was how the two directionally challenged siblings always found their way back to the starting point. They took road trips to visit their other sister Evelyn and flew to different destinations for some of Ed’s national church meetings. I especially remember the two of them visiting us in California where the two of them had the exciting experience of surviving their first earthquake.
Doris Gobrecht Heckman was a real person with loves, joys, sorrows, frustrations and talents
Mom was ninety-eight years old when she took her last breath.
We held a virtual vigil on one of Mom’s difficult days and shared photos and remembrances of our Mother. She is remembered as being somewhat eccentric. Seldom did you receive a straight answer to a question. Walking through the house she would sing ‘Racing with the Moon (pause) high above the midnight blue’ -just those words.
She did not like to cook but provided for her family of six on a limited budget. The meals my siblings remember most are: pork chops in a thick gravy, spaghetti noodles with corn kernels, torn bread in noodles and macaroni and cheese embedded with bits of hotdog. When the garden was producing, we feasted on a dish of boiled potatoes and green beans with a side of tomato slices. Corn on the cob was a favorite but the corn fritters made with leftover corn were not. The sisters often encouraged Chuck to eat the remaining corn to avoid having fritters the next day. Potato cakes made with left over mashed potatoes were a favorite but there were seldom enough mashed potato leftovers to create the favored dish.
Our favorite dessert was chocolate cake with Easy Penuche Icing (Betty Crocker). The icing was basically brown sugar and created a hard crust that broke off in pieces. My sisters have tried to recreate that icing with zero success.
She was a philosopher, ‘The first hundred years are the hardest.’ ‘I only have a kitchen because it came with the house.’
Doris seemed to exist on weak tea. Tea was her passion and she could make one tea bag last for about a week. I may be exaggerating a little. But one tea bag was enough for an entire pot of tea at Mom’s house. Linda credits tea with Mom’s physical longevity. Reading was a second passion resulting in several walls covered with built in bookshelves for her books and journals. She had to keep building bookshelves because it was a crime to throw away a book. Finally, she had a love affair with the Conewango Creek where she experienced good times as a child and again in her retirement years.
Her most comfortable moments in life were experienced sitting at a keyboard. Beginning as a nine-year-old she learned how to play the piano. Along her life journey she played the piano for soloists, (sister-in-law Barb gushes that Mom was the best accompanist she ever had) hymn sings, anyone willing to sing along and just for the heck of it. If people were around while she was playing she would look up and invite everyone, “Sing! Sing!” When we moved to Dayton, PA in my fifth year, we walked into an empty parsonage with a brand-new spinet piano sitting in the middle of the living room. There was always at least one piano in the house. Her expertise included the pipe organ which she played for congregations on and off until the dementia ate away that part of her brain.
Doris Gobrecht Heckman Born: October 6, 1924 Died: January 25, 2023
“Although I love flowers very much, I won’t see them when I’m gone. So in lieu of flowers: Buy a book of poetry written by someone still alive, sit outside with a cup of tea, a glass of wine, and read it out loud, or silently, by yourself, or to someone. Spend some time with a single flower. A rose maybe. Smell it, touch the petals. Really look at it. Drink a really nice bottle of wine with someone you love. Or, Champagne. And think of what John Maynard Keynes said, “My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne.” Or what Dom Perignon said when he first tasted the stuff: “Come quickly! I am tasting stars!” Take out a paint set and lay down some colours. Watch birds. Common sparrows are fine. Pigeons, too. Geese are nice. Robins.In lieu of flowers, walk in the trees and watch the light fall into it. Eat an apple, a really nice big one. I hope it’s crisp. Have a long soak in the bathtub with candles, maybe some rose petals. Sit on the front stoop and watch the clouds. Have a dish of strawberry ice cream in my name. Or chocolate. If it’s winter, have a cup of hot chocolate outside for me. If it’s summer, a big glass of ice water. If it’s autumn, collect some leaves and press them in a book you love. I’d like that. Sit and look out a window and write down what you see. Write some other things down. In lieu of flowers, I would wish for you to flower. I would wish for you to blossom, to open, to be beautiful. I would wish for you to align your soul, for a time, with flowers.”~ Shawna Lemay
The government can’t tell me what to do. The government must tell women what to do with medical issues.
Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment. Teachers are not allowed to teach about the harm hate speech causes to society.
My belief is protected by the First Amendment. Homosexuals of other religions cannot get married because my religion forbids it.
Public schools are indoctrinating my kids. Republican led schools systems ban books and install ‘Communications Staffers’ to censor class content.
We must reduce the federal debt. We must reduce taxes on wealthy people and corporations.
The Justice Department and FBI are unfairly harassing the former president who stole hundreds of classified documents, refused to return them, and ‘stored’ them in his resort. The Justice Department and FBI are too lenient on the current president who returned classified documents his team discovered and is cooperating with the Justice Department in finding other classified documents.
A black person kneeling during the playing of the National Anthem is unamerican. White people waving Confederate and Nazi flags is free speech.
The House Repubican led Judiciary Committee will investigate Joe Biden’s handling of classified material. Donald Trump’s handling of classified material is just a political witch hunt.
Hunter Biden is guilty of awful crimes. George Santos is innocent until proven guilty.
We want transparency in government. Closed door back room deals got Kevin McCarthy elected Speaker of the House.
In search of some chainsaw carvings, I ventured into Lake County once again. Lake county, like many of Florida’s counties, were dominated by racist sheriffs in the 20th century. The worst one in Lake County was Willis McCall who ruled for seven consecutive terms from 1944 to 1972.
He gained confessions from black prisoners after hours long interrogations which included being beaten with a leaded rubber hose. You can read more about McCall in “Devil in the Grove” by Gilbert King. We aren’t supposed to talk about this history in “free” Florida because it makes the Governor uncomfortable.
The quest on this day involved something much less disgusting. The target of the search was the sleepy little town of Umatilla. This community is just shy of four thousand people and is one of those places that woke up and wondered where the last fifty years had gone.
Just off the main drag across the street from the fire department is a well-kept location named Cadwell Park, a stop on the Lake County Citrus Label Tour.
Umatilla is one of those places when you ask direction people will tell you, “You can’t get there from here.” Exiting the turnpike my GPS stair stepped me to town with directions like, in two miles turn right on Britt Road followed by, in one point one mile turn left on Wolf Branch Road, then in three miles turn right on Round Lake Road. I don’t have those roads in order, but you get the idea. My favorite road was Thrill Hill.
When the GPS named it, I thought of Fats Domino singing, “For you were my thrill on Blueberry Hill”. But this was a different kind of thrill. The road was almost an Adam’s County, Pennsylvania rollercoaster hill. I loved it.
Arriving in town it was easy to find the park.
The best I can discover is the park is named after Gwinn Cadwell a part-owner of a convenience store chain and city clerk beginning in 1977. There is surprisingly little detail about the name’s sake of the park which is home to a community building,
public restrooms, two picnic shelters
basketball court, and playground. There is also a zip line sort of device
which I, of course, had to test. Wheee!
The attraction at Cadwell Park is the chainsaw carving in the old tree trunks. The artists who created these visual delights are exceptional at their craft. I don’t know if the two recognized did all the work but they are, Chad Gainey
and Mark Rice.
Smaller sculptures are attached to the community building and the restrooms instead of dead trees.
The bigger sculptures were on the trees where the tree roots held them in place.
These bits of art are amazing.
Umatilla sort of lays claim to being the gateway to The Ocala National Forest,
but they can only claim a ranger station outside of town and still sixteen miles from Silver Springs and the national forest. Umatilla is ultimately a little citrus country town tucked away quietly in Lake County.
The first bill Republicans passed in the new congress targets the IRS arm of law enforcement. The charade of being the law-and-order party is officially finished. We have seen evidence of the discarding of law-and-order in the party’s ignorance toward the assault on the capital and their disregard for the police who put their lives on the line to protect the very people opposed to lawful order. These glimpses of the party ideology have been confirmed as fact in the passage of the IRS reduction act.
My guess is these lawmakers (I use the term loosely) believe the rest of us are cheating on our taxes like they are. Really, a law-abiding citizen doesn’t have to worry about an IRS audit. A crook like George Santos doesn’t want law enforcement looking into his finances, however.
There also may be some attempt by these Republicans to protect the ultra-wealthy from audits to keep the money flowing into their campaign funds from these tax cheats.
Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric of these law breakers (I use that term confidently) trying to frighten you with talk of armed IRA agents coming to your house. These are the same Republicans who believe everyone should have a gun. The language of fear has zero basis in reality but these people will use every dirty trick available to avoid the law. IRS agents will not be armed but the cranks in congress do not want law enforcement to be armed and able to defend themselves from criminals with weapons.
To prove the party is opposed to law and order the republicans will be investigating law enforcement agencies involved in investigations of the terrorists who attacked the capital on January 6. The Republican party doesn’t want any indictments to come down from law enforcement because many of them (Paul Gosar, Jim Jordon, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Scott Perry, Lauren Boebert, and Kevin McCarthy to name a few) will be on the receiving end of those indictments. These representatives and others have no choice now but to stop the legal process from bringing criminal charges against them.
The military leadership will be the next target of these traitors as they try to make the uniformed services their own law enforcement mechanism.
People who voted for these folks put the crooks and traitors in charge of law enforcement to the detriment of the American people. Fortunately, the Senate and White House will prevent the injustice the Freedom Caucus wishes to inflict on America. However, we are looking at two years of a completely dysfunctional government that will cost Americans maybe billions of dollars before the next election. If people vote these same screwballs into office again American democracy will have seen its last days. Every action of the Freedom Party is an action that removes someone’s freedom, and this group will not quit until they hold dictatorial powers over American citizens. Our democracy continues to be under attack from the Freedom Caucus and its allies.
Readers do not continue to allow this dangerous collection of insurrectionists end democracy.
Another year is behind us which means I’m looking a birthday in the face, once again. The last time I shared birthday news was in 2020 when my birthday challenge was a ‘Tin Man Triathlon’ consisting of swimming, biking, and walking. This year the decision was to upgrade to a pentathlon adding basketball and weightlifting to the three triathlon events.
The five events include some connections to the number 74, which is my age this birthday. I wanted to go to a softball batting cage for one of the events, but those resources are in short supply in my area. Maybe I can find one to use next year.
At 7:30 in the morning, January third, I jumped on to ‘Purple Haze’, my bike, (I did survive the sixties twice) for a seventy-four-minute ride in the pleasant sixty-two-degree morning.
The ride went without incident, and I even found a previously unknown (to me) Bass Pet Resort and Spa at the end of Bass Road. The website says the place offers Dog daycare, training, grooming, and boarding. It was curiosity that found me riding through the resort parking lot. Riding past “Give Kids the World” I wondered where all the car traffic passing me was going. The only places I knew about farther south were a playground and the city dump. Turns out Bass Road makes a hard left just past the dump
and a quarter mile later ends in the resort parking lot.
It was a fun little excursion into a tiny bit of new territory. Returning home, I saw my neighbor taking a smoke break and asked him to snap my photo as documentation of the complete bike ride.
I explained what I was doing, and he inquired about my age. He expressed surprise that I was seventy-four. I didn’t ask if his surprise was due to me being older or younger than he thought I was. There wasn’t any reason to experience a negative with four more events to complete in the pentathlon.
I did some stretching, ate breakfast, and set out on the mile and three tenths walk around our neighborhood in 70 degrees under blue skies.
About halfway around the circle I must have ‘butt dialed’ my daughter because suddenly I was sharing a conversation with the two youngest grandchildren. I use the term conversation loosely because Facetime with those two is less talk and more of them making faces. But the time on the phone with the six- and seven-year-old was a lot of fun and is now a great moment to keep in my memory vault.
I was keeping close to my schedule when the weightlifting session began. The original plan in this event was to lift seventy-four more pounds than usual for each exercise. This idea was discarded when I couldn’t figure out how to use the dumbbells to lift seventy-four pounds. Instead, I lifted eighty extra pounds for each exercise. My thinking is this will be useful if I’m still lifting when I turn that age.
My weightlifting routine consists of the following exercises using dumbbells; Bench Press,
My usual practice is to complete ten reps with ten pounds, ten reps with fifteen pounds, ten reps with 20 pounds, repeat with fifteen- and ten-pounds finishing with five reps with the fifteen-pound dumbbells. This is the routine for Bench, both Curls, Shoulder Shrugs and Hinge. Only one dumbbell is used for the Triceps extension, Trunk Twist and Triceps Fly. The Upright Row is something I added in November, and I only do one rep of ten with the ten-pound weights.
Creating this pentathlon, I was surprised to learn that three days a week I lift 13,730 pounds (if I did the math correctly). Wow! How much weight does ‘The Rock’ lift? Guys like him must be lifting locomotives (210-220 tons which is 465,000-480,000 lbs) during their training routines.
Anyway, adding the eighty pounds did make a difference that I noticed for sure doing the Overhead Triceps Extension.
Billy Joel kept me company and the time went by almost as quickly as those evenings when the Piano Man ‘got us feeling alright.’ The good news is I didn’t hurt myself and moved on to basketball.
Setting up the hoop took a little effort after the weightlifting and shooting felt awkward. If I do this pentathlon again weightlifting will not be in front of basketball.
The goal was to score 74 points by twos. About six minutes (5min 58 sec) later I hit seventy-four. I do not know if this is a good time or not but the week before Donovan Mitchell scored seventy-one points in a Cavilers overtime victory against the Bulls and everyone is making a big deal about him doing that in about an hour.
I’ll bet he was tired because I was breathing pretty heavily after six minutes in the sunny seventy-six-degree street.
The pool event occurred after lunch under cloudy skies and a temperature of eighty-one degrees.
Time in the pool consisted of seventy-four minutes of water aerobics. The last time I shared a birthday challenge I was swimming. Since then, a pain developed in my chest while swimming and doing planks. I shared the discomfort with my doctor hoping to fix it. She gave me a medical term for the condition and told me to keep an eye on it. Well!? That was as helpful as if she said, “Put the lime in the coconut, and drink them both up, Put the lime in the coconut, and call me in the morning.” (Harry Nilsson)
So, I began keeping an eye on the sternum discomfort by stopping the activity when I notice the pain. This fits my motto of ‘no pain, no pain’ when I exercise. Unfortunately, this practice means I usually only swim between five and ten minutes at a time. Swimming has been enhanced with water aerobics consisting of High Knees, Jumping Jacks, Scissor Kicks (sitting and face down), Shadow Boxing, Horizontal Windmill, and walking (forward, backward, sideways). Walking always reminds me of the underwater attack scene in Pirates of the Caribbean.
I imagine I am joining the attack only I’m not a ‘non-human, almost fish’ creature. Oh, and my head is above water.
I started to cramp up a little bit at 60 minutes into the 74 minutes so stopped (no pain, no pain) walking and stuck to the upper body exercises until the alarm sounded the end of 74 minutes.
My support team steadfastly cheered me across the finish line.
A shower followed the pool, and I don’t remember anything after that.
During my military career I handled classified information on a regular basis. The rules associated with handling these documents were clear and not difficult to understand. In my Navy days it was my job to complete the corrections to classified material kept in a locked safe. I never took any of the material out of C.I.C (Combat Information Center) and placed the material back in the safe as soon as I made the corrections. It wasn’t a complicated process, just tedious (This was before computers back in the dark ages).
My time in the Air Force saw me exposed to classified material due to my position as adviser to commanders and a member of battle staff. I had a top-secret clearance because I sat in on intelligence briefings alongside Wing Commanders, Squadron Commanders and Senior Enlisted staff. We addressed these matters with utmost seriousness, leaving all electronics outside the briefing room. The protection of classified material was a serious matter in my military career, and I knew well enough to keep the information to myself.
People talk about transparency in government and military matters, but these people do not completely understand the need for nondisclosure of certain materials for the good of the country. There is much information in classified areas that cannot be disclosed without doing harm to operatives, systems, and national security. So, properly caring for and protecting classified material is paramount to the defense of America.
This brings me to the sorry circumstance of classified material being found in a locked cabinet in an office used by Joe Biden. I am disgusted that the classified material was removed from secure areas and deposited in a random office. I am disappointed in this lapse of security by the current president.
Some in the tin foil hat wearing crowd are ready to compare this breach of security with the debacle at Mar-a-lago spewing inflammatory rhetoric about the unfairness of the treatment of this president with the treatment of the last president. This is purely theatre meant to keep the lemmings angry.
At this point in time there is no comparison to this incident and the Mar-a-lago debacle. Let’s break it down.
At Mar-a-lago the president intentionally stole classified material from the White House and stored it among unclassified material and personal items in boxes accessible to anyone. His actions were ones of commission. He knowingly removed material owned by the American people from the people’s house and carried it to his own house.
What we know so far about the recent incident is that Biden was unaware that he had the documents. His was an act of omission. In other words, he did not intend to take the material and store it in the locked cabinet in his office. Now, I’m not excusing this behavior and he deserves to be investigated for his actions.
In Mar-a-lago the National Archives knew material was missing and requested it be returned. The requests were ignored and lies about the documents were repeated again and again until the FBI was sent in to retrieve the material.
There is no comparison to what happened in Biden’s office. The president’s own lawyers came across the material and immediately contacted the National Archives to turn the material over to the proper authorities. I hope there will be a follow-up search for any other documents in that office. The difference in responses by the former president and the current one is stark.
The former president acts like a mafia chief and bully. The current president acts like a president who understands his duty to the American people and is cooperating fully with law enforcement. The outcome of this incident will be much different than the outcome of the Mar-a-lago incident which hopefully culminates in formal charges against the former president.
Again, I do not excuse Joe Biden for his mishandling of classified information. He knows better. Again, Joe Biden is acting like a president while the last guy is acting like a spoiled teenager.
In my military career I would have been disciplined if I had mishandled classified material. I expect the same of the president of the United States.
During and following the debacle in the House of Representatives last week some folks attempted to depict the disaster as what democracy looks like. Do not believe a word of this distorted understanding of what democracy looks like. Democracy is a process by which the body politic strives to reach consensus, compromise, agreement, understanding, accommodation, a deal, or middle ground.
The twenty tinfoil hat wearing house Republicans were not engaged in any of those democratic pursuits. The loony twenty instead demanded, dictated, bullied, obstructed, and tyrannized the majority of the House.
If the House had looked like a democracy last week the majority would have cobbled together an agreement that would have given the House a week to do the people’s work instead of being stuck in the muck of obstructionism. Democracy would have seen the four hundred plus Republicans and Democrats come to an understanding, elect a House Speaker and go to work leaving the cranks to sit in their treehouse licking their wounds.
What we saw last week was an example of Minoritarianism, a political structure or process in which a minority group of a population has a certain degree of primacy in that entity’s decision making. And we saw the worst of Minoritarianism in action. The minority held the majority hostage (granted mostly because Kevin McCarthy is a weak shortsighted man) until their dictates were swallowed by the leader.
In a democracy getting your own way is not the goal. Arriving at the best decision for the country is the goal. Pretty much no one gets all they want in a democracy because that is impossible. However, last week we saw a group of cranks who demanded the majority bend to their every wish. That is not democracy. That is extortion, tyranny , bullying and obstruction.
Do not allow anyone to convince you that what we saw in the House of Representatives last week was democracy in action.
In the last blog, “Can We Talk”, I left you as we were approaching the WWII display in the Kissimmee Military Museum. The quest of any military museum becomes personal when we approach WWII and the conflicts that follow. From this point on a family connection makes the conflicts a bit more intimate for me because my family was involved in these historic moments. My Father joined the Army Air Corp after Pearl Harbor serving in the Pacific theater on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He made sure the P-38 Lightning’s four 50-caliber machine guns and 20-mm cannon worked the way they were meant to. His service in the fledgling Air Force is a connection to my career in the Air Force. Dad is sitting on the right in this class photo from 1945.
Moving along, the museum displays a cool model of a P-47 Thunderbolt
along with what looked like a Dauntless dive bomber.
Now, there was a job. The pilot found a target then dove as steep and fast as possible getting close enough to drop a bomb before pulling out and getting away as fast as possible while the enemy was shooting everything they had at the aircraft. At the battle of Midway only three of the 42 bombers survived in flyable condition. 99 crew members took off from their carriers in that battle with only three surviving. And Midway was a huge victory for the United States Navy that changed the direction of the war.
The Thunderbolt was the heaviest fighter of WWII when fully loaded. The airframe could be used as an escort fighter or a ground attack weapons platform when loaded with bombs and/or rockets. The plane had eight fifty caliber machine guns, four in each wing. This airframe was used until the end of the war.
I didn’t find any models of a P-38 Lightning but here is a photo of the airframe my Dad worked with.
Women are well represented in the museum with displays of SPARS (“Semper Paratus—Always Ready” the Coast Guard motto.) and nurses.
During WWII 350,000 women served in those units plus Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (later the Women’s Army Corps or WAC), the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), and the Women Accepted for Volunteer Military Services (WAVES).
The Navy display gave me a moment with my Father-in-law, Gerry, who was a Navy storekeeper stationed on Sumar in the Philippines during the assault on Japan. He is the one on the left. Maybe his Navy experience helped him to grow his own business after the war.
The ‘Four Chaplains’ display is very special to me. My maternal Grandfather was an Army chaplain who served aboard a troop transport in the Pacific and later as chaplain for a military hospital in the midwest. I believe he never quite recovered from the experiences in the hospital. I say this because in his ministry career after the war he was a terrific speaker and preacher but hated visiting hospitals. (Here he is in his American Legion Department Chaplain uniform.)
Maybe his service in the Chaplain Corp is why I became an Air Force Chaplain.
When the SS Dorchester sank in February 1943 the four chaplains gave their life jackets to troops who had none. Chaplain 1st lieutenants George L. Fox, Methodist, Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, Catholic priest Father John P. Washington, and Clark V. Poling, Reformed Church in America, went down with the ship. One of those chaplains could have been my grandfather.
More than 88,000 Harley-Davidson motorcycles were used in WWII for messengers and reconnaissance troops, especially in fast-moving formations.
The Marine Corps is represented by a tableau which connected to my Uncle, Bill Heckman. He was a part of all those island invasions in the Pacific Theater beginning with the Solomon Islands where 7,100 Americans died. He eventually threw down his gun and ran off the beach in one of the later assaults. In those days this was called ‘battle fatigue’. I believe he suffered the rest of his life from PTSD, but that generation just sucked it up and pretended to be okay. Maybe I get my desire for peace from my Uncle Bill.
Bill is the brother on the right. My Dad is on the left and the youngest brother, Chuck, is in the middle.
The Japanese and Germans were represented with their own sections in the museum as well.
An estimated 40,000,000 to 50,000,000 people died during World War II. Among the Allied powers, the U.S.S.R. suffered the greatest total number of dead: perhaps 18,000,000. WWII was supposed to end the world’s pain but we can’t seem to find that place where the lion and lamb lay down together.
The next American conflict occurred on the Korean Peninsula and killed 40,000 Americans and wounded 100,000. I was a baby during this conflict but the connection was made when I spent 1993 stationed in Kunsan Air Base on the Yellow Sea.
Eight chaplains died in the Korean War.
A Willys M38 Jeep, the descendant of the iconic MA 4X4 Jeep from WWII is on display in the Korean War section. You have to have a jeep in a military museum.
This is the Jeep model you see depicted in every episode of M.A.S.H.
Stepping into the Vietnam War display transported me back in time to the early seventies when I was part of the chaos. The mannequin wearing the ship’s communication system
brought back a ton of memories of my own time on that phone in C.I.C. (Combat Information Center).
My sister, Linda, has other memories of these years during her time in the Navy.
We both were on leave when this photo was taken in Berlin, PA.
It didn’t take the country long after we left Vietnam to switch our military focus from Asia to the Middle East, from the jungles to the desert and Operation Desert Storm followed closely by Operation Enduring Freedom.
Linda spent time in the desert during Operation Desert Storm and I found my way to Kuwait in the midst of Operation Enduring Freedom.
My sister and I are both retired military members.
The museum tour ended with a display of the current uniform configurations and a case of military chaplain’s paraphernalia familiar to me. Yes, the second half of the museum experience was very personal.