Accidental Universe, Accidental Us

The explosion of that small meteor over Russia—injuring over a thousand people and terrifying many more thousands—when added to the close encounter with yet another planetary rock, this one an asteroid that barely (by a mere 17,000 miles) missed another earth hit that would’ve caused even more damage, left me pondering our place in the vast shooting gallery we call the Universe. It is not so much that we have to fear another cosmic collision like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. It is that these two encounters remind us just how accidental, how truly unpredictable everything about our existence appears to be. We are mere blips on the screen of cosmic time. Less than blips. We appear, “strut and fret our hour upon the stage,” as Macbeth put it, and then are heard no more. We try to attach some sort of significance to our every “decisive” move, but the truth seems to be that we are not even in charge of the tiniest aspects of our lives, much less the largest, and that even if we were, what even potentates do is so paltry in the grand scheme of things that it might as well have never happened.

            There was a zen master named Huang Po who one day, in answer to some questions from his audience, assured his students that if he told them the truth about their real condition, they could not stand up to it. Then he summed things up this way: “There is nothing on which to rely. That is what you have to realize. There is nothing at all on which to rely.” What he meant by that was what the meteors remind us: some flying piece of rock could strike the earth, for no reason whatsoever (though no doubt our religious leaders would try to link it to some deep sin of ours), and if it happened to hit in the right place—New York city, say, or Moscow or Beijing or New Delhi—it would wipe out half of our species and all its works. To ward off our terror of such things, we imagine we can rely on our government, or on our military, or on our scientists watching out for such things. But the truth is that there is nothing they or anyone else could do in such an event. We have no cosmic ray guns, no Super beings from the planet Krypton, who could divert the thing. Nothing on which to rely. And this works in those small everyday accidents that continually afflict us as well. Nothing lasts, nothing is secure even for a moment, especially us. In fact, modern physics tells us there isn’t a real, core “us” to begin with.

            And of course, the situation is even worse than that. It now appears that the very ingenious devices we humans have been busy erecting and inventing over the past few thousand years—safe food supplies, military and scientific weapons, fossil fuels to power our heat, our conveyances, our mastery over space and time, pesticides and herbicides to increase our crop yields—have been leading us down the garden path to disaster. We thought such manifestations of human genius were helping us, making us more secure. We thought they were leading more of us to healthier, happier lives—about which our cheerleaders take every opportunity to remind us. Instead, they have been leading us down a fool’s path, their very sources of power being the engine on which we are undermining the stability of the planet we’ve lived on for millions of years. The planet is warming chiefly due to our pollution. The oceans are dying chiefly due to our pollution. The very seeds of the plants we’ve relied on for a stable food supply are being distorted and chemicalized chiefly due to our tampering to make them “secure” from blight and disease and weeds and change. So everything we have done—thinking that this is our grand purpose in life, to save ourselves and other human beings and make all lives better—has been a mirage. Worse than a mirage. Not only has it not been a useful purpose, a salvational purpose, it has been, in the long run, a suicidal one. By trying to make ourselves last, we’re killing not only ourselves, but possibly all the life on the planet.

            So what we are compelled to say is that if so-called “gods” have our interest at heart, it is an interest that leads us to extinction—which, in that curious way things have of feeding back on themselves—might well be the best thing for the rest of creation and the planet itself.

            On the other hand, the cosmic events that we know about, or think we know about, make this idea of purpose a very dubious proposition. We are accidental creatures, seemingly without purpose. We, the human species, cannot be viewed any longer as some divinely-ordained (or cosmically-blessed) system of life that some wiser entity has directed all existence towards. I mean, why would any rational or benign or compassionate entity create a system, evolution, whose highest branch is occupied by a species like ours? A species that threatens, is in fact well on the way to destroying the whole system out of which it arose. The only logical way to look at this (and evolutionary theory sees it precisely this way) is as accident. Everything we are, everything we do is accidental, and can only be understood probabilistically. We have almost no say in who we are or how we have developed or what we choose to focus on or fight for. We are born with certain proclivities, like self-protection and reproduction, geared to certain environments over which we have no control. We are what we are born with added to where we happen to have been dropped and by whom. And we are swept along by the historic and economic and social and cosmic forces that pertain during our puny lifetimes. To think that we can help anyone or save anyone, much less ourselves, much less the planet, is based on sheer ignorance of the facts.

            That is, if we insist, as most humans do, of thinking of ourselves as self-directed, self-contained, human individuals responsible only to and for ourselves. On the other hand, if we could change our perspective only slightly; if we could come to understand that it is not the survival of our little selves that is the issue, but the survival of the whole grand scheme that includes life and non-life, every animal, vegetable, mineral, planet, sun, galaxy and all it relies upon, then perhaps something can be salvaged. Not saved. Salvaged. We might come to see that, as the aforementioned Huang Po put it, the jewel of salvation for which we have been turning the world upside down to find has been attached to our foreheads all along. We, the totality of what we really are, is always already salvaged. It relies not upon our feverish doing designed to secure us and our nearest and dearest from harm, but upon our simply accepting the risk of our connection to, our dependence upon, our identity with all that is.

Of course, this is not easy. Everything we’ve been taught, everything we think we have learned on our own militates against it. Almost every sensory and material gift we’ve been given, everything we think we have earned on our own, militates against it. And yet, something nourishes in us this counterintuitive truth. There is a jewel that belongs to all, a jewel which, given how we see things, must seem accidental. Preposterous and iniquitous. But which, in the end, may come to seem the most inevitable, and indeed the most salvational reality of all.

Lawrence DiStasi

Killing Citizens

In the early days of WWII, the U.S. government put immigrants from the enemy countries of Germany, Japan and Italy under various restrictions. The most severe of these restrictions were: forced evacuation from prohibited zones, and internment in camps set up on various Army bases. Neither of these penalties was imposed because of actions taken by any of those affected, for none had done anything. They were imposed because the government had ruled that the affected persons were “potentially dangerous.” In the evacuation cases, the suspicion was applied to the whole group, without individual adjudication of “dangerousness:” all enemy aliens were forced to leave homes or jobs in a given prohibited zone, usually along the coast. In the internment case, the suspicion was applied to specific individuals who had appeared, for some reason, on the government’s ‘custodial detention index’. The cause could be overheard statements favoring an enemy leader, or the enemy country, or simply an accusation by a friend, acquaintance, or rival. In most cases, the individual affected had no idea why he was considered “dangerous;” in fact, at hearings for internees, they were not allowed to know the charges against them, but only to “prove their innocence.” If they failed, which most did, the internment orders were final.

            Since 9/11, the United States has been engaged in yet another global war, and in this war, too, individuals are investigated and judged to be “terrorists” or “terrorist sympathizers,” even absent any actions they may take or have taken. The difference, now, is that if certain conditions are met, an individual—including an American citizen—can be killed. No trial. No jury. No chance for the person to question evidence or protest his innocence. He is simply made the target of a kill order—usually by drone—and he is eliminated.

            This process has been the subject of increasing scrutiny of late, and recently NBC news published a “white paper” from the Department of Justice outlining the reasons and conditions under which the Obama administration can assassinate a suspected terrorist. The assassination can be done in any country, at any time, whether or not the United States is at war with that country, and whether or not the individual is actually in the process of planning or mounting a terrorist operation against the United States. It should be said that this “white paper” or memo is not the official legal memo authorizing this procedure from the Office of Legal Counsel. The Obama administration refuses to release that. But it is an astonishing document nonetheless, being the administration’s attempt to justify the President’s power to order the murder of a suspected terrorist, even if he is a U.S. citizen, without judicial or any other kind of review. In other words, the right to due process granted every American (and indeed every resident of the United States, citizen or not, to know and be able to contest the charges against him) is simply not operative where this kill procedure is concerned. The President’s (or whoever is empowered to authorize such assassinations) word is final. And we know for certain that at least two American citizens—Anwar Awlaki, and then his 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman Awlaki—were indeed killed in two separate drone strikes in Yemen in September 2011. Of course, the administration has contended that Awlaki, a Muslim imam, has plotted and ordered attacks on the United States. But whether he has or has not done so (we have only the Administration’s word on this), he was simply targeted and killed by a drone strike. It is not clear whether his son, at age 16, was also considered to have been plotting, or was judged guilty by reason of genetic inheritance; no matter, he was eliminated as well.

            Glenn Greenwald, among others, has written about this new memo  titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qua’ida or an Associated Force”, and outlines several of the most egregious elements it contains (see Glenn Greenwald, “Chilling Legal Memo from Obama DOJ,” commondreams.org, 2/5/13) . They are mouth-dropping. The first is the fundamental violation of our core legal protections, due process and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The founding fathers made these a key part of the new nation’s legal system primarily to head off the arbitrary and absolute power wielded by traditional monarchs to eliminate their enemies by decree. “Off with their heads” is the popular way of putting this. No, said the framers of our Constitution; an offense must be proved in a court of law. But as Greenwald puts it, this constitutes the “core distortion under both Bush and Obama: equating government accusations of terrorism with proof of guilt.” This is precisely what happened in WWII to enemy aliens. They were presumed guilty unless and until they could prove their innocence. The same thing is happening now—only with the serious difference that the presumption of guilt now becomes a death sentence. Anyone accused by the U.S. government of terrorism is, ipso facto, a terrorist—no evidence or trial needed. And to be a terrorist means to be plotting against the United States, and therefore to be guilty and deserving of death—no questions asked.

            During World War II, the FBI had, over some years, produced a custodial detention list—a list it activated by arresting and interning thousands on that list right after Pearl Harbor. Today, however, it is the President and a few key aides who produce another list—this time a “kill list.” The New York Times has written about the presumed procedure for targeting a terrorist on this list for a lethal drone strike, and it is another chilling aspect of the process. Here is how Greenwald summarizes it:

            The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president - at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" - then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.

The president’s men claim that proof (however flimsy) of being a “senior leader of Al-Quaida” plotting an attack is a sufficient condition for execution. BUT as Greenwald points out, even this is not a necessary condition. The memo makes clear that assassinations may in fact be permitted “even when the target is not a senior Al-Quaida leader posing an imminent threat.” In short, in a process this secret, with no checks or balances whatever, the person exercising such arbitrary authority can call for the assassination of anyone he chooses. Death by presidential fiat allows for no review, either before or after the death sentence. It makes moot any question of whether the accused person was, in fact, an al-Quaida leader, whether, in fact, there was a chance of capturing rather than killing him, and whether, in fact, a specific attack was “imminent” (this notion of “imminence” is a prime justification for killing someone who has not actually committed a crime; it’s akin to the idea of “potentially dangerous”) at the time of the assassination. As Greenwald points out, “the U.S. routinely assassinates its targets not when they are engaged in or plotting attacks but when they are at home, with family members, riding in a car, at work, at funerals, rescuing other drone victims, etc.”

            There are more astonishing aspects to this new and radical power claimed by a president who campaigned on the idea that the Bush White House had violated constitutionally-sanctioned war powers both by its invasion of Iraq and by its indefinite detention of “enemy combatants” without trial at Guantanamo. But here we have Barack Obama, a putative “liberal,” arrogating to himself the supreme power of death-by-drone with no oversight whatever. It is one of the grim ironies of the current situation in which the United States finds itself: advertising itself as the great bastion of liberty and due process, and at the same time engaging in the same kinds of targeted assassinations long favored by tyrants of every stripe.

A warning given a few years ago by legal scholar David Cole, should be remembered here: “what we are willing to allow our government to do to immigrants creates precedents for how it treats citizens” (David Cole, “Enemy Aliens,” Stanford Law Review, V54, p959). In the present situation, the precedent to kill U.S. citizens has already been established in Yemen. How long it will take for this precedent to reach citizens in the United States is anyone’s guess. After that, it will only be a matter of time for the next question to arise: which of us will be next?

Lawrence DiStasi

            

Lincoln's Inauguration

I have been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning bio of Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals. It is the book on which the recently-released Spielberg film, Lincoln, is partly based.  But Spielberg’s film focuses only on the fight for the thirteenth Amendment; Goodwin’s book begins with Lincoln’s life as a boy, follows him as a young lawyer in Springfield Illinois, describes his part in forming the new Republican Party out of the wreckage of the old Whig party, charts his victorious campaign for the Republican nomination and presidency, and beyond. It includes the lives of Lincoln’s three rivals for the presidency, William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates, all of whom he tapped for important posts in his new administration: Seward as Secretary of State, Chase as Secretary of the Treasury and Bates as Attorney General. 

            More important, to me, Team of Rivals reminds one how hazardous was the situation facing the nation and Lincoln, even before he took office. Seven Southern states had seceded almost immediately after Lincoln was declared the winner in the November 1860 election. In the weeks thereafter, countless members of Congress from those southern states left their offices to take part in the rebellion. So did huge chunks of the officer corps, Robert E. Lee of Virginia being only the most conspicuous. Moreover, rumors were rife that a Southern plot existed to invade and seize Washington DC before Lincoln could even take office. Edwin Stanton, a member of then-president Buchanan’s cabinet (and later Lincoln’s Secretary of War), was convinced that the government was filled with traitors and spies, that “the army had been deployed in far-flung places,” with arms shifted from northern arsenals to various southern ones, and that if Maryland and Virginia could be induced to join the secession, the rebels would seize an essentially defenseless capital, including all the symbols of government, the treasuries, the army and navy, and assassinate the new President in the bargain. Stanton decided to become a spy within the lame-duck Buchanan government, initiating contacts with then-Senator Seward in late December of 1860 to neutralize potential traitors. Seward in response gave a major speech, without Lincoln’s consent, offering concessions to the South, rehearsing Lincoln’s resolutions calling for a constitutional amendment to prevent any future Congress from interfering with slavery where it already existed, and taking steps to enforce the hated Fugitive Slave Laws. He even promised additional conciliatory changes to the Constitution to mollify the southern secessionists. Of course, Seward’s speech had no effect whatever on the southern states, but it is an important indication of where both he and Lincoln stood regarding slavery.

            Goodwin reminds us that it was not slavery itself that Lincoln and Seward and most of their allies in the new party objected to. It was the extension of slavery into the newly-forming states of the west. Lincoln himself said a number of times that he had no intention whatever to interfere with slavery in the states where it already existed. He also insisted that he had no intention of trying to make slaves “equal” to whites, even in the free states, except in the most formal sense of being free of bondage. In fact, so unequal did Lincoln consider blacks, and so impossible did he consider the mixing of the races that he was a proponent of a plan to ship freed slaves back to their native countries in Africa (as well as one, about the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, to find a home for them in Central America). Both Lincoln and Seward calculated that if the Southern secessionists could be persuaded that they would be left alone to have their slaves and way of life, they would withdraw from the brink of civil war. They also had in mind that the border states like North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky could be persuaded to remain in the Union if  they saw how moderate and conciliatory the new Republican administration would be.

            Of course, they were wrong. The border states joined the rebellion, as did Virginia. Maryland came very close, with major riots breaking out by secessionists in Baltimore, even as Lincoln’s train was proceeding to Washington for his inauguration. So dangerous, indeed, was the inaugural situation that Seward and others prevailed on Lincoln to leave the main train transporting his wife and family members to Washington from Illinois, and board a separate train that would slip through Baltimore late at night. Lincoln did exactly that, and arrived safely.

            But the danger was far from over. Before a month was out, Lincoln had ordered the re-supply of Fort Sumter, which was bungled, the Confederate forces had attacked its fewer than one-hundred defenders there, and the outmanned and outgunned commander, Major Anderson, had surrendered. With the defection of Virginia to the Confederacy, the huge naval depot at Norfolk also fell to the rebels. Now it was a question of whether Washington DC itself could be defended. Maryland was wavering, and if it too joined the Confederates, the capital would be surrounded by Confederates. Though it did not come to that, it came close: a group of Baltimore delegates demanded that Union troops stay out of their entire state, and though Lincoln refused to comply, he could not prevent a mob of secessionists in Baltimore  from cutting all the telegraph wires in Baltimore and demolishing all the railroad bridges surrounding the city. Washington was at one stroke isolated from any communication with the north, and for the next week all Washington residents trembled behind barricaded doors and locked windows, able to see the campfires of the Confederate soldiers across the Potomac in Virginia, and knowing there was no army at hand to defend them.

            Fortunately, Abraham Lincoln maintained a calm exterior, though he hardly slept most of the time. This makes it all the more remarkable that when he finally gave his inauguration speech, it was filled with the stirring phrases for which he became known. On March 4, 1861, he continued to try to placate the South, as he had been advised to by Secretary of State Seward—who had made major revisions to Lincoln’s original draft. The new president repeated his promise not to “directly or indirectly interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists,” saying he had no lawful right or even inclination to do so. He pledged to uphold the Fugitive Slave provision of the Constitution requiring that “slaves shall be delivered upon claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” He also pledged not to invade or use force against the people of the South, though he was determined to defend government property—i.e. Fort Sumter. But he also made clear that there could be no separation of the American people from each other:

Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.

Then he ended with the beautiful verbal music of which he was uniquely capable, though the original phrasing had come from Seward:

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

            Goodwin titles her chapter with that magical phrase, ‘the mystic chords of memory.’ And though neither those “chords” of unity nor the “better angels of our nature” would emerge for many many years, if ever, especially where the pervasive racism of Americans is concerned, Lincoln was in the most fundamental sense correct: the Union would survive its most dangerous crisis, though it would take four years and the bloodiest war in American history to preserve it.

            Now, with yet another president offering a ringing inaugural address, the question, if not the details, is essentially the same: can the warring factions from different areas of this country ever come together on the strength of those “mystic chords of memory” to agree on a sane way out of our current crises? One would like to think so; but given the persistent lunacy and power of selfish interests that prevails, it’s going to take something like those ‘better angels,’ and more, to make it happen.  

Lawrence DiStasi

            

Esty: A Novel/Memoir

I’m happy to announce that my new book, Esty: A Novel/Memoir, is now ready for distribution and purchase. It is available from me directly—you can email me at lwdistasi@sbcglobal.net, for mailing and payment instructions; or you can send a check for $16.95 plus CA tax (if relevant) and $3.50 shipping & handling, to Lawrence DiStasi, P.O. Box 533, Bolinas, CA 94924—or on Amazon.com (be sure to key in the full title).

            I should explain a bit about the title (“Esty” was my grandmother’s nickname, short for Ezsther, which was her given name). I call the book a “novel/memoir” because in the manuscript my mother gave me near the end of her life, she began by writing a novel about her mother (Esty) and her romance with a nobleman for whom her parents worked, but then before too long drifted into a memoir about her own life: her birth in Hungary; the family’s ordeal during World War I; her 1920 emigration, with her mother and sister, to America to follow her father, who had left before she was born; her growing up in both Indianapolis and Brooklyn; and her own forbidden romance with my Italian-born father. It is the latter that provides the juice of the story, and the impetus for her attempt to remake herself. My contribution, in commentary, filling in episodes of her later life, and creating an imaginary dialogue between her and me, also partakes of both memoir and fiction. Hence, a “novel/memoir.”

            Rather than try to convince you of its merit, I’ll let a few others speak for me. Poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan, on the back cover, called Esty

“brilliant..a gripping family saga, an exploration of DiStasi’s past and heritage that is so fascinating and layered it is difficult to put down…This is a beautifully-nuanced book that is not to be missed.”

My blogging colleague George Giacoppe called Esty

            “a masterful treatment of a delicate set of issues…Normally an epilogue is space-filling gas, but Esty is an exception. The edgy discussion of the family history is an absolutely delightful treatment that adds to the mystery and the conflict…”

Historian and feminist scholar Lucia Birnbaum writes, “I’m about half way through and stunned by your perceptions…not to speak of your writing.”  Then there’s what I wrote to describe the book for my fundraising site:

“Esty is not just a family saga, though it is that. It’s also a rare collaboration based on an actual-not-imagined manuscript, and an observer’s eye that simultaneously accepts and questions and deepens the story it is telling. The rich tapestry that results gives us something like a postmodern origin myth. It is both innocent and self-conscious; both a mother’s attempt to revise her patriarchally abusive roots, and a son’s attempt to verify them; both a story of immigration, and a drama of call and response that generates a triple love story touching on female rebellion, the search for identity, and the yearning for liberation.”

Finally, about the cover (above). The image was taken in Hungary and depicts Esty with my mother at about age two, clinging to her mother’s hand. The full photo, from about 1916, can be found inside the book, along with several others. I’m hoping it makes you curious enough to read the whole thing (see ordering information above.)

Lawrence DiStasi

Leave No Soldier Behind

The following blog is written by my colleague, George Giacoppe (see link on this page). I thought it important to post here. 

Ah, for rhetoric to meet the truth

Of all we were told in our youth

Where black was so black

That we longed to attack

And white was so white

That we joined for the fight

Because we were the same

Seeking Justice and never fame

Shot on the field of strife

Some lost blood or life

While others lost touch with the world

Their colors forever furled

Invisible wounds so hard to find

In the soldiers we leave behind

           

Shortly before the recent holidays, I happened upon a gripping scene as I popped into a nearby Stater Brothers supermarket.  I saw this moving shadow of a man in a Vietnam War hat and a thin dirty jacket.  He was emaciated and frail and literally shaking in the wind.  We spoke briefly about Vietnam and I learned that he was riding shotgun on escort convoys leaving Da Nang in 1969.  I told him that my year was 1967-1968 and that I was further south in the Mekong Delta; gave him a dollar and went back to my car with this stark reality engraved in my mind:  we left this soldier behind.  The average wait for VA services is 13 months.  If on his own, this veteran will be dead in 13 months.  I went home feeling a little empty and guilty about the vagaries of fate.  That moment, I found a waterproof bag and loaded it with clean socks a heavy woolen sweater, T-shirts, sundry toilet articles and a flashlight.  Returning to the supermarket, I looked for the soldier.  He was gone.  I kept the bag in the car and returned to Stater Brothers almost daily over the next couple weeks.  My description must have been pretty good, because my wife Louise spotted him outside a nearby CVS on one of those days.  As she sometimes does, she ordered him to stay put and said that I was looking for him.  That day, I had bought orange juice and one banana.  The old soldier needed a ride home.  We gladly assisted.   We put his walker in the trunk and left him at home with the bag of goodies now enhanced with orange juice and one banana.  John’s wife Diana met us and explained that John had Agent Orange induced Parkinson’s and had PTSD as well as Alzheimer’s.  We promised to return.

On the next day, we did return with food and some additional clothing we bought from a nearby thrift store.  We were treated as warmly as cherished family.  This provided enough food for Christmas.  After another week, we returned with additional food and were invited in, but John was nowhere to be seen.  Diana explained that John often wandered, and that is why she wrote a note for him to carry in his wallet.  He had shown me that note with his address when we drove him home.  There was no money, just a note from his wife so that when lost, he could be returned to that “home.”  Diana had confided that they pay $825 per month for this hovel with a space heater and that John’s disability payments had been reduced by $800 per month since he began receiving Social Security about a year earlier.  This leaves the couple with about $200 per month for the luxuries of food and hygiene.  They now owe the VA $15,000 for ‘overpayment’ as a result of getting Social Security.  Nice touch.  Diana also commented that they hated to use the kitchen stove since it gave them shocks when they touched it.  When Louise and I entered that home, we were stunned to find a third world corner of Riverside, California.  Words fail to describe the chaos, grease and grime of this tiny fire-trap.  Dante came close:  “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”  Our nation left John and now Diana in the hell of no hope.

My clue to hope abandoned came when I told Diana that she had to solve the administrative problems one at a time.  To get long-term help, she needs her former husband’s death certificate from San Bernadino County.  They need proof of common-law status after living together for 20 years.  They need to get John’s divorce papers and his DD 214 (proof of service).  This stern advice brought a tear to her eye.  Clearly, navigating the tortuous paths of administration is not for the timid but I showed my inexperience as an advisor to the afflicted.  Oops, John and Diana don’t think like MBAs.

Why cannot the VA get the money to carry out its mission?  The one word answer is “politics.”  Will the current ideological House of Representatives allocate sufficient money for the invisible constituency of quiet disabled veterans when it would not willingly allocate money for very visible victims of Super-Storm Sandy?  An organization has been working this legal issue for about five years and only this month will learn whether the Supreme Court will hear the case referred by the 9^th Federal District Court.  Veterans United for Truth has been joined by several additional veterans groups in this effort to force the government to recognize a forgotten cost of war, the human cost.   Will this make a difference when we fought two wars without putting either the Afghan War or the 2^nd Iraq War on our national budget?  Ironically, the folks who cheered lustily for those two wars when VP Cheney stated “Deficits don’t matter” have suddenly gotten religion and want to reduce the deficit on the backs of the same people who fought the wars instead of those who gained power from the policy.  As we face language such as “entitlements,” the words of a recent presidential candidate scream in our ears.  These are the 47%, even if they fell into this pit through no fault of their own.  Now I hear “volunteers” used as a weapon against soldiers with traumatic brain injury and even less visible PTSD.  “They volunteered for this duty, why should all Americans pay for it?”  Subsidies to corporation-people are good.  Entitlements to breathing people are bad.  Oh, to be treated as a corporation-person and freed from the bonds of death.

The national answer is simple, really.  We are all in this together and if we cannot carry the injured a little further and if we cannot rehabilitate them and if we cannot respect them, then what kind of country are we?  The image of commonwealth where we share in the pain as well as the rewards to the greater good is fading.  It is being replaced with a cannibalistic frenzy where we feed on the less able and those whom we feel are holding us back.  We are leaving our soldiers behind.  What happened to compassionate conservatives?  What happened to “Christian virtue?”  What happened to fair play?  What happened to our safety net?  Where did our humanity go?  We have glorified our corporations with the trappings of humans where money is free speech and unlimited political force, but we cannot respect those real people who have given fully and freely until they can give no more and need to be “takers” in our commonwealth.  The scales tip still further, because we enshrine the practice of subsidies for those who have already been rewarded richly through the highest corporate profits on record.

John and Diana are real and they are in pain and they need help.  It is not a mystery and predestination itself is bunk, but especially when there is a fat thumb on the scales of justice that decide the fate of our least fortunate whether it is due to an enemy bullet or a political rebuff.  Let us review the real costs of war and, as a minimum, never enter another one without counting the soldiers we leave behind both during and after the war.  The costs are real and we need to budget for wars and we need to budget for the record suicides and the thousands of torn families and the physical and emotional pain inflicted on those who fight the good fight and sometimes lose.

It takes trained experts to help the helpless.  The Lord knows that I was trained as a soldier and not a social worker.  It takes experts to look under the right bridges to find the homeless and a trained eye to see the invisible wounds, but it takes us all to agree to help.  It takes us all to change our priorities to include helping the ones we have left behind.

Peace,

George Giacoppe