24 April 2007
Symbols
Boris Yeltsin and David Halberstam left us yesterday, both in their mid-seventies. They had not much in common, except the proximity of their age, and the undeniable fact that they were among the best and brightest in their respective lines of work. Boris was a swaggering giant on the public stage, and David was a consummate observer of the performers. Mr. Yeltsin had been reported in poor health, though with the decline in the average life expectancy in the former Soviet Union, it can be said he had a pretty good run.
During the period of Mr. Yeltsin's stewardship, a Russian male lost over three years, from 63.8 years in 1990 to 57.7 years in 1994. The trend has continued through the transition to Mr. Putin, but it is to be hoped that resurgent state revenues may reverse the decline, which has been attributed to surging rates of heart disease, suicide, homicide, and alcohol use.
Yeltsin had retired to private life, while Mr. Halberstam remained quite vigorous. He was killed at the scene of a traffic accident near Menlo Park, California, while en route to a speaking engagement. Press reports indicate a graduate student was driving. The American life expectancy for males is hovering around 73.6, and Mr. Halberstam exceeded it, barely, and what is tragic is that he had the reasonable prospects of another productive decade or two, and was working on a new project at the time of his passing.
It's all in the averages. The length of things can vary wildly. The Tampa Tribune reported last week that a popular phrase died abruptly, after only a year of life. Admiral “Fox” Fallon, the new commander of the U.S. Central Command, responsible for the execution of the wars in the Middle East, recently told his staff to stop using the term “The Long War,” to refer to the struggle against radical Islamic terrorists.
I think I can say that, being a private citizen, though exactly what to call the conflict has been problematic. It is about the symbolism of the words.
We all hated the first term for it, which was the “Global War on Terror.” It was first shortened to the unpalatable acronym “GWOT,” which evolved over time to “Gee-Wot.” The Administration is still fulminating over other terms, like “Islamo-fascism” and “the Salafist Extremist Network.”
Both of the latter terms are apparently offensive to Muslim Fascists and Salafists, so I don't know where we go from here. The White House still thinks this is a generational war, though the shelf life of generations, at least from an ideological perspective in Washington has been declining for years.
Part of the averaging in life expectancy comes from the passing of young people, like the nine US troops who perished in a suicide attack near Baquba, Iraq, late yesterday. The enhanced security drive being conducted in Baghdad has had some real success, but in order to accomplish it, reinforcements have been brought from other locations. Baquba, north of the capital, has been left thinly manned and the insurgents have been squeezed up there.
It is very much like a War on Toothpaste, which I propose as an alternate new term, since increased pressure in one place leads to spurts in another.
The military routinely reports the age of combat causalities, which averages around twenty, but not their faith, which is intentionally irrelevant to the effort on the Western side.
Things have changed, though. The Government-issue headstone was once spare in message, with only the cross or the Star of David permitted along with the name and key dates. That has evolved. Now the stones are becoming quite chatty, including the symbol of thirty-eight religious affiliations to choose from, military decorations and campaigns in which the departed served.
It is a slippery slope. Last week, a court suit resulted in the agreement of the VA to add the Wiccan pentacle to the list of approved religious symbols that it will have engraved on the white government headstones.
The Department has been fighting this one for years, which is understandable, since there is a lot of misconception about the Wiccans. The President called them devil-worshippers as recently as 1999, and his attitude naturally permeated the system.
According to a Pentagon study cited in the lawsuit, there are almost two thousand Wiccans in the armed forces, and the military chaplains have been trained in accommodating them.
It is easy to understand where there might be some confusion. Wicca is a modern faith that has its roots in the British Civil Service, a mystical organization of long standing. A bureaucrat named Gerald Gardner announced the re-emergence of Wicca in 1954. He said he was fully indoctrinated in what he called the Old Religion. He claimed that he was simply revealing the traditions of the faith that had survived the occupation of the Romans and their successor bureaucrats in the British Isles.
He felt free to bring Wicca out in public after the repeal of the British Witchcraft Act in 1951. It had been passed originally by Parliament in 1401, with the support of Archbishop Thomas Arundel. The preferred penalty was burning at the stake, since the Church in those days did not believe in the spilling of blood.
Over the years, the intent of the original law changed to an emphasis on punishing fraud in the Medium and Clairvoyant communities. The last conviction of which I am aware of was the successful conviction of a fortune-teller named Helen Duncan, who authorities feared would disclose the details of Operation Overlord, the evidence of which was the military equipment piled up on every English country lane, and in the person of all those young Americans wandering about.
With the installation of the Labour Government in 1945, a movement began to repeal the Witchcraft Act, and it was so done in 1951, being replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, and the re-election of Winston Churchill in precisely that order.
There may be more symbols to come. There is a strain of Wicca directly derived from Mr. Gardner, which is appropriately termed “Gardnerian Wicca,” and involves a rigid spiritual hierarchy and secretive initiations.
Others have a more eclectic approach to Wicca that reflects a sort of genial paganism focused on reverence for the natural world, and the presence of the spirit of the Goddess and God in all of us below the stars. Some feminists have dropped the latter altogether, on the grounds that the God has caused quite enough mischief of late. All told, the 2001 American Religious Survey estimated that there could be as many as 134,000 American adults who identify with some part of the Wiccan faith.
I imagine there will be other variants of the Pentagram authorized for VA headstones, eventually. Considering the duration of the current conflict, and the prospective need, some things seem inevitable.
The thing I find curious is that Parliament actually repealed the Witchcraft Laws, though I imagine it was largely symbolic at the time. From a policy perspective, I can't imagine such a thing happening in Congress.
In fact, quite the reverse.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com