11 June 2009
 
MICE and Swords


(Naval Officer Sword Hilt)
 
There is an e-mail going around reporting the arch outrage of the local Conservative rag, the Washington Times, when it was discovered that the Midshipmen at the Naval Academy graduation were asked- ordered- to leave their dress swords in their lockers when they came to the ceremony at Annapolis.
 
The tone of the article was mocking, as if the Brigade of Midshipmen were liable to storm the podium as though boarding a pirate ship. Of course, the whole idea of “pirates” and “boarding” is not as ridiculous as it once was, and one is tempted to remember that the officers of the venerable Royal Navy must carry their swords, rather than hang them from their belts, due to a long-ago affront to a Royal Person.
 
The British Army- carefully styled- likewise salutes with palm up, in order to provide double assurance that the hand is empty for the same reason.
 
Or so they tell me. Anyway, everything old is new again, and it fills me with some dread.
 
Not that the security folks cannot trust Naval officers, but rather the time seems to be coming around to where we can trust no one. Reading about the latest spies to be busted this morning I was reminded of the acronym “MICE,” as a description for the motivation of the vermin of state.
 
“Money, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego” as what the letters stand for, and if you include the rag-bag of the sexual Id under compromise, it sums things up pretty well for why anybody does anything out of the social norm.
 
Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn were apparently spying for the government of Cuba out of ideology and ego. I hope their marital life was rich, during their time, because their arrest would appear to have ended their conjugal relationship.
 
With the end of the Cold War, and of Marxist governments in general outside of China, Cuba and North Korea, it is a little unsettling to have the ideological motivation come back.
 
But is seems to be rising elsewhere, too.
 
I remember the 1960s well, and some of us do. There has always been a low roar of violence in this rough and ready democracy, but the political nature of the violence, aimed at all ends of the spectrum, seemed to have faded away.
 
It is back. The bad economic times has raised desperation to a level that is not unpredictable, regardless of how repugnant. There seems to be something going on beyond that, though, and maybe it is just hitting me because The Intern was supposed to take a trip to the Holocaust Museum today.
 
She is a German major at school, and is under no illusions about the flawed greatness of the Deutsche psyche. She wants to remember the evil with the good. But she is not going to get a chance this week.
 
We are all glad she did not visit yesterday.
 
With the museum filled with visitors, a rifle-toting 88-year-old man entered the solemn entrance and opened fire. He fatally wounded security guard Stephen Johns before he himself was shot down, though unfortunately not killed.
 
The family of James W. von Brunn, of Annapolis, MD, says they had disowned him long ago for his neo-Nazi views. Being as old as he is- he would be a contemporary of George Lincoln Rockwell, by the way, and also a veteran of WW II Naval Service- you can argue that this is simply the continuation of a very long nightmare with firm roots in an ancient conflict.
 
It is enough to boggle the mind. When I first heard about the incident, I thought the outrage must have been committed by some alienated skinhead, not the Ancient Mariner.
 
Three of these murderous incidents stand out in the last couple weeks. I can smell a trend in the air. It started with the killing of a soldier at a recruiting center in Little Rock. Abdulhakim Muhammad, aka Carlos Bledsoe, was quoted as saying he didn't consider his attack on the recruiting center to be murder, since it was justified by U.S. military action in the Middle East.
 
There are some crocodile tears from the radical right-to-life brethren along the same lines. Naturally, they say, the killing of any human being is wrong. But the shotgun murder of Dr. George Tiller at his church was only to be expected, since he was known to practice a legal medical procedure.
 
I don’t know. I remember when this went on before, all the lone gunmen and their strange causes that justified almost anything.
 
It seems as though we are coming around again to a time of ideological passion that is divorced from any objective reality.
 
I will confess that I am affronted by the idea that the Midshipmen were disarmed of their symbolic weapons. We are the protectors of the democracy, after al. But with all the MICE scurrying around these days, I suppose a little prudence is in order.
 
Just until things settle down again, right?
 
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com