Editor’s Note: Gentle readers, we are blessed to have some great submissions from Arrias, Marlow and Point Loma this week. In hierarchy Arrias dealt with a national numbers crisis. Marlow today explores out institutions and the nature of their generational change. Tomorrow Point Loma will take us to the tactical level of organizations, and the change we have experienced in the combat organizations we served. In the background is a string of informative commentary on how institutions change over generations. The string that fascinates me is the role of unconventional units in wartime like our renowned Patrol Boat (PT) crews in World War II and Vietnam, and how that free-wheeling independence is crushed by ancient tradition in peacetime. It speaks to Point Loma’s observations tomorrow on the complex nature of names and naming in tactical aviation. Here on Refuge Farm in gentle rural Virginia, I am fascinated by Chicago and the latest wild round of looting. Forgive me. As a native Detroiter, I take this event personally. The Windy City lived as my Motor City died. We knew why.

This insurrection of today is not new. It is just better organized. Chicago is now dying like my home city of Detroit. I always had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about the big city that survived when mine didn’t. Now I know it was the same process that just took longer. Marlow’s piece resonates. I will be following it all with interest.

-Vic


America’s War Department Wars


Author’s Note: Vic, your GGG’s stories propelled me to write this. Too bad today’s folks can’t forgive the other side like the combatants did to one another as they aged.

-Marlow



America’s War Department wars were unique — an entirely different kind.

If you look at mankind’s history, you’ll see men fighting for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot.

They fought for land, or because a king made them, or just because they liked killing.

But we here did so in almost every instance for something new.

This didn’t happen much in the history of the world.

We fielded our war dogs and machines to set men free.

In some ways this made us sheep in a world of wolves. Our only hope was to be as wise as serpents, innocent as doves, but always sporting the biggest and baddest-assed weapons in overwhelming quantities.
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First, we set to making America a free ground, from Maine to the Pacific Ocean. It took three wars to do so. Our goal was to ensure that no man had to bow, and no man was born to royalty. Here we would judge you by what you do, not by who your father was.

Here you could be something.

Here you could build a home. But it’s not the land. There’s always more land.

It’s kinda the idea that we all have value, all of us. In the end, we fought for each other.

Sadly, the War Department didn’t fix it all. The fight continued. Emancipation Proclamation, multiple Constitutional Amendments, multiple Civil Rights laws, myriad court decisions, uncounted martyrs, enforcement actions, civil unrest, dead in the streets, untold trillions of dollars spent. Still the war continues over how far the phrase “all men are created equal” extends.

Sorry for the preaching, but to paraphrase Pope Julius II question in the movie Agony and the Ecstasy, “When will we make it end?” Michelangelo’s response “When I am finished.” no longer is satisfactory.

Do we adore this place? Yup. Idolize it all out of proportion? Nope. Romanticize it all out of proportion? Yup.

Are we too romantic about it? Yup. Do we thrive on its hustle, bustle, its crowds and its buzz? Yup. We love, no revel in, knowing all its angles. So, sue us.

Maybe, this is a bit corny, a bit precious, a bit preachy and somewhat angry. We Americans fancy ourselves as tough and romantic as the country we love. It’s ours. It always will be.
We never bought into any of that new age Man stuff or the uncertainty or angst crap. No, once we went to war, we did, by the American book — surrender or die.

Now that that’s at an end, I’m glad to write down this brief review. Writing it has helped me at least sort it all out. Vic’s company has graciously offered to pay me by the word, so please pardon me if sometimes I tell you more than you’d like to know. Peice work leads to certain behaviors.

Getting some distance on this with all its twists and turns is hard to explain. Seeing it whole gives one some peace. No remorse, regrets, about the shoulda’s, woulda’s, and coulda’s,

What waits for us all beyond this is the earth and the sky. Enjoy ’em while you got ’em.

I am no longer certain how strongly America now leans on its triumph in the Civil War, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before them through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution.

If social media cancel culture is any indication, love of country no longer seemingly sweeps over our countrymen like a strong wind, bearing them irresistibly on.

They do not mourn its death and departure; nor will they longingly wait for its return.

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