Editor’s Note: Marlow is on the hunt this morning. Arrias had some observations on the Navy’s failures of leadership. Vic contributed some thoughts on the Winds of Change series. Marlow goes for the gusto in this chapter of his Coastal Empire amid the reports of a nation in transformation. And the generational change that enables it.

– Vic

Author’s Note: After two plus days of grey skies, cold and constant heavy rains, I’m feeling achy and peckish. Hence this short detour.

Might it have something to do with advancing age? More likely it’s listening to and pondering one too many times Bob Dylan’s song Dirge.

-Marlow

Yessiree!

George Orwell’s yessiree

We’re going to find out, after these day’s endless culture war is over, what we fought for long ago, if it was for freedom or so a bunch of upper-class people twits could take over, get rich, ruin the country, and never call things by their rightful names.

Yessiree, Bob.

We children of the Greatest Generation did our part working to defend this country. We took what had been built and been given to us, built some more and then messed up a bit what was there to begin with, that belonged to everybody. How’d that happen? Well, we stood by and watched these closeted, big government types get control of our values, our work, our pay, our bank records, our public lands and resources, and our government. They dug holes that we all started falling into one by one at first, then in droves, and then by the 100s and then 1000s of 1000s.

Were we as dumb as a bunch of primitive tribesmen? Our American republic needlessly got carpet bombed. Or so it seems, as we appear to be living in growing ruins. Those who come after us are going to have to be content with what we allowed to be despoiled. But it’ll all be so meta. Or is metajust wanking solipsism?

It’s like a long carefully-tended garden we’ve lovingly owned. They’re pulling up the spring’s young plants and watering the weeds. People don’t see what’s happening, since they app-order stuff online and have no connections to where it comes from. We allowed them to stay ignorant. That’s on us. But since we’re lucky enough to have lived long enough, we could see it coming, easy-peasy — like falling off a log. They didn’t fool us but sure did most everyone else. We paid the price, bought the ticket, took the ride, and saw the show.

Beltway folks don’t care about us. Today’s political parties and media outlets are just shells. Fleabag by-the-hour hotels. Clients come and go. Why’d we risk getting us and ours shot at for whorehouses is what concerns me, but even that’s sorta fading off and away from me. After we’re gone, they’ll host and sweet talk other guests. We really owed them nothing, but we were raised so very differently back then. We believed in something that they didn’t believe in, let alone us.

We were just a few of the so many cigs that they puffed on till we were spent and then they reached for another pack, carton, case, and pallet ad infinitum.

What really mattered in the end was our shipmates who shared our journeys that allowed us to see and feel people going about their work, raking hay and putting it up in barns, working on assembly lines, in offices and cubbies writing Fortran that would later link the world into one global conversation, having kids, volunteering — a land of peace and truth, bright with an unearthly light.

It was gracious, noble, serene — it was all that was not the strife, the bullshit, or the senseless destructive political ass and boot licking that has become what we are now. It was peace, it was hope, it was deliverance. It was belonging. Not owning. Nor taking.

Then, as the last of the war’s mortarings sputtered out, ominously we felt it — a cold, empty fear — like a hollow, a void, where our confidence once lay, as did our pleasure and confidence in ourselves and country. It made us old farts feel queasy. And it promised to stay with us till the end of our days when we’d become shoeless, sleeping ghosts.

Perhaps in time, our nation like this earth will cleanse itself of this, our temporary foolishness. And a return of hope, peace, deliverance, and belonging will spring forth and spread across the land.

Cassette tape case cover of Bob Dylan’s
Planet Waves album containing his recording of Dirge

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