Tom Glenn's Blog, page 101

Alarmed About Trump—Again

For several days running, even when directly questioned by reporters, President Trump has declined to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the November election. He avers that voting-by-mail is fraudulent based on no evidence whatsoever. He himself has voted by mail. Make no mistake: He is threatening to refuse to cede the White House if he is voted out of office.

Rejection of the will of the American people as expressed in an election is the act of a dictator. As Trump has made clear repeatedly, he admires the dictators and looks down on democratically elected leaders. He believes that as president he is all-powerful. Over and over again, he has taken actions forbidden to the president and has refused to comply with legal orders from other branches of government including subpoenas. His Republican supporters, who still control the Senate, refuse to take him to task. They are complicit in the attack on American democracy. If the November election goes as I expect, the Republican party as we know it may cease to exist.

What I would love to see happen is for Trump to lose the election by a landslide, refuse to leave the White House, be arrested and tried for treason, and convicted. It seems to me that, even if that doesn’t happen, he has committed so many crimes he’ll surely be arraigned after he quits the White House—whether voluntarily or by force. And the evidence for conviction on multiple fronts is overwhelming.

Meanwhile, we Americans need to heed the warning: we have a president who is, in effect, threatening to seize dictatorial power. As Representative Adam Schiff warned, “This is how democracy dies.” We need to be prepared for the worst.

Solitude (2)

These days I prefer to be alone because I am grieving. My partner of many years died in March. Nothing can replace her. Mourning is not something I share.

A reader might ask why I am so careful to avoid contagion during the pandemic. It’s because I’m an older man with a history of lung cancer. That makes me a prime target for covid-19 that would likely prove fatal. For me, avoiding others is avoiding death.

So my weeks alone turn into months and maybe into a year. I mostly don’t mind, but sometimes I wonder if so much time alone might make me into one of those old people who’s alone so much he becomes erratic. My cure is to be disciplined—eat, dress, clean normally every day.

We’ll see if it works.

Solitude

I’m now in my sixth month of isolation. The coronavirus pandemic has required me to spend all my time alone. The only breaks have been for groceries, and then I war a mask and stay at least six feet away from all others.

This morning, the outside temperature is in the fifties, but it has been down in the forties some mornings. That means it’s time to bring in my potted plants from my deck and arrange them next to the sunny window on the eastern side of the piano room. The change in weather reminds me that my seclusion began last winter, before I put the plants out when it got warmer in the spring.

How long will the pandemic last? Since the U.S. under President Trump still is doing nothing to combat the covid-19, I presume I’ll still be sequestered six months from now. More than a year in isolation.

I’m fortunate that I’m a loner by habit. I normally spend little time with others. I’m a writer, a profession that requires many hours working alone. My diversions are weight lifting, reading, playing the piano, a little gardening, and working on my house—all activities I do by myself.

But under normal conditions, I have a heavy schedule of readings and presentations to assembled groups of readers. Barely a week passes that I’m not out appearing in public. All that is, of course, on hold. And so far, I’ve only managed to arrange one remote reading. More will come.

More tomorrow.

Covid-19 Deaths in The U.S.

The U.S. continues to be hurt far more by the coronavirus pandemic than any other nation. We have now reached 200,000 deaths, the highest by far of any country in the world. We have just 4 percent of the global population but roughly 21 percent of both deaths and overall cases.

But six months into the pandemic, President Trump has still done nothing at all to combat the virus’s spread. With no evidence whatever, he claims that we have started to improve. He says we have done an amazing job in fighting the spread of the virus. He maintains that young people are “virtually immune” and repeats the claim that the virus “affects virtually nobody.” Meanwhile, more than 800 Americans are dying of the virus each day.

I trust that Trump’s performance on this issue alone will be enough to see him defeated in November’s election. His record on the virus is but one small part of his overall colossal failure as president. As a friend of mine recently observed, if we fail to remove Trump from office in the election, we deserve what we will get.

Yard Sign

My neighbor, who lives across the cul-de-sac from me, has posted a large sign in his yard. It reads:

STOP TRUMP

ELECT DEMOCRATS

SAVE AMERICA

The first and third lines are bright red letters on a white background. The middle line is white letters against blue. So he has the three patriotic colors—red, white, and blue—prominently displayed. The message is loud and clear.

When I congratulated my neighbor on the sign, he told me that four years ago he put out a similar sign supporting the election of Hillary Clinton. It was stolen within a few days. He’s waiting to see how long this one lasts.

It’s still there this morning. Four days now. There’s hope.

Do What You Have to Do (2)

The hardest part came at the very end, in April 1975, after the withdrawal of American military forces, when it was incumbent upon me to get my 43 subordinates and their families safely out of the country before the North Vietnamese attacked Saigon. To do that, I had to stay in place until the attack was underway. I had to lie, cheat, and steal to get my people on flights because the U.S. ambassador, Graham Martin, forbade me to evacuate them. A representative of the government of Hungary, a communist nation allied to North Vietnam, had assured him that the North Vietnamese had no intention of attacking Saigon. Signals intelligence—my job and the job of all my guys—made it blatantly clear that the North Vietnamese were about to launch a blitzkrieg against the city. The ambassador believed the communist representative instead of acting on the validated intelligence I was giving him.

The result was the worst days of my life. At the very end, I and two communicators who had agreed to stay with me to the end were isolated at our office during the final assault against the city. The enemy used rockets and artillery against us as they prepared to seize Saigon. The building we were in was hit repeatedly. The building next to us was destroyed, and two Marines at our gate were killed. On the afternoon of 29 April, my two communicators were finally extracted safely. I escaped that night under fire.

I’m justifiably proud of my service to my country and especially of my willingness to stay to the end during the fall of Saigon to assure that none of my guys or their wives and children were killed. I understand from President Trump’s perspective, that makes me a close kin to those who died in war—suckers and losers.

Maybe so. I did what I had to do, whatever it took.

Do What You Have to Do

Today I want to return to an idea I have explored several times over the years in this blog, the sense of devotion that a service member or government representative must have in a crisis: the willingness to do what is required no matter the personal cost, even it means giving up one’s life.

“Do what you have to do, whatever it takes.” Those words were my guiding principle during my thirteen years on and off in Vietnam supporting both army and Marine units in combat. It was an honor to be on the battlefield with the troops, undercover as one of them, but it also meant that I had to be willing to give up my life if that’s what it took.

The same words are the motto of characters in my 2017 novel Last of the Annamese, set during the fall of Saigon. There’s nothing elegant or poetic about the phrase. It’s down and dirty. It smells of blood and human sweat.

I was in Vietnam more time than I was in the states between 1962 and 1975, and I was put to the test multiple times. My job was providing signals intelligence support to U.S. combat forces. That meant telling the Americans, based on intercepted radio communications, what North Vietnamese forces were aligned against them, what their strength was, where they were, and what their plans were.

More tomorrow.

Global Warming and Gun Violence During Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has done little to slow down two curses bedeviling the U.S. caused by our own doing: global warming and gun violence.

Evidence suggests that human actions that gave rise to global warming, burning of fossil fuels and destruction of forests, have declined during 2020. But the heating of the environment was already moving so quickly that 2020 is on track to be one of the hottest years ever. We have had record high daily temperatures in a number of places in the world. The highest was in mid-August in Death Valley—130 degrees. That may be the highest temperature ever recorded. The previous record, 134 degrees in Death Valley on 10 July 1913, is now considered of doubtful accuracy. The world, in short, is getting hotter by the year.

And our gun violence hasn’t slowed because people are sickened and dying as a result of the spread of the coronavirus. Thus far this year, the U.S. has suffered over 30,000 deaths by guns. We have more guns in the U.S. than we have people. And as is clear from world-wide statistics, the more guns a nation has, the higher its death toll from gunfire. We suffered 4.43 deaths per 100,000 people in 2017 (the most recent year for which I can find statistics)—a far greater death toll than in other western democracies.

What does it take for us to learn from our own mistakes? As a nation we failed miserably to confront the covid-19 pandemic, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths we could have prevented. We continue to burn fossil fuels at record rates, assuring global warming will increase. We refuse to control the number of firearms in the hands of citizens, guaranteeing thousands of gun deaths.

U.S. exceptionalism has changed its meaning. It now refers to our unique national failures to meet challenges. If we are fortunate enough to have a new president and a new Congress in 2021, we must push for restoration of our ability to take on challenges and win.

Biden Support Among Those of Modest Income

I’m surprised to discover evidence in the media that Americans of the lower classes—those with less money—are sometimes ambivalent about supporting Joe Biden for president. The reason seems to be that those populations favor conservative moral and cultural norms at odds with Biden’s more liberal approach. They tend to disagree with him about abortion, taxes, future relations with Cuba, sexual orientation, and his stand on police funding which they misrepresent.

Those who belong to minority groups are often liberal in their politics but conservative in their ethics. Blacks, Asians, and especially Latinos are frequently members of traditional religious communities that condemn, for example, divorce and same-sex relationships.

What this hesitancy to support the Democrats overlooks, to the detriment of those who hold the view, is the far greater importance of economic liberalism for the lower classes. Liberals have long supported fair wages, unions, equal pay for equal work, minimum wage laws, and many other measures to improve the economic status of those at the lower end of the financial scale.

When those with less income fail to support liberal candidates, they are working for their own disadvantage. I hope and trust they will see the light in time to elect those who will do the most good for them.

College Tuition: No Longer Affordable

When I went to the University of California (Berkeley) for an undergraduate degree in the 1950s, the tuition was just over fifty dollars a semester. From a background of poverty—my father was in prison, my mother an alcoholic—I was able to work part-time to support myself and pay tuition. Granted, it wasn’t easy. My last semester, I collapsed from exhaustion and listened to my graduation ceremony at the Greek Theatre, an 8,500-seat amphitheater, from nearby Cowell Hospital on campus.

Back then, state universities were affordable for people like me with low income. Not anymore. The current annual tuition at the University of California, Berkeley, is $14,254. The university health plan costs another $3,286. The poor, like me, are out of luck.

There are scholarships, of course, but they are for poor students who are bright. I was by all indications not bright. My high school grades were low enough that the school counselors advised me not to go to college. I’d done poorly in school because of my disrupted family life.

I accepted the judgment of my scholastic advisors that I was too stupid for college. But I was determined to go anyway. After graduation, at a time when military service was mandatory for all, I went on to language school in the army (Vietnamese) where I graduated top in the class and later, long after my military service was complete, while working fulltime, went to graduate school where I earned a doctorate with a straight-A record and honors. Turned out I wasn’t so much dumb as deprived. I ended up as a linguist in seven languages and was promoted to the top executive ranks in the U.S. government. That meant that I could retire with a generous annuity and write fulltime. I now have six books and 17 short stories in print.

Were I just reaching college age today, I’d be out of luck. I wouldn’t be able to afford the tuition costs. I’d end up in a low-level job for life.

It’s time for us as a country to revise the way we do things to allow the young a greater chance for advancement. We have stacked the decks against the poor, the black, the Hispanics. My hope is that with a new Democratic president and Congress come January, we can begin to change our country so that opportunity is open to the poor as well as to the rich.