Tom Glenn's Blog, page 26

How Bad Will the Election be for Republicans?

Columnists and commentators are finally coming around to the notion that the Republicans will not do well in November’s election. The platitude that the winning party always loses in the midterms is finally being questioned.

It seems to me that the likelihood is that the Republicans will lose heavily in November because of the positions they have taken and particularly because so many of them go on supporting Donald Trump—a majority of GOP members of Congress went along with Trump’s illegal attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And yet close to half of Americans think Trump should face criminal charges for his role in the deadly insurrection. And Republicans are divided. Republicans who support former President Trump more than they support the GOP climbed to 41 percent in August, up 7 points from May when 34 percent said they supported Trump more than the party, according to NBC.

Trump remains head of the party. As a result, the party owns his sins. And there are lots of them: encouraging Russian interference in our elections, threatening Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political opponents, cozying up to Kim Jung Un and other foreign dictators, abandoning our closest allies, defunding the Post Office, proposing $30 billion in cuts to Social Security, caging migrant children at the border, attacking freedom of the press, building a racist border wall, inciting the January 6th Capitol insurrection, threatening state officials to rig the 2020 election, imposing a transgender military ban, and denying the severity of COVID-19, to name only a few. According to the Washington Post, Trump publicly told 30,573 lies while in office, an average of 21 a day. He was, as many experts have stated, the worst president ever.

As a result, I expect that the November election will show an historical defeat for the Republicans. I’m inclined to agree with those who question whether the party will survive.

The Medical Community

All my life—but particularly in my later years—I have been poorly served by the medical establishment. The worst occurred a few years ago when I coughed up blood and my doctor told me not to worry. When it happened again a few months later, he sent me for a chest x-ray. I had a large tumor in my right lung. I spent the better part of a year in chemotherapy and radiation, then had the upper lobe of my right lung removed by surgery. It took me another year to recover. I never returned to that doctor.

A little before that, I hurt my right knee running—I had been a runner most of my life. As a consequence, I had knee replacement surgery. The operation and recovery were the most painful experience of my life. Only after my children beseeched the surgeon for three says did he finally prescribe pain medication. Since I was limping after I recovered, I went to another surgeon to see what could be done. He recommended that I have the surgery done over again. But I refused. The whole thing had been too painful. I still walk with a slight limp.

Before all that, in April 1975, during my escape under fire when Saigon fell, I came down with dysentery, pneumonia, and exhaustion. My visit to a doctor brought no diagnosis, so I struggled on my own. Eventually, another doctor diagnosed the ailments and prescribed treatments. It was another long period of looking after myself.

And that doesn’t count office incompetence. Three different times, I have quit the practice of a doctor because his staff’s bungling. I attributed that ineptitude to physicians’ almost universal lack of management skills.

So my experience with the medical profession has been a long way short of satisfactory. Despite that, I am a pinnacle of health for my age. That’s because I go out of my way to assure a healthy lifestyle—a diet of primarily vegetables and fruits, regular strenuous exercise, plenty of liquids, and plenty of sleep. I credit myself, not the medical profession, for my good health.

At Long Last (2)

The man in prison and I exchanged letters two or three times a week for all those years. Then, last December, after twenty-seven years of incarceration, he was released. He returned to his home state of North Carolina and began to live like a normal person. We exchanged letters far less frequently, but we met regularly in Zoom sessions, and for the first time, each of us found out what the other looked like.

Then last week, he came north to visit his family in this area. I invited him to dinner on Sunday. He came at ten in the morning, and we spent the day talking. I can assure readers that, for me, there is nothing like spending time with someone who understands what it’s like to suffer from PTSI. This man and I are soul brothers in a way unlike any other relationship I have. All I have to do is look into his eyes, and I know him.

He told me that he has read all my books except Friendly Casualties which is not yet out in hardcopy. To say that I was enormously complimented is to put it mildly.

So often these days, I quietly celebrate the wonderful life I lead. I live in a house I own that is ideal for my purposes—in the middle of a forest and devoid of external care (no lawn) and blessed with a magnificent view from the deck on the back of my house overlooking a small lake half filled with water reeds. My generous annuity allows me full time to write. Best of all, I have friends whom I love—I know men are not supposed to love each other, it’s not masculine, but we do anyway.

What more could I ask?

At Long Last

Years ago—now more than five—a friend sent a relative of his, a man in prison, a copy of one of my books, The Trion Syndrome, about a man suffering, as I do, from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). That disorder results from a wound to the soul inflicted by experiencing deadly violence. My case came from repeatedly going through combat, first between 1962 and 1975, when I spent more time in Vietnam than I did in the U.S., later in other places that are still classified and I can’t talk about. My job was working on the battlefield using signals intelligence, the intercept and exploitation of the radio communications of the enemy, to tip off friendly forces as to where the enemy was, his strength, and his intentions. All those years I was a civilian, but I operated under cover as an enlisted man assigned to whatever unit I was supporting (U.S. Marine Corps or army or friendly foreign military).

As I have reported before in this blog, PTSI is permanent. The malady is never cured and never goes away. The sufferer has to deal regularly with the symptoms—flashbacks, panic attacks, nightmares, irrational rages, and depression—and to learn to live them. Because I had top-secret-codeword-plus security clearances, I was not allowed to seek therapy—I would have lost my clearances and my job. I had a wife four children to support. Seeking help was not something I could risk. So it was up to me to deal with my memories on my own.

I discovered early on that despite my yearning to push away the memories, the only way to cope with the disease was to face the unbearable recollections head on, bring them into my conscious mind, and train my emotions to react more calmly. That self-ministered therapy led me to write down what happened and, eventually, to my books.

The man in prison, whose name I’m not disclosing to preserve his privacy, had also been in combat many times, operating a navy corpsman tending to wounded Marines on the battlefield in Vietnam. He was stationed in central Vietnam in 1967, not far from where I was serving at the time, but we never met. He, like me, was not strictly speaking a combatant (even though we were both armed) but a helper. And he was a victim of PTSI, which contributed to the violence he committed that landed him in prison. He found my Trion intensely personal. It was his story told by someone else.

More next time.

The Belch

Having considered the yawn and the sneeze, I turn my attention to the belch. According to Oxford English, the word means to emit gas noisily from the stomach through the mouth. Most belching, according to the sources I consulted, is caused by swallowing excess air. Like yawn and sneeze, the word belch has been in English for hundreds of years. It comes from the Middle English belchen, which is related to the Dutch balken, meaning “to bray,” and the Middle Low German belken, “to shout.”

Then there’s burp. What’s the difference between belch and burp? My research showed no difference between the two words, which begs the question: if there’s no difference why two words? Sources don’t answer that question, but my guess is that most people consider burping to be so minor as to be barely noticeable, whereas belching is loud and disgusting.

What’s the history of the word burp? I was very surprised to learn that it’s first recorded occurrence in English was in 1929 and that Americans invented it. Apparently, we came up with a word that sounded like the noise a small belch makes. It’s been in our language ever since.

The Sneeze

My recent ruminations about yawning made me think of another universal uncontrolled human action, the sneeze. According to Wikipedia, a sneeze (also known as sternutation) is a semi-autonomous, convulsive expulsion of air from the lungs through the nose and mouth, usually caused by foreign particles irritating the nasal mucosa. In company, the sneeze, like the yawn, is generally considered impolite. And it’s hard, sometimes impossible, to avoid.

What causes sneezing is fairly clear. It is due to what I call nasal tickling—the irritating presence of alien material in the nose, usually nasal mucous (snot). It can also be caused by sudden exposure to bright light, a sudden fall in temperature, breeze of cold air, a particularly full stomach, exposure to allergens, or viral infection.

I personally enjoy sneezing. For reasons I can’t explain, it feels good to me expel air violently though my nose. While I can prevent myself from sneezing or stop sneezing after the first one, I generally do all I can to prolong a sneezing fit. Usually, the most I can manage is four or occasionally five.

Sorry ’bout that. It’s how I am.

The Yawn

Some time ago, I posted a blog here about yawning, defined by Merriam-Webster as opening the mouth wide and taking a deep breath, usually as an involuntary reaction to fatigue or boredom. It is often accompanied by stretching and is generally considered a symptom of sleepiness.

The word “yawn” has been in our spoken language for many centuries. It derives from Middle English (which the Oxford English Dictionary says lasted from 1150 to 1500) word yenen or yanen, from the Old English ginian; akin to old High German ginēn (to yawn) and to Latin hiare and Greek chainein. Yawning is a practice shared by humans with many different animals. And there is even a field of scientific study of yawning called chasmology.

Yawning is universal among humans and advanced animals. We humans yawn an average of 20 times a day. Most of us try to squelch yawns while in polite company because it is considered impolite, a sign of boredom.

The problem is that there is no agreement among experts as to what causes yawning. Theories range from: a belief that yawning occurs when one’s blood contains increased amounts of carbon dioxide and therefore becomes in need of the influx of oxygen (or expulsion of carbon dioxide) that a yawn can provide; to a hypothesis that yawning, especially psychological “contagious” yawning, may have developed as a way of keeping a group of animals alert.

And the contagion of yawning is well established. If I yawn, the likelihood that others around me will yawn is high. Even a yawning animal nearby can trigger a yawn in me. And in the years when I had dogs and cats when my children were growing up, I noticed how often one of them yawning could cause me to yawn and vice-a-versa.

So here I am, subject to universal behavior I can’t explain that most others consider rude. Sometimes I think we don’t give enough credit to how difficult to understand life is, especially if you associate with others of the species.

Last Light

One more blog about twilight: sunshine on the trees.

At the end of the day, as I sit on my deck spellbound by the beauty of the fading sun, I observe one more phenomenon I haven’t described previously: the gradual disappearance of sunshine from the tops of trees surrounding the pond that extends perhaps a hundred feet to the north of my house.

As the sun sinks lower in the west and disappears from view, its light moves up the trees. First the upper half glow in light. Then only about a quarter. The trees seem to be looking west at the dying sun as if savoring the last radiance. Finally, only the very tops of the trees at the eastern side of the pond are lit. They look to be stretching upward to their limit to hang onto the last glimmer.

Then even the highest point of the easternmost trees is deprived of sunshine. I raise my eyes to passing airplanes, flying east to west, so far up that their underside glows with sunlight from below. A few minutes later, even the passing planes are no longer lit by sun, and for the first time I see the lights on their bodies and wings.

Unfortunately, starting Sunday, I will be deprived of this beauty by rainy weather, forecast to last for three days, before sunshine returns. I console myself by remembering that rain is the reason the trees surrounding me and my pond are so full of leaves that will soon be turning all shades of red, orange, yellow, and brown as autumn replaces summer. Meanwhile, I’ll just have to stay inside, away from the splendor that gives me such joy.

Review of The Yank (2)

Crawley’s story intrigued me because he reminded me so much of myself and my years in Vietnam between 1962 and April 1975 when I escaped the fall of Saigon under fire. During those years I spent more time in Vietnam than I did in the U.S. I had two three-year accompanied tours there with my wife and four children and so many shorter trips, called TDY (temporary duty), that I lost count. I was a civilian the whole time, but I operated under cover as an enlisted man in whatever unit, army or Marine Corps, I was supporting. Because I spoke Vietnamese, Chinese, and French—the three languages of Vietnam—my job for most of that time was supporting units in combat on the battlefield with information about the enemy drawn from signals intelligence, the intercept and exploitation of enemy radio communications.

So many of the scrapes Crawley got caught in were like the ones that almost cost me my life. More times than I can count, I caught myself grinning at his descriptions of close calls and how he extricated himself from dangers surrounding him, situations that sounded so familiar to me. He, like me, operated as an independent—he by necessity, me by choice. My impoverished childhood had trained me to avoid depending on others; more times than I like to count, that saved my life.

The editors at the two outfits I do reviews for learned long ago of my expertise in dealing with books on Vietnam and other wars. It is they, not I, who are responsible for my reviews of so many books about combat and the battlefield.

Review of The Yank

As I reported several days ago, my review of John Crawley’s The Yank (Melville House, 2022) is now on the internet. You can read it at https://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/the-yank-the-true-story-of-a-former-us-marine-in-the-irish-republican-army

As I noted in the review, because my background is Irish, I am more interested than most in “The Troubles,” the thirty-year-long disquiet in Ireland between the largely Catholic republicans, who wanted the six counties of Northern Ireland, a British possession, to become part of the independent Republic of Ireland; and the largely Protestant loyalists, who wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom. The Troubles ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that restored self-government to Northern Ireland on the basis of “power sharing” with the U.K. The pact stipulated that Northern Ireland would remain in the U.K. until a majority of people in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland wished otherwise. During The Troubles, more than 3,500 people were killed.

I was more than a little fascinated by the book’s author, John Crawley. He was born in the U.S., but his parents were Irish immigrants who took him back top Ireland at age 14. He returned to the U.S. at 18, joined the U.S. Marine Corps, took every kind of training he could get, then left the corps to return to Ireland to join the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in its fight against the occupying British.

More next time.