Tom Glenn's Blog, page 46

Gun Violence in the U.S.

Several times over the years, I have written in this blog about gun violence in our country. On March 23, the New York Times reported that over the weekend of March 18-20, there were at least nine mass shootings in the U.S. Total gun violence deaths in the U.S. in 2020 (the most recent year for which complete figures are available) were almost 20,000. Already this year, as of March 23, the number is already 9,553.

The Times offers a series of reasons for the spike in mass shootings, but it doesn’t mention the most important: we have the highest per capita gun ownership in the world: 120.5 guns for every 100 people. We have 20 percent more guns than people.

Gun owners are quick to point out that the right to keep and bear arms in the United States is a fundamental right protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, and by the constitutions of most U.S. states. They stress that our culture is a gun culture.

We are alone. All other western democracies and modern nations severely restrict gun ownership and, as a result, keep the number of gun deaths low. It’s long since time we overcame our addiction to deadly weapons, changed our Constitution and laws, and joined the civilized countries in the world.

All I can do is to appeal to the sensibilities of Americans: Is maintaining gun culture worth 20,000 deaths a year? My answer is no. Let’s work together to revise our laws and save lives.

Republicans Disgrace Themselves

Watching the Senate hearings on the nomination for the Supreme Court of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, I was shocked once again by the uncivilized behavior of Republican senators. They regularly treated Judge Jackson with contempt, distorted the facts shamelessly, and interrupted her while she was speaking. Judge Jackson, by contrast, was a model of politeness, her statements rational and reasoned.

And, as the New York Times pointed out, “Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing has turned into a case study of how disconnected from reality large parts of the Republican ecosystem have become.” The Republican senators’ criticism of Judge Jackson wasn’t even based on fact; it ranged from fantasy to deliberate misstatement.

My sense is, as I have said before in this blog, that the GOP’s days are numbered. Led by Donald Trump, it has so disgraced itself that, over time, fewer and fewer Americans will want to be associated with it. Because of the damage that it is doing to the U.S., its debacle will be welcome.

Decline of Democracy

I’m alarmed that one of civilization’s greatest achievements, democracy, is in decline around the world. According to Freedom House, from Poland to Britain to the U.S., antidemocratic political movements are enjoying the support of the conservative elite. That’s also the judgment of Anne Applebaum in her new book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism (Doubleday, 2022). We now have authoritarian regimes in Philippines, Turkey, and Venezuela. The governments in Hungary and Poland are reducing democratic freedoms in their countries. The share of countries designated as “Not Free” has reached its highest level since the deterioration of democracy began in 2006. Countries with declines in political rights and civil liberties now outnumber those with gains by the largest margin recorded during the 15-year period. Recent reports downgrade the freedom scores of 73 countries, representing 75 percent of the global population.

Democracy is also on the downturn in the U.S., thanks primarily to Donald Trump. In the aftermath of his defeat in the 2020 election, his Republican supporters in 19 states enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for Americans to vote. Worse, Trump attempted a coup d’etat on January 6, 2021, by inciting mobs to storm the Capitol and overturn the election, thereby restoring him to the presidency even though he unmistakably lost the election. The Republican National Committee labelled that violence, which resulted in the death of as many as ten people, as “legitimate political discourse.”

Have we really sunk so low? Democracy is waning around the world. Worst, from my perspective, is its decay within the U.S. We Americans must bond together to restore our democracy and defeat the efforts of Trump and his followers to undercut our freedom.

Forthcoming Surgery: Cancelled

Several days ago, I notified readers that I would be undergoing surgery on my right eye on Tuesday, March 22. It didn’t happen. I got a call on Monday telling me that the surgery was postponed until March 30. That was the last straw. I informed the surgeon that I no longer wanted her to do the surgery. I’ve since found another doctor.

Here’s the background: I went to the doctor with a referral for Lower Lid Ectropion OU, a drooping of the lower lid of my right eye that requires removal of part of the lid to make it tight again. The doctor scheduled the surgery but didn’t tell me the date or time. I repeatedly tried to telephone her but got no answer, only a recorded voice saying stay on the line my call would be answered. Four different time I waited through ten minutes of no-answers before I gave up. I finally wrote a letter to the doctor and sent it through the U.S. mail, telling her that I needed to know the date and time of the operation. Several days later, I found a message on my answering machine from her telling me that she would have her scheduler contact me. He never did.

I finally called the Towson Surgical Center, where the operation was to take place, to see if it had been scheduled. The center told me that it would be either March 22 or March 23, but it didn’t know what time. Several more calls from me and my daughters finally nailed the date and time down to 7:00 a.m. on March 22.

Then, on March 21, I got a phone call from the surgeon’s scheduler telling me that the surgery had been postponed again, this time until March 30. But once again, he didn’t know what time. Then and there I cancelled the surgery and wrote a letter to the surgeon confirming the cancellation. I have now found another eye doctor. I have an appointment for an exam with her on July 7.

I am disheartened to learn that a surgeon, a professional by trade, can treat a patient so unprofessionally.

Gilchrist Vietnam Veterans (2)

During all the years leading up to the fall of Saigon, I returned from my tours in Vietnam with the troops through San Francisco. As soon as we landed, we were met by crowds who yelled “butcher” and “baby killer” at us. They spat on us. I was shamed to the depths of my soul, not for the troops who had fought bravely and followed commands even at the risk of theirs lives, but for America. Our people, the people we fought for, were blaming us for what they saw as an unjust war. I was sickened. For decades, I never mentioned my time in Vietnam.

Then, less than ten years ago, I got an invitation to attend something I’d never heard of, a welcome home party for Vietnam vets. After considerable hesitation, I decided to attend. Young people, who hadn’t even been born when Saigon fell in 1975, shook my hand, welcomed me home, and thanked me for my service. I was so moved, I cried.

My time in the Gilchrist celebration brought all that back to me. Speaker after speaker brought me to tears. I remembered the soldiers and Marines I’d known who had died. I thought of all the South Vietnamese I knew who were left behind at the end and were killed by the North Vietnamese. I recalled the Amerasian children, fathered by American GIs with Vietnamese women, abandoned to the gentle mercies of the North Vietnamese conquerors.

It was a day of remembrances. And heartbreak.

Gilchrist Vietnam Veterans

Yesterday, Sunday, March 20, I attended the Gilchrist Fourth Annual Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day Celebration at Martin’s West, a sort of luxury reception center in Baltimore. Gilchrist is a hospice where I volunteered to work with the dying for a number of years. It has been celebrating its annual welcome home event honoring Vietnam veterans for several years but didn’t hold it for the last two because of the pandemic.

I got started in hospice care at the height of the AIDS epidemic. For five years, I took care of seven AIDS patients—all gay, all died. As the medical community progressed in preventing AIDS deaths, I went on to work with other dying patients. I stayed with it for seven more years and worked with more than thirty patients. I finally had to quit when I got too old and feeble to lift and carry the patients.

I qualify as a Vietnam veteran many times over. Between 1962 and 1975, I spent more time in Vietnam than I did in the U.S. But I was not in the military—I was a civilian employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) operating under cover a member of whatever unit, army or Marine, I was supporting on the battlefield. I was comfortable in the three languages of Vietnam (Vietnamese, Chinese, and French), and my job was supporting the unit I was assigned to by providing data from signals intelligence (the intercept and exploitation of the enemy’s radio communications) on which unit we were facing, what its location was, its strength, and its intentions.

I had two three-year tours in Vietnam and so many shorter trips, called TDYs (temporary duties, lasting four to six months), that I lost count. I ended up heading the clandestine NSA operation in South Vietnam in 1974 and 1975 and was the last men out when the North Vietnamese seized Saigon in April 1975.

More next time.

Water Birds

As I reported sometime back in this blog, to the back and north of my house in Columbia, Maryland, is a pond perhaps a hundred feet in diameter surrounded by mature trees. Water reeds fill something like half the pond, and it attracts birds of every variety.

Among the fowl drawn to my little pond are ducks and geese. The ducks are mallards with green heads and brown bodies. They appear in groups of a half a dozen or so, move through open sections of the pond, and stay in motion except when they perch on fallen trees sticking out of the water. They come for short visits, less than a day, then fly off again. They make no sound; if their movement over the surface of the water didn’t attract my attention, I would never have known they were there.

Far noisier are the Canadian geese who announce their arrival and departure with honks. The Canadian goose is a large wild bird with a black head and neck, white cheeks, white under its chin, and a brown body. Their numbers tend to be fewer than the ducks, usually no more than four or five, and they seem more active than the ducks, regularly flapping their wings to rise above the water and then return. Like the ducks, they stay in motion, exploring all sections of the pond not blocked by water reeds, and climbing up on partly submerged logs to rest.

For reasons I can’t fathom, the ducks and geese never alight on the pond when there are already waterfowl there. So I never see them together.

I thoroughly enjoy the birds. They intrigue me so much that I sometimes take binoculars out on my deck and watch them close up. They pay me no mind, as if my presence was irrelevant, and explore the pond until they’ve had enough and fly off to parts unknown.

Forthcoming Surgery

Next Tuesday, I’ll undergo surgery on my right eye for something called “Lower Lid Ectropion OU.”  In essence, the lower lid of my right eye is drooping. The surgeon will tighten it up by cutting out a portion of it and sewing it up so that it’s taut again.

I have no idea what caused the problem or how to avoid it in the future. Nor has the doctor told me how long I’ll be laid up or how soon I’ll be able to read and write again. So I have no way of knowing how long my blog posts will be interrupted. My guess—but it’s only a guess—is that my recuperation will be less than a week. Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of reading a book for review. That, too, will be delayed.

My sense is that I’d better get used to physical malfunctions. I’m getting on in years—I’ve already lived past my expected longevity—and the body is declining. But it’s also true that I am a model of health for a man my age. I lift weights for a couple of hours every other day, watch my diet (mostly vegetables and fruits), normally sleep ten hours each night, and drink plenty of water. And I’m determined to live to be a hundred.

So I’m inclined to see my eye problem as a temporary nuisance. If all goes according to plan, I should be back in the saddle within a week or so. Here’s hoping I’ll be able to resume posting this blog before the end of the month.

Being More Human

As Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, pursues his conquest of Ukraine, which is costing thousands of lives, I am reminded of our duty to do all we can to help our fellow human beings. It is incumbent on each of us to do our utmost to assist each other and to make life as fruitful and fulfilling as we can for each of our human companions.

I know firsthand, up close and personal, what death in war is. I will never recover from the damage to my soul inflicted by watching men die in battle. Putin’s wanton murder of innocent civilians—including women, children, and the elderly—is unforgivable. The world must never try to gloss over or dismiss Russia’s unspeakable acts in this war.

Putin’s savagery is becoming more unmistakable as more reports reach us from Ukraine. According to U.S. estimates, more than 7,000 Russian soldiers have died already in Ukraine, greater than the number of American troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The number of deaths, not of soldiers but of civilians of all stripes, is unquestionably greater and will soon become so numerous as to make Ukraine the equivalent of Chechnya where about the Russians killed 300,000 people during two wars there, and more than 200,000 people went missing.

The best that ordinary people like you and me can do is to reach out to others. We can make their lives a little less burdensome. We can help those in need. We can give a hand to those most beleaguered. We can, in short, offer an example to others, especially those in other nations, that will expose, by contrast, how goodness looks when compared with evil.

Youngkin

The state of Virginia is getting what it deserves. It elected Republican Trump-supporter Glenn Youngkin as its governor in its most recent election, and Youngkin took office on January 15, 2022. He is now pushing conservative policies including banning masks in schools and urging parents to report teachers who teach “critical race theory,” who, in other words, include our history of slavery and race prejudice in their curriculum.

It is long since proven that wearing masks reduces the transmission of Covid-19. Discouraging their use is sure to raise the death toll from the disease. And pretending that the U.S. doesn’t have a race problem and downplaying the story of the enslavement of African-Americans is blatantly dishonest and damaging.

This is only the beginning. We’ll see more policy moves like these as Youngkin proceeds. The end result will be that Virginia will fall further and further behind more progressive states. The well-to-do conservatives will succeed in maintaining their hold on the levers of power to the detriment of the middle and lower classes. Most damaged will be he black and brown minorities.

The voters of Virginia got what they asked for. I have no sympathy for them.