Tom Glenn's Blog, page 54

The Cold

As I’ve reported here before, I became acclimatized to Vietnam’s tropical temperatures during the thirteen years (1962 to 1975) I spent more time there than I did in the U.S. I’ve never readjusted. I still glory in hot weather and suffer during the cold.

So our current weather is a curse to me. As I write just at dawn, it is well below freezing outside. The gas stove in my office has been on for half an hour, and it is still only 68 degrees in here. I’m all bundled up in a snuggler (a heavy bathrobe with legs) and mukluks (heavy slipper socks) against the cold.

If I’m going to go on living in this part of the world (Columbia, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.), I’ll have to adapt to the weather someday. The results so far don’t look promising. I’ve spent the last 47 trying without success. As I look from the back of my house northward, I see the pond a few feet from my deck. It’s frozen over. I see a tangle of tree and bush branches, limbs, and twigs gleaming white with frozen snow in the dawn’s early light. I consider getting a heavy jacket to wear over the snuggler.

The net result is that I’m unique. I’m the only person I know who actually looks forward to global warming.

Death

Like it or not, these days my thoughts often turn to death. The subject is very relevant. I have already lived well past the life expectancy for an American male. Daily I read in the press of people younger than me dying. And few of my contemporaries are surviving.

As I have written here before, I am determined to live well past a hundred years old. I do all I can to stay healthy. My diet is primarily vegetables and fruits with little meat and no sweets. Granted, over the holidays when my children brought me food and I attended a good many parties, I allowed myself treats I would otherwise never indulge in. And my weight has gone up a few pounds. Now I am back to my regular diet. The pounds will disappear rapidly.

I also lift weights every other day in a routine that lasts more than two hours. That keeps my body trim. More important, it keeps me healthy.

And I sleep. I seem to have a limitless appetite for sleep, and I indulge it. I often sleep ten hours at night and then take an hour’s nap in the afternoon.

All that said, I know that my life, like all lives, will end in death. I can delay it, but I can’t avoid it. So I do my best to prepare.

My last will and testament and instructions for the handling of my remains are in the hands of my children who have promised to carry out my orders. My possessions—objets d’art, books, recordings, and furniture from all over the world including places which I cannot claim to have visited because my work there is still classified—range from paintings and sculptures to ceramic animals and intricately carved screens. All of them will pass to my children for disposition.

All I am left with is the question of what happens after death. As an agnostic, I make no claims about what I believe. Maybe my death will mean I’ll cease to exist, or maybe there is life after death. Maybe when the moment arrives, I’ll find out.

Or maybe I won’t.

Veteran Suicide (2)

I was more fortunate than most veterans. I have a compelling vocation that I can’t escape: writing. I found that the most effective way for me to face my excruciating memories was to write down what happened.

Besides, for reasons I’ve never understood, I have a will to survive stronger than that of anyone I’ve ever known. That instinct dictates that I must maintain my health through a regimen of exercise, diet, and rest that makes me the healthiest man my age that I know.

Hence, the prospect of someone taking his own life chills my soul. As a result, I go out of my way to be with other veterans and assure that they know they are not alone in their memories.

As I have written before in these pages, the strongest human bond I have ever experienced is that between men who fight side by side. That is why the song, “My Buddy,” brings tears to my eyes. The Bible makes it clear: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

So I reach out to other veterans, especially those over 55, to let them know that I am there for them. I share their memories. I’ll be their buddy. And although as men we’ll never use the word, they’ll know they can depend on my love.

Veteran Suicide

Nothing horrifies me as much as suicide. The prospect of someone deliberately and purposefully taking his own life makes me shiver. And yet, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 47,511 Americans died by suicide in 2019 (the most recent year for which I could find complete statistics).

Especially distressing to me is the rate of suicide among veterans. In 2019, it was 31.6 per 100,000, nearly twice the rate among non-veteran U.S. adults (16.8 per 100,000). According to the VA, in 2016, about 58 percent of all veterans who committed suicide were 55 years old or older.

Why do they kill themselves? The only answer I can find is that veterans are more likely than others to have witnessed the level of human carnage that occurs on the battlefield. That means they’re more prone to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) and its manifestations—flashbacks, panic attacks, nightmares, and irrational rages. Those are the symptoms of soul damage. There is no cure, and the memories are permanent. They never weaken or go away.

And the majority of veteran suicides are among men old enough to have served in combat in Vietnam.

I speak of PTSI from personal experience. Because of my years of assisting with signals intelligence on the battlefield, I know all too well what it is like to watch men die in ways too ghastly to describe. In the aftermath, I at first tried to escape from the visions that haunted me, to push them into my unconscious, and pretend they didn’t exist. But then they’d come back to haunt me when I least expected it. I finally learned that the only way for me to keep going was to face those memories head on, bring them into my conscious mind, and learn to live with them.

More next time.

The End of 2021 (2)

I began yesterday with a list of quotations that summed up one of the worst years in memory. Today, the first day of a new year, I complete that list with fervent hope that these words describe a year that is past and will never be repeated.

Here are the quotes:

“We [the U.S.] are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.”

“The [richest] top 1% [of Americans] evade an estimated $160 billion in taxes each year.”

“The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceration rate.”

“Taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time.”

“Over HALF of the Justices on the Supreme Court were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.”

“The study finds that at least four times as many active duty personnel and war veterans of post-9/11 conflicts have died of suicide than in combat, as an estimated 30,177 have died by suicide as compared with the 7,057 killed in post-9/11 war operations.”

“147 Republican lawmakers, including Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, voted to overturn the 2020 election results.”

“January 6 will be the first anniversary of one of the most shameful days in American history. On that date in 2021, the United States Capitol was attacked by thousands of armed loyalists to Donald Trump, some intent on killing members of Congress. Roughly 140 officers were injured in the attack. Five people died that day.”

I invite readers to comment.

The End of 2021

This hasn’t been a good year for me or for anybody else. Two factors cursed us: the continuing damage of covid-19 and the aftermath of the Trump administration.

I won’t try to sum up the year. Instead, I’ll offer some quotes meaningful to me as a veteran, an ex-spy, and a writer. I welcome your comments.

“A veteran is someone who, at one point in their life wrote a blank check made payable to ‘The United States of America,’ for an amount up to and including their life.”

“According to the Gun Violence Archive, from January 1 to September 15, a total of 14,516 people died from gun violence in the US. That’s 1,300 more than during the same period in 2020, a 9% increase.”

“Countries with the Highest Total Gun Deaths (all causes) in 2019: 1. Brazil (49436) 2. United States (37038)”

“42,596. That’s the number of people killed by guns so far this year—more than 122 people every day. At least another 38,618 people have been wounded. In total, more than 5,000 children and teens have been shot.”

“2019: 991 deaths involving gun violence among people 17 and younger — a number that climbed to 1,375 in 2020 and already stands at 1,405 for 2021.”

“I want to live in a country that loves its children more than it loves guns.”

“Amid lockdowns, distancing and job loss, there was another epidemic ripping through America: Drug overdoses claimed over 100,000 lives from April 2020 to April 2021, a record figure.”

“Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden.”

“In 2020, Trump presided over a worst-in-the-world pandemic response that caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths; held a super-spreader event at the White House and got covid-19 himself; praised QAnon adherents; embraced violent white supremacists; waged a racist campaign against Black Lives Matter demonstrators; attempted to discredit mail-in voting; and refused to accept his defeat in a free and fair election, leading eventually to the violence of Jan. 6 and causing tens of millions to accept the ‘big lie,’ the worst of more than 30,000 he told in office.”

“Most Republicans and supporters of Donald Trump don’t believe the 2020 election results were counted legitimately.”

“Former President Donald Trump’s company is poised to sell its lease on Washington, DC’s Old Post Office, which houses the Trump International Hotel, for a record-breaking $375 million, which would send Trump more than $100 million in profit.”

More next time.

The Electoral College

The Electoral College was established in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution. It is the formal body which elects the President and Vice President of the United States. Each state has as many “electors” in the Electoral College as it has Representatives and Senators in the United States Congress, and the District of Columbia has three electors. When voters go to the polls in a Presidential election, they actually vote for the slate of electors.

The problem is the Electoral College sometimes elects presidents not chosen by the majority of voters. That was the case with John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes, Benjamin Harris, George Bush, and Donald Trump, who in 2016 lost the popular vote by 2.8 million ballots, the largest margin of loss by anyone elected to the presidency.

If the corrupt and disastrous presidency of Donald Trump taught us nothing else, we should learn from it that the Electoral College is a disaster that must be abolished. That will require a constitutional amendment, a tough bridge to cross. Over the past 200 years, more than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College. There have been more proposals for Constitutional amendments on changing the Electoral College than on any other subject. Public opinion polls have shown Americans favored abolishing it by majorities of 58 percent in 1967; 81 percent in 1968; and 75 percent in 1981.

And yet it persists. Because Democratic voters outnumber Republican voters, the Republicans must depend on means other than simple vote counting to win elections and have, therefore, opposed doing away with the electoral college. As noted above, the college resulted in their winning the presidency twice in recent history.

The time is long since past for the U.S. to grow up and rid itself of anti-democratic practices. The Electoral College heads the list. Let’s do it now.

Civil War

The U.S. is leaning dangerously close to civil war. Donald Trump and his followers insisting that he won the 2020 election—in the face of overwhelming evidence that he lost it by a more than comfortable margin—led to a violent attack on the Capitol on January 6 of this year in which at least four and maybe as many as ten eventually died. The purpose of the assault was to prevent the Congress from validating the election of Joe Biden as president. There is genuine danger that if Trump runs again in 2024 and is defeated, his supporters could launch military attacks to secure his rule.

According to the Guardian, the U.S. is “closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” That is the conclusion of a book by Barbara F. Walter to be published next year. And three retired generals wrote in the Washington Post that they were “increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military.”

I don’t in the least doubt that Donald Trump would use military force to seize power. It appears that the democratic forces opposing him would be hesitant to go to war to prevent his victory. But in the long term, that might be the only means available for preventing a Trump coup d’etat.

Let us all work together to see to it that we never face that prospect. That means, first and foremost, assuring that all have the freedom to vote. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as of October 4, 2021, more than 425 bills that would restrict voting access had been introduced in 49 states—with 33 of these bills enacted across 19 states.  And Republicans in at least eight states have introduced legislation that would allow the legislators to overturn unwelcome election results. Since Trump and his supporters know they would lose a fair election, they are doing all they can to impede voting.

In the end, it is up to us American citizens. We can work to prevent military actions by those losing elections, and we can assure free and fair voting. But if we don’t move quickly and decisively, civil war is a real possibility.

Pet Peeves

As regular readers of this blog are well aware, I am especially disturbed by two aspects of American life: the deaths we suffer from firearms and our failure to avert the disasters caused by global warming.

The Gun Violence Archive reports that as of this morning, we have suffered 44,318 gun deaths in the U.S. this year. According to ABC News, “The United States has a gun violence epidemic, and it’s not one shared by its peers. The nation that by one estimate has more guns than people has the highest rate of firearm deaths compared with other high-income countries. Mass shootings, an all-too-common occurrence in the U.S., are also exceedingly rare in peer countries — where governments have often been quick to pass gun reform in the wake of such tragedies.”

The ill-effects of global warming are already upon us. Only if we move quickly will we be able to stave off the worst. The New York Times reports: “Nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years, though there is still a short window to prevent the most harrowing future, a major new United Nations scientific report has concluded.

“Humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, largely by burning coal, oil and gas for energy. And the consequences can be felt across the globe: This summer alone, blistering heat waves have killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada, floods have devastated Germany and China, and wildfires have raged out of control in Siberia, Turkey and Greece.”

We Americans as a nation have within our power the means to lessen the two evils of gun deaths and global warming. But in our national wisdom, we have chosen to do nothing about our rate of killings by guns and too little about the rising heat on our planet. It’s probably fair to conclude that we deserve the damage we have inflicted upon ourselves.

Rich Republicans

In the U.S., there are more Democrats than Republicans. So why don’t they win more elections? Because the Republicans have much more money and are willing and able to pay to arrange elections so that Democrats’ voting is prevented or nullified.

What this amounts to buying elections. It is the wealthy invalidating the votes of those with less money. Data from the internet show that Republican candidates gain a significantly higher percentage of votes from individuals with incomes over $50,000 per year, and the advantage increases along with the income level, to a height of 63 percent of individuals earning $200,000 or more a year supporting Republicans. This level is the direct inverse of individuals earning.

Put differently, an individual’s likelihood of being a Democrat decreases with every additional dollar earned. Democrats have a huge advantage (63 percent) with voters earning less than $15,000 per year. This advantage carries forward for individuals earning up to $50,000 per year, and then turns in the Republicans’ favor—with just 36 percent of individuals earning more than $200,000 per year supporting Democrats.

As a result, more than 400 bills with provisions that restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states in the 2021 legislative sessions. These bills are almost invariably motivated by false and often racist allegations about voter fraud. In addition, Republicans in at least eight states have also introduced bills that would give lawmakers greater power over election administration so that they could overturn election results that didn’t please them.

Does that mean that in the U.S., elections can be bought? It sure does. It’s time for the democrats (small d) among us to fight against restriction of voting. My sense is that things are moving in that direction already. Let’s all push harder.