Installment # 58

I mentioned something to Sandy that she thought was very interesting and should be included in my memories somewhere.  I was telling her that in a recent chat with Don, I mentioned that we could end up with a one-party political system at the national level, as the Republicans seemed to be tearing themselves apart and heading toward self-destruction.  He said that the Republican Party may split into two parties, whereupon I told him of a lesson I learned way back in grade school (which is the part Sandy wanted me to include here).  It was either 5^th or 6^th grade, and we needed to elect one person to represent our class.  Well, the boys nominated two people (both boys, of course), and the girls only nominated one person (a girl).  As we started to vote, I was thinking that the boys had a 2 to 1 advantage over the girls, and that a boy would surely be elected.  I’m not sure exactly when it started to dawn on me that, with the class comprised of roughly half girls and half boys, the girl candidate was going to get about 50% of the vote, and the boy candidates were going to split the other 50%.  The point to Don being that, with the nation comprised of roughly half liberals and half conservatives, the liberal candidate would get about 50% of the vote, and the two conservative candidates would split the other half, thus essentially creating a one-party system.

My pet idea, which I will stick in here even though pontificating is not one of the purposes of these “memories”, is that we should have a two-step voting process to elect the President of the United States – a general election and run-off, instead of a primary and general election.  People in all states would vote for their favorite presidential candidate in a general election from among any number of political parties, and the two candidates with the most popular votes nation-wide would then choose their running mates and participate in the run-off election.  Historically, a third party candidate represents a significant portion of one of the two major parties.  By running, all he/she is doing is taking votes away from the major party candidate and ensuring the election of the opposition party.  Thus a viable system of more than two parties cannot develop.  Under my two-step process no one would “waste their vote” by voting their conscience, because each person would still have the opportunity to choose between the two largest vote-getters.  As it stands now, we have to choose the “lesser of two evils” or vote against the worst candidate, instead of for the best candidate.  So my pet idea would allow us to really take the pulse of the nation by letting us vote our consciences in the general election.

Every four years we have discussions about the arcane Electoral College system and the fact that a candidate can (and often does) win the popular vote but lose the election.  I was speaking with a man who was born in Portugal, now lives in Canada, but considers himself a citizen of the world.  He speaks all of the romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc.) plus English.  In his world view, he sees our division by state as a means of keeping the populace fractured and weak.  He said that, for example, France has no subdivisions when it comes to national elections.  He said that in France the government is afraid of the people, while in the U.S. the people are afraid of the government.  He reminded me of the times that the French people have overthrown their government and publicly beheaded the leaders.  Yes, I can see why the government is afraid of the people there!  I think it would be very helpful and healthy for us to have the two-step popular vote system I have described that allows all voters, without “wasting” their votes, to indicate the candidate they think most closely reflects their values and desires.  It could be a real game-changer.

Getting back to Franklin’s “well-armed lamb contesting the vote” - as a passive, cooperative person, I for the longest time could not accept that war is inevitable.  Now I have sadly and reluctantly accepted that it is.  As a human being, I am a sample size of one.  In the absence of common sense, I assumed that most people think and feel the same way I do.  If that were the case, we indeed would have no wars, and most everybody would live in peace and harmony.  Differences would be tolerated, if not accepted and celebrated, and we would all see the unifying, precious humanity in each other as far more important than the differences.  Interestingly, philosophers have been wrestling with the same human nature issues from as far back as we have records to see.  Someone has said, “Human beings may be better off, but they are not better.”  Ouch!

I watch celebrities use their platforms, and often their time and money, to support causes they believe in.  That is totally their right and maybe their responsibility, whether most people agree with them or not.  I heard one celebrity say, in effect, If you (the media, the public, the paparazzi, etc) are going to shine a spotlight on me, then I am going to redirect that light and shine it on the causes that I believe in.  I respect that a lot.  However, if a fan pays good money to hear someone sing, and the singer uses the opportunity to spout their political opinions from stage, the fan has every right to be upset.  They may not get their money back, but they can try to start an exodus in the middle of the show; they can tell other people what happened; they can vow to never support that performer again.  The celebrity must be willing to accept the consequences of espousing their causes, whether at proper or improper times.  The Dixie Chicks, who hail from Texas, found that out when they told their Country Music audience that they were ashamed that George Bush was from Texas.  Their careers never recovered.  My life-long favorite female singer, Barbra Streisand, had to be told by an audience member to “shut up and sing.”  I’m sure she deserved it, but I was sad to hear that.

I took an interest in history rather late in life, mainly through the discovery of historical novels and what is termed historical narratives.  The latter are very much like reading history, except that you need to trust the author to relate private thoughts and private conversations of the characters as consistently as possible with the facts of history.  Additionally, reading an historical narrative, the characters do not know what will happen next.  One author calls it “contingency.”  It makes reading a lot more interesting, as I don’t know what is going to happen next, either.  I may have noted elsewhere that our two political parties have a long history of mistrusting each other; of impugning their opponents’ motives; of being bitterly and vehemently opposed to each other.  Heck, there was a fist fight on the Senate floor back in 1902! 

The major difference today (or so I thought) was not the vehemence, but how evenly divided we are between the two parties, as calculated by results of recent presidential elections and various political polls.  However, the real change these days is mistrust of government in general.  I read an op-ed article recently (which I can’t seem to put my finger on) indicating that to the statement, “Government can be trusted to do the right thing all or most of the time”, something like 65% agreed back in 1965, but only 17% agrees with that statement today.  That is the real sea change in American politics.

A few years ago I read Leon Uris’ book, Armageddon.  It was published in 1964, which means he was writing it while I was stationed in Germany.  I kept coming back to the thought that all of this was happening just 15 to 20 years before I arrived in 1962.  I thought that the Berlin Wall had always been there and always would be; that East Germany and West Germany had never gotten along, and never would.  How much more I would have appreciated what I was seeing if I only had the perspective to understand that it had only been a few years ago.  The same applies to what I learned in grade school and high school about the countries of Western Europe and Eastern Europe.  I thought things had always been that way and always would be.

I also wish I had had an awareness and appreciation of the military unit I was assigned to, in terms of its historical significance.  I was assigned to the 1^st Battalion of the 509^th Infantry Division.  This was an airborne battalion attached to a “leg” (non-airborne) division.  In reading historical novels and narratives, I have learned, first of all that the paratrooper was a new weapon in World War II.  The men who volunteered to join and jump out of airplanes behind enemy lines were both revered and feared as maybe half crazy.  Who would do that?  I also learned how instrumental the 509^th was in the successful invasions of North Africa and the defeat of “The Desert Fox,” German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps, just twenty years earlier.  I had a proud heritage that I didn’t know about.  This is not an excuse, but it seems to me that each year that we studied western civilization in school the school year ended just as we were getting up to World War II.  I felt like I had a void or blind spot where WWII ought to be in my mind.

Before I started reading historical novels I did watch the downfall and breakup of the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.) and the formation of a number of new countries and new names for new countries.  Now as I read I realize that Europe is ever-changing and that it will continue to be ever-changing.  I had thought that Czechoslovakia had always been and always would be Czechoslovakia.  But it is now two countries: The Czech Republic and Slovakia.  Imagine if the number and names of the states comprising the United States of America were to be in a state of flux, with new states forming and dissolving and redefining themselves frequently.  The only change that has happened in my 70 years is the addition in 1959 of Hawaii and Alaska as our 49^th and 50^th states.  I was 15 years old in 1959 and completely oblivious to the whole thing, of course.

I read that if Abraham Lincoln had not been able to hold the Union together, we likely would have had two countries – the northern states and the southern states – and probably a third country would have formed as the western frontier was settled.  None of the three alone would have been as strong as the United States, so perhaps Texas would have stayed with Mexico or become another separate country, and so too California.  This is the kind of mind-blowing stuff I think about when I realize what Europe is really like, and I cannot help but conclude that the United States of America is a very special place.  But things that may have been “out of the question” in my mind are not necessarily – and maybe never were - out of the question at all.  The polarization of our two-party system is so complete that it is possible that extremists in a large state like Texas or California could lead their followers to break away and become their own country.

The other huge issue with the breakup of the Soviet Union, of course, is the end of the Cold War and the related arms race.  During the Cold War both countries stockpiled enough nuclear weapons to blow up the whole planet and knock it out of its orbit around the sun.  This was no doubt on Herman Wouk’s mind when he quoted in his introduction to War and Remembrance something he had one of his main characters say in the book: “Either war is finished, or we are.”  I still remember during the tense days of the Cold War, when we were living in Burlingame around 1967, being awakened in the middle of the night by a sonic boom, and laying there wondering whether we had just been attacked with an atomic bomb. The sound of a jet breaking the sound barrier was very unusual in our area – perhaps had never happened before – and I was not all that familiar with the sound, anyway.  So I lie there listening for sirens or any other indications that we might be under attack.  It didn’t take long to realize what had actually happened, but it also made me realize how real the threat or possibility of a nuclear attack was, at least to me.

I remember all the talk about fallout shelters while growing up on Long Island.  The families in our socio-economic group couldn’t afford to actually build an underground shelter and fill it with all the recommended survival stuff in quantities sufficient to last as long as possible.  I think the minimum recommended was 6 months, and a year was more ideal.  So the conversations I heard had more to do with why we didn’t need one: the odds were against it happening in the first place; and if it did happen, a fallout shelter probably wouldn’t save us, anyway.  I remember Dad saying how sooner or later, you would have to emerge from the shelter, and either you would die from the remaining radioactivity, or you would be captured and/or killed by the conquerors.  But of course the reality was that we didn’t have the funds to build one in the first place.

I remember one of our friends when we were around 8-9 years old, which would have been in the early 1950s, could (or had us convinced that he could) identify enemy aircraft.  His name was Bobby Tam, and he had us all watching the skies when we were with him, and alerting him if we saw an airplane.  He would then stare at it and we would all heave a sigh of relief when he announced that it was not an enemy plane: It was “one of ours”.  He must have come from a family where his Dad or an older brother or a close uncle had been in World War II and talked about the planes the enemy used – the insignias and colors to watch for, maybe the sounds to listen for, etc.  This was childish stuff but the point is that the early days of the Cold War and the threat of attack was very real to us, and surely we got it from our parents and what we may have heard on the family radio.