Worth It

“We have heard that a half a million children have died. I mean… that’s more children than died when, when uh,-in Hiroshima. And, and… you know. Is the price worth it?”

“I think this is a very hard choice. But the price, we think the price is worth it. It is a moral question but the moral question is even a larger one-don’t we owe to the American people and to the American military and to the other countries in the region that this man not be a threat.”

Interview by Leslie Stahl of former Secretary of State Madelaine Albright on 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996.

The former secretary of state was answering a question based on the claim that the US sanctions and wars against Iraq had resulted in the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. She has since claimed that she was bated and taken out of context. And others have claimed that the records do not show a sizable increase in child deaths during that tragic time.

But the cavalier attitude is not disputed. 500,000 may not be accurate, strictly speaking. Not a number in an accountant’s ledger. Nor is it supposed to be. It is a symbolic number. Like the millions who died in WWII death camps, the number is mythological. Six million Jews, three million Gypsies, homosexuals, communists, the mentally and physically handicapped and several other groups targeted by the Nazis in WWII, one million starved to death in Leningrad, over half a million men, women, and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Three million Armenians in WWI, half a million Iraqi children in the Gulf war. Well, one of them, anyway. Cambodia, Palestine, Yemen, in every age and on every continent save Antarctica… The list goes on, refusing to be tabulated.

These numbers all come from the dream time of human misery. They are meant to convey a truth beyond counting. These numbers impress upon us the magnitude of the atrocity, not an actuarial tabulation. We are not counting machines, we are sensing souls.

Beyond a certain limit the human mind cannot comprehend a number so vast. It defies comprehension and becomes meaningless, so we digest the truth in symbolic terms. In visceral terms. In terms that do not pique the intellect but prick the skin. It becomes a vast amount. A huge amount. An atrocious amount. Even then we do not comprehend. We need a way to absorb such numbers and fathom the unfathomable.

Someday a monument may stand in Baghdad. May I humbly suggest a design? Two children, a boy and a girl, one wearing a hijab and an embroidered thobe and one a keffiyeh and a dishdasha. They kneel in the dust and play with dolls similarly dressed, unaware of their surroundings. Just two children at play. Above looms a cloud that leans over them, a dark, sprouting mushroom of black iron and marble, bristling with lightning bolts and gun barrels, cluster bombs, horrid drones, and desert storms.

On it are inscribed names in different styles and fonts, haphazard and crayon like, without order. Much like a child’s life. They are the names of five hundred thousand children who were consumed by that whirlwind. Five hundred thousand children whose worth was not allowed to grow.

“It’s a moral question,” she said. 

What will it profit a man, or a Secretary of State, if she gain the whole world and lose her soul? 

I wonder if Madam Albright’s fate in hell will be to face the souls of those Iraqi children one at a time, over and over again, and answer each one’s moral question:

“Worth what?”

 

Siberia in Connecticut

OK. I’ll admit it. I am a snow refugee. A Connecticut Yankee in Ron DeSantis’ Court. A melted snowbird. Having lived for over 60 years in Connecticut I moved to Wesley Chapel, just north of Tampa, Florida. How cliché.

I have tons of friends in New England that I was loth to leave, as well as family, but my only daughter lives with her only husband (to my knowledge) in North Tampa. They had moved here three years ago from their 10 year home in Oregon and I had flown down to help them move into their new adobe and clay tile roofed hacienda. While there I drove around seeing what the Florida countryside had to offer.

My only knowledge of Florida consisted entirely of stereotypes. Jackie Gleeson moving to Miami from New York, “How sweet it is!” Gleeson used to joke that once he lived a few years in Florida he could no longer stand the New York winters. His doctor told him it was due to his blood becoming thinner in the warmer climate. “Of all the places to lose weight,” he quipped. “It has to be my blood!”

I heard stories of four lane roads with strip malls, restaurants, gas stations, endless traffic lights, and congestion. A few years earlier I helped my nephew move into a new house in Valrico, which is east of Tampa. I saw a lot of those strip mined, strip malled, four lane highways. And there are Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. I remembered Walter Cronkite narrating the launches of the Atlas rockets to the moon. And, of course, Florida is Disney World.

What I found was an Other Florida. A few miles outside of the strip mall mycelia growing out from the big cities, there is a countryside every bit as lovely as the lonely lands of Connecticut. There are fields and farms. Cows and horse barns. Theaters and cultural centers. Bee hives-I liked that! Rivers, of course. Florida is one, big sand bar soaked in water. Rail road tracks labor under the weight of boxcars of freight. There are little towns and, yes, long county roads growing barnacles of shops, bars, and businesses in clumps. Dade City, about 15 miles north, is a lovely old Florida city. There is history here going back to the Spanish. And the Seminoles, of course.

Connecticut? Well, what about my home? I will always be a New Englander, New Englandman. New English? Culture is like salt, once it gets into the blood it never leaves. But part of one’s culture is criticizing one’s culture. I was getting tired of New England winters, which can be a dastardly drench of dismal. My house, my home into which I had invested decades of improvements, work shop, custom made cabinets and staircases. Maquettes of a compass rose and an actual rose in the oak floors in my office and living room. And the flooding basement. God, the mold in the basement was evolving opposable thumbs.

I lived in Eastern Connecticut. What is affectionately called the Other Connecticut. That’s the Connecticut east of the Connecticut River. Unlike the Connecticut Gold Coast that stretches from New Haven to Greenwich, where people like Paul Neuman, Mia Farrow, and Radar from M*A*S*H had lived. 

The Connecticut river runs from Quebec through New England and straight down the middle of Connecticut, except for the bottom bit where it suddenly turns to the southeast and drains into Long Island Sound around Old Saybrook, like an Egyptian mumification tool gouging out Southeast Connecticut’s brains.

Eastern Connecticut was the rural part, except for the Military Industrial cities of New London and Groton. I had worked in EB at one point for about 10 years. The Electric Boat Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, to be precise. Builders of the world’s finest submarines. Our boats are guaranteed to sink!

Everybody in eastern Connecticut worked, had worked, knew someone who worked or had worked, or was related to someone who worked or had worked at EB. Or all of the above. EB was in our blood like seawater. Norwich used to, note: Used to, be a great city. Putnam is an up and coming city with the Bradley Playhouse a pillar of culture. I volunteered there, too, for decades. 

There is some spark of the old New England gentile society still in place. A mark left on us by Mark Twain. The University of Connecticut is in the east part of Connecticut. I worked there for 25 years and loved being part of academia. At least as a technician in the Computer Center. I pushed the buttons and pulled the levers of Metropolis. Though the freshmen kept getting younger every year.

And that’s where I lived. In the northeastern part of Connecticut. The real back country. The Appalachia of New England. Really, there are some burned out factories to yesterglory. Capitalism comes in like the whirlwind and leaves like a defeated army. Thus had had the industrial revolution its way with us. 

The Other Connecticut is doubly blessed. We have all the benefits of high taxes and regulations from Hartford without any of the burden of public services, economics, and stuff. What’s not to like?

And then, with nostalgia, I moved to Florida.

A Lock Odyssey

I remember going to the bank when I was a kid. It was one of the chores my mother would drag me along on, while doing laundry and having an ice cream soda at the pharmacy next door to the laundromat. Or having a grilled cheese sandwich and a coke at the Woolworth’s lunch counter downtown, next to the Midtown theater, barber shops, and newspaper stands that orbited the square. Or doing her banking which baffled me, of course. My mother would be at the teller window doing a transaction and I was distracted and looking around the place.

I saw the vault door, a two ton hunk of steel and intricate gearing on the inside that was laid back flat against the wall, I could see inside to the concrete and steel vault within. Secure? You bet! It was like Fort Knox to me. It held the hundreds of millions, back then it was millions, of dollars that constituted the depositor’s money, I assumed. What a burden. What a dragon’s hoard. It took me many years and a theater career to realize that that was all a show. Do you think that the bank’s money is in that vault? I did, once.

Outside, on the street. The street going from the marina to Franklin Square in Norwich, CT, where the bank I was standing in and gawking at was located. It looked like a Greek temple with Doric columns and stone steps ascending to the great glass doors. You had to climb up to the gods of finance within. That was banking. That was money. That was the only way you could live in this world. And from where I stood I could see into the Holy of Holies: The Vault. Is your money there? No. Of course not. Your money is in mining shares or invested in General Electric or AT&T. In government bonds and Ponzi schemes. The government controls our money, or so I thought. Those were the gods of commerce. Or the Titans, one might think. Money is our blood sacrifice and the blood that flows through our vanes. We give a little. We get a little. Every worshiper knows that.

Every school teacher. Every tinker.
Every scholar and every thinker.
Each bum on the street and every street sweeper.
The high. The low. Every newspaper inker.
All need money to live.

So I, as a little kid, standing in the lobby of a bank in Norwich, Connecticut marveling at the wonder and the security of it all was just an acolyte. Just a novice initiate into the world of ‘We own everything and we own you, too’ that I lived in.

And what did I know? Just that the mechanism of the vault door looked cool and secure and an object of worship to supplicants like my mother who worshiped at the altar of Mammon with a deposit slip passed under the glass confessional and a savings accounts, 3.5% interest, would you like a calendar, Ma’am?

Recently I bought a set of lock picking tools. I had watched some YouTube videos on lock picking and it looked like a clever puzzle to solve so I thought, Why not? Thirty dollars later and a neat little wallet of about 20 picks, rakes, and tensioning tools arrived at my door. I took the lock off of my driveway gate, I never lock it anyway, and had a whack at it. It was a Master lock I got at Home Depot last year to ‘secure’ my perimeter. It even had the word ‘Master’ emblazoned on the laminated steel casing as if that meant anything. How secure is that?

It was a little rusty and very much in need of oiling, as are all residential locks exposed to the weather, I suppose. So I wasn’t expecting much. I put the pick in just to feel around and get an understanding of the mechanism. Yup. There is some springy resistance against the pick. That must be a pin or something. And there is another. Cool.

Then I tried picking for real. I put the tensioner in and gave it a press, just to put pressure on the lock cylinder as if a real key was in it and legitimately wanted to open the lock. Then I felt around and pushed up on the pins, not expecting much. OK. There’s something. A pin fell into place. And another. A click! That’s supposed to be a good thing, or so said the Lock Picking Lawyer on YouTube. He should know. He has a YouTube channel!

What? Am I at the end? I’d gone all the way down the inside of the lock cylinder, merrily picking as I went. Not really sure what I was doing. I’d say I was lost but since this was my first trip through the lock picking maze, how can I say I was ever found first to begin with? Oh, OK. Another. And another. Oh, another click! This if fun-wait. Huh?

The lock just snapped open in my palm. Under two minutes and it was compromised.

Really? I, a jackass with a thirty dollar lock picking set just opened a Master lock? No way. It must be beginner’s luck. Beginner’s, lock picking, criminal’s luck. Let me try that again.

The second time took more time because I really wanted to know what I had done right the first time. So I felt along the inside of the cylinder for the little spring loaded pin thingies. One, two, three… Where are they? How are they set in the cylinder? And how do they respond to the magic of the key that I was trying to counterfeit? Alright. There is a soft spot. A click! I remember that from the YouTube videos! OK. That one is ‘set.’ And another. Then back again. Pretty straight forward. And… Open! Under five minutes. Like, way under. Who’s the master now?

You’ve got to be kidding me. A dweeb in his home can pick a lock without knowing what the heck he is doing in under a few minutes? Why do we even have locks in the first place, anyway? I mean, they look so impressive what with their laminated bodies and two ton doors. Their glass windows and scary tellers and their calendars. What’s the use of them?

The use of them is use, of course. We use them because we use them. We believe in them because we believe in them. We trust them because enough of us trust them to make them trustworthy. Locks are there to keep honest people honest, they say. Who is this ‘They’ anyway? And why do ‘They’ have so much to say? And why should we believe ‘Them’ anyway? Have ‘They’ ever picked a lock? I doubt it.

That bank on the side street of the 1960’s city downtown with the Doric columns and the marble steps and glass doors admitting one to the sacred, sanctioned lobby with its holiest of hollies laid bare, tempting, licentious, at the back of the temple. That house to commerce and lifeblood of town and shop and home. It exists because we believe it exists. It has virtue because we think it does. It gives us life because we give it life.

Until someone comes along and picks its locks.

Shoes and Feet

 

I try to see things from other people’s perspectives. Like many people of my generation I was a second generation something-or-other. There was the great immigration wave of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through Ellis Island in New York Harbor, and I was one of their grandchildren. In my case it was eastern Europe. My grandfather was Russian, having been born between Odessa and Crimea, which is in today’s Ukraine. My grandmother was Polish, having been born further north in a region which today is, ironically, also in Ukraine. The town she was born in is just across a river which is today’s border between Poland and Ukraine. East European borders are a calliope of contradictions.

I grew up with Slavic culture saturated in 1950’s kitsch. I never knew my father’s relatives, so, sadly, I can’t speak for my western European ancestry. Not from personal experience, at least. I will always be an admirer of Queen Olga. No offence, Boudica.

I am not going to draw any moral conclusions in this essay. Not today. But I would just like to draw an analogy. I would just like to place some Slavic shoes on some Columbian feet, if I may. So. Let’s suppose.

Let’s suppose that in 1990 the United States empire was the one that was collapsing. Suppose that Presidents Gorbachev and Reagan had been negotiating the breakup of the US. It might have gone something like this. The former United States of America will be transformed into three republics: The Western Federation, the Eastern Federation, and the Prairie. With capitols being San Francisco, Washington DC, and New Orleans. The Eastern Federation would have control of the army and nuclear weapons, with negotiations on interstate commerce, rail roads, Interstate highways, the electric grid, water rights, the Internet, etc. It was a mess, but it was necessary.

The USSR would assist, obviously. It was in their interest for a former American empire to be stable and an integral part of the world’s economy, blah, blah, blah. We will provide ‘advisors’ to assist in restructuring the US economy, politics, yada, yada, yada. Here! We will even write your new constitution for you. And so forth and what not. The end was clear: The former United States were to become a vassal resource pool and dumping ground for They, the Winners. Just like every other conquest in history.

Oh, and one more thing. President Gorbachev made guarantees that the Warsaw Pact army would not move against the Americans in their weakness. Not one centimeter west! was the promise he gave. The Iron Curtain would become more of a polite Iron Picket Fence that friends could lean on and talk about the weather and walk through unlocked gates to get to each other for Sunday picnics in the park, favorite fishing holes, and whatnot. Just a way of declaring, in a friendly fashion, that here is my turf and there is yours. See! We respect each other. Picket fences, or iron curtains, make for good neighbors, after all.

Then there arose a Pharoah that did not know Joseph. A president of the USSR, let’s call him. Wilburn Clintonovitch, who wanted none of that ‘equal partner’ stuff. The USSR won, after all. We are the post Cold War Empire Supreme. Why are we not empiring? Supremely?

It started with advances west of the old Berlin wall. West Germany was invited to join the Warsaw Pact nations. As was Italy. Greece. France. Soon most of western Europe was pretty much under the auspices of the Soviet Union-for defensive purposes, of course. There were threatening governments in South America that needed to be countered. Gradually the Soviet Union’s power spread westward, like mycelia growing throughout the roots of an ancient Oak tree, mushrooms popping up along the way.

Then, Clintonovitch made up some claims about genocides and ethnic cleansing going on in California and evoked the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect to wage a full scale invasion of the Western Federation, decimating all infrastructure; water, electricity, fuel, rail roads, Interstate highways, food supplies, sewage; and left the west coast a shambles. New Mexico was declared ‘liberated’ and became an independent nation and a de facto vassal of the USSR, who immediately started building military bases on its territory, along with Oregon, Washington, and Canada.

Then in 2014 USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs Hildren Clintonova orchestrated the overthrow of the government of Prairie. “Five billion rubles,” she boasted. “We spent five billion rubles to overthrow the government of New Orleans!” And she added, “F*** the USA.” Clintonova then installed a government composed of KKK members from the southern region. There were old scores to settle. They were not too bright. But vicious. And useful if you don’t let them too close to your own country. The new government delegitimized the use of the English language and English history in schools, instead insisting on a Creole language of French, Spanish, and African dialect and claimed an ethnic ancestry with the Louisiana Territory. And a searing hatred of the northern states.

The government in Washington protested. Flustered and blustered. And filed complaints in the United Nations, which the USSR vetoed, of course, being dominated by Russian stooges and KGB agents. There was a fifth column in the Eastern Federation composed of American oligarchs who were growing rich on the wars that the Soviet Union were fomenting around the globe. Why rock the yacht? Useful idiots are infinitely available and as disposable as used condoms.

At this point in my story I would like to say that the Eastern Federation regrouped and rallied around a leader who could push back against the evils of USSR: Invincible. Someone who could electrify his base along the common bonds of religion, culture, self-sacrifice, and shared destiny. And give them strength to shelter in the bunker of last resort and never give in. Someone who would die for a cause. Someone to believe that the USA is our culture, our people, our motherland.

I don’t see it.