WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS

By Edwin Cooney

 

Eighty-two years ago, as the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, several factors favored fortress America.

First, there was our geographic isolation from Japan and Germany. Second, there was what Winston Churchill called Britain's and America's fraternal association of blood, law and language. Third, totalitarianism was at war with itself which was emphasized by Nazi Germany's invasion of Communist Russia and therefore Russia needed to be saved from Nazism by the “free world.”

The last time that Congress declared war on any country was Monday, December 8th, 1941.

Today's world, of course, is vastly different than the world of 1941. It is much more deadly than the Second World War was for millions of people across the globe.

The close of World War I marked the end of empires and royal dynasties.

The close of World War II opened the atomic age and a worldwide agenda to avoid World War III.

Back in 1991, millions of us believed that the end of communism and the advance of democracy meant that World War III had been pretty permanently avoided.

Now, however, Armageddon may — just may — be around the corner. Hence, the inevitable question: where do we go from here?

Last night, as the host of a zoom program called "The Political Parlor," I featured a Christmas Eve broadcast from the South Lawn of the White House by FDR and Winston Churchill.

President Roosevelt wondered how we could celebrate Christmas, how we could light our tree and give our gifts. He found the answer to those questions in the significance of Christmas as the birthday of "our Savior Jesus Christ.” After all, the sharing of gifts to one another was to share gifts with Christ.

Prime Minister Churchill, in his best Dickensian way, linked family tradition and Father Christmas with children's innocence and happy inheritance, asserting that the hard and grim days ahead constituted a struggle to win for the children's future their natural birthright of happy lifelong  expectation.

Perhaps there's some hope that catastrophe will be avoided for most of us if not for all of us. After all, human nature has a habit of doing what it takes to preserve life here on earth.

Someone once observed that perhaps communism stayed its hand during the cold war because it came to realize that it was too materialistic to deserve the blessings of a spiritual reward and that capitalism was sufficiently anxious to avoid nuclear disaster because there was still much more profit to be realized.

For now, I'm allowing myself to take comfort in the best images of our imperfect but glorious past.

Ah! Grandfatherly Winston: with your plum pudding, your cigar, and your imperial eloquence, bathe today's crises with the assurance you offered the less than worthy world of eighty-two years ago!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

A BEFUDDLED PEOPLE

By Edwin Cooney

When I was growing up in the 50s, 60s and 70s, many people asserted that there were three topics one should avoid discussing: race, religion, and politics. That admonition was advice I happily and totally rejected. After all, how could one resolve issues without writing and talking about them? These three topics were always an aspect of human relationships, but neither Democrats nor Republicans had a monopoly when it came to coping with the emotional components of race, religion, or the wise application of politics.

Last week, I wrote that since 2000, Americans have been bombarded as never before with crises that in one way or another reflected on our wisdom or well-being as a people. The wisdom or sincerity of lawyers and politicians has always been suspect, but the genuineness of educators, physicians, and even the clergy have, over recent decades, been dulled and even poisoned by their increasing connection with political parties and controversial social conflicts. Political divides have become personal.

Political talk show hosts of the left, right, and of the “Trumpian cult” appear to have more influence than Twentieth Century spiritual leaders.

Even more disheartening is the degree of person to person animosity among people who just awhile ago would have been tolerant of one another. Many who are straight resent the marriage and parental privileges that gays and lesbians have been granted. People resent the sympathies of legal immigrants’ support for other immigrants fleeing from terror in their native countries. Whites fear the almost inevitable majority status of Blacks. Law enforcement resists and resents efforts to monitor their behavior. “Black lives matter” to some and don't matter enough to others.

The 2024 elephant in the room is the electability of former President Donald Trump. His appeal lies in his decisiveness and his willingness to destroy all lawful and even constitutional impediments that would obstruct his agenda. He says that his enemies are “corrupt politicians” while he and his supporters are “American patriots,” pure and simple. The question is: would a reasonable and rational people elect Mr. Trump as our 47th president in 2024?

The answer to that question is that as unlikely as it ought to be, they might! However, the fact that they might doesn't mean that they will.

In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln asserted that no government worthy of its purpose would allow for its destruction. He established our ultimate Union by characterizing the upcoming conflict as a “rebellion” rather than a war. Thus, the Congress never declared war against the Confederacy.

Sadly, Donald Trump's political availability via the voting booth, means the people may overthrow their government if they so choose.

Freedom, vital as it is, does not guarantee wisdom. Freedom is only about freedom. Freedom doesn't require either morality or wisdom. Freedom is merely dependent on both! 

Therein lies freedom's greatest challenge to a befuddled people!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

AMERICA — SCARED STRAIGHT OR SCARED TO DEATH?

By Edwin Cooney

Although “America the Beautiful” plays deep in my soul as I write, the unpublished song “America the Scared” rattles around in my brain!  In many states, a program exists designed to "scare straight” teenage delinquents who are thought to be ticketed for adult prison. Hence, will America be scared straight or scared to death due to the social, economic, and political body blows she has suffered over the past nearly 24 years?

A review of recent history reminds me that we've had at least ten major national crises since the year 2000. First there were those “hanging chads” and the partisan Supreme Court that defeated the winner of the popular vote of 2000.

Next came September 11th, 2001 when Toby Keith suggested in his angry song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” that “we’ll put a boot in your ass” of one or two Arab societies who had sought to intimidate us by hijacking our own airplanes.

Next, believing that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction,” we pinned him down in a cave and eventually sent him to the gallows. Then, we sent good American soldiers into Iraq in a frustrating and rather futile attempt to control the land of the Tigress and Euphrates from which we all originated. That conflict lasted until 2011.

In 2008, there were two disasters. One, which was economic, resulted from poor commercial banking and consumer rip-offs. For too many, the other disaster was political — the election as president of a man both Black and of Islamic and African extraction!

In 2010, there came  “Obamacare."

In 2011, Osama bin Laden was captured but, satisfactory as it was, our president didn't deserve credit for it!

In 2012, there was the Sandy Hook shooting and a government shutdown by the president's political opposition.

As shootings continued throughout 2014 and 2015, the old capital punishment controversy became silly as most shooters killed themselves.

In 2016, for the second time in 16 years (and four presidential elections), the electoral college winner was the popular vote loser. There were matters having to do with one candidate's emails and the other candidate's relationship with women.

Once 2017 got underway, there was the National Security Advisor's lies and an angry president's cries. There were 7 school shootings in 2017, 9 in 2018, and 7 more in 2019.

Finally, 2020 brought the question forth as to whether Black lives mattered or didn’t and what was right, wrong or uncertain regarding our responses to Covid!

Accompanying all this was the 2020 election and what, if anything, either candidate had to do with it.

Twenty-first century Americans have more information at their fingertips than any generation in history. We're flooded with stories of minority groups' lifestyles, mores, and political demands. We know, or think we do, about many types of people and their lifestyles that appear to threaten our very national heritage. All of these uncertainties both personalize and politicize every public issue. 

In addition to attitudes which are anti-Semitic,  anti-Catholic, and against those who are foreign born — going back to the beginning of our republic — people hate gays and lesbians, Muslims, and others who may be married or unmarried. Many insist, especially the religious, that they hate the sin, but love the sinner but when you ask them what sinner they love, their response gets vague and defensive. Fear, the father of hatred, so dominates us, including fear and jealousy of the successful and perhaps especially of the rich, that we're ultimately confused as to where the root of our fears resides.

Back in 2020, candidate Joe Biden told author Evan Osnos, "The problem addressing hatred is that to do so only gives hatred more oxygen. If we can't even address hatred, how can we hope to wisely select and elect our national leadership?”

We've become so enamored by suspicion, hatred and fear that  the very idea of tolerance either scares us to death or may, just may, one day soon even scare us straight!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY