Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Advice for Would-Be Presidents
I’m not much of a joiner. Besides, any club that would have me as a member obviously has standards too high for me to live up to. But I am excited about my first meeting tonight with the “Monitor Twitter and Facebook Looking for Anyone Who Says Something Positive or Evenhanded About Donald Trump So We Can Bully and Harass Them on Social Media and Recreational Drugs Club.”
Okay, I made that up, but there is a loose confederation of such folks and they lie in wait ready to pounce if they even smell anything that resembles “normalizing” Mr. Trump. And, for them, normalizing means making any mention of him or members of his family or administration that does not include words such as “wacko,” “nutjob,” “racist,” “sexist,” or “megalomaniac.”
For example, I occasionally read a blog that analyzes, discusses, and critiques The New York Times’s crossword puzzles. Any mention of anything Trump in an answer or a clue causes the writer of the blog to fly into a rage over how the Times is normalizing the guy. Really? It’s a crossword puzzle! It’s The New York Times! And he’s the President of the United States! Well, maybe not his president, but certainly a president.
I’m not sure how all this anger will play out, but I’ve now come to the unhappy conclusion that it will remain with us for the balance of the Trump Era. (Excuse me, I meant Wacko Trump Era.) And in all my decades on this planet, I’ve never seen politics create such a divide among friends, families and co-workers. It’s really wearing me out. If there truly is a pendulum effect, that could mean the time will be ripe for an incredibly boring candidate. After all the Trump and Clinton Drama — and I’m afraid the latter isn’t going anywhere either — the country could very well be ready for the political version of Caspar Milquetoast. The best slogan for a future presidential candidate? How about, “Bland is Beautiful.”
Published in General
There is another facet of the Vietnam War that might escape the casual observer or student today. The draft reached into our homes and forced our young men into a war on behalf of a people that Americans did not know. Our military sought to assemble the youngest military America had ever fielded based on studies that showed that 18 year olds who had not started a family yet were more malleable ethically and more aggressive in combat than 25 year olds who were likely to have started a family and established a career. As someone who had uncles in the draft pool, and was nearing draft age myself by the end, I had an acute interest in the war at the time.
Young men returning from Vietnam, like every other war, often suffered from what we now call PTSD. The topic was discussed more openly than before and was gathered up with all the other arguments against the war to be liberally aired. A kid next door liked to show the staggered pattern of entry and exit wounds that had bought him a long hospital stay and early discharge.
Working construction at Walter Reed for the summer, my first job, veterans of Company C taught me things about the poetry of cursing that would make the script writers on Deadwood blush. Naturally, the CoC prevents me from sharing.
It was in college that I encountered a Vietnamese refugee, a boat person. A medical doctor in his thirties whose credentials did not convey to the states, he was studying computer science with a focus and discipline that was rare. These were “illegal immigrants” in their day, and a living reminder of defeat that Washington rhetoric often despised, but they made the argument every day, not in words but in their actions and comportment, for winning that already lost war.
Our contesting of the war was cited for buying the Philippines and other rising Asian capitalist societies in the region to prosper and harden their militaries to counter Chinese and Russian pressure to adopt Marxism.
The closest I came to encountering radicals in my college career was a priest-led class covering just war theory in the context of mutual assured destruction. The urgency of “exposing our throats” to the Soviets before a sinful, reckless Reagan initiated a nuclear winter against the plan of God. Amusingly, as William F Buckley shared after Reagan passed, the president had privately shared his own confession that, as a Christian, he could not in good conscience retaliate against a Soviet first strike with a nuclear response.
In the end, Reagan was able to convince the dubious Soviets that if they allowed internal reform the American led West would not take advantage as the Soviets sorted themselves out.
Not that you would know that from following the fake news.
And we have a 21st century Calvin Coolidge. His name is Mitch Daniels. I still keep holding out hope that he will realize the country is more important than Purdue. (Apologies to Purdue grads.)
@sisyphus, Excellent points!
I don’t know if I ever heard Bill’s recollection about what Reagan said. Young members of the left have been indoctrinated otherwise.
I’m glad to hear your memory of the Vietnamese doctor you met in college. For all the things we supposedly did wrong in Vietnam, the mass exodus out didn’t happen until we were gone.
One of the most important wrong things we did, IMO, is to have simply quit and walked away, regardless of the still arguable question of whether we should have been there in the first place. Since then I believe it can be argued that we have followed the precedent set, in all the armed conflicts we have been in, to the detriment of all concerned in each conflict.
Just to say: Thank you, Mr. Sajak! @max, where’s the “I love this!” button?
Yes. A Democratic Congress overrode a Gerald Ford veto to adopt a budget that required that “not one nickel” could be spent to help our ally South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese simply waited. Six months later, after the Army of South Vietnam had literally run out of gasoline and diesel fuel, the North Vietnamese rolled in and achieved victory in six weeks.
The result was a half million murdered South Vietnamese plus 800,000 boat people and over a million other refugees. Then dominoes fell, leading to three million dead Cambodians plus over a half-million dead Laotians.
So, yeah, we “simply quit and walked away,” thereby betraying friends and allies and demonstrating to the world that America is an unreliable ally. We did the same thing in Iraq under Obama.
The lesson is that the Democrat Party is the Treason Party. The precedent is that, no matter how good the situation on the ground is, the Democrats will throw away victorious positions, betray our friends and sell out our allies and take a bow for their efforts with the aid of a deceitful anti-war, anti-American mass media.
This is the best summary of the end of the Vietnam War that I have read in a while. Thank you.