News and Opinion – South of Town: Notes and Scenes from Texas' Upper Gulf Coast

2020 – A SILENT GENERATION LAMENT

The cohort of Americans born between 1928 and 1945 has been called the Silent Generation. I didn’t know that I was a member of the Silent Generation until I wrote the piece below and I looked up “generation” in Wikipedia to see if I was indeed a boomer myself or, maybe, even an undeserving member of what they were calling the Greatest Generation. I found out that I am stuck in between the two. We are hardly noticed by the folks who try to generalize about the behavioral characteristics of people born in certain age cohorts.

I was late coming to the Silent Generation so my adult years were spent with talk everywhere about “boomers.” Marketing and media primarily addressed their needs and preferences. I heard so much about boomers that I subconsciously identified and, in any case, I was very nearly one myself since you could say that I was born on the cusp. But as I read more about those years between 1928 and 1945, I could see how completely my life was in the grip of that history.

What follows is very long. If you decide to read it, you will see that it is laid out like a poem. If it reads like prose to you, at least stop for a beat to think before going to the next line. Each bit of our history is loaded with plenty to think about. Yes, Truman and Eisenhower may not excite you. Ozzie and Harriet may bore you. But the kids who first learned about the world from floor model radios and small black and white screens had much to think about. And we have much to regret.

The piece is a personal project. It was completed during the 2020 election campaign and before the Biden-Harris election results were known. Although it is a hopeful sign, it doesn’t really change much. Having lived through alternating and descending stair steps down into Trump hell, I know that it will take more than a single presidential election to get us heading onward and upward again. But we must continue the struggle.

Reflections on Democracy: Lessons from the White House, 1964 and 2025

I had decided to let this thing go, this WordPress subscription. I stopped it but I was informed by the WordPress powers (that’s their spelling with the capital P in the miDDle) that I had recently paid for a year and I could post until my renewal date but no longer if I didn’t renew. So I left it to fallow and let the old posts rot in the field thinking that I would never post again.

I’m not sure what pushed me over the edge and led me to reach out again last night but maybe it was the criminal destruction of the East Wing of the White House. I have always felt myself to be a part owner of the White House with a bit of personal interest in its preservation as a public historical asset.

I went there once in 1964 as a college student invited by President Lyndon Johnson who, working from a mailing list, asked Dr. Phillip Hoffman of the University of Houston to identify and sponsor a student leader to come to a special White House student leaders meeting.

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Observing Flag Day, June 14, 2025

The president has demonstrated a distaste for anything that limits his power — the rule of law, the Constitution of the United States, courts that refuse to be used by him, and the free press which constantly reports “fake news”. The list goes on — foreign aid, immigration law, noncompliant Republican legislators, whistleblower protections, checks and balances, climate science, trade agreements, NATO. Those are only a few of the things that trigger him. (Do you like that word?)

Beyond that, he has insulted or abandoned allies that America has developed over many decades — some, for over a century. He has admired the leaders of Russia and North Korea when they rolled out tanks and rockets to demonstrate their power to the people of the Earth — but, most importantly, to their own citizens.

He has spoken derisively of the American men and women who loved their country and its democratic values enough to sacrifice their lives to protect those values from people like him.

Yet he loves his flag. He wears it on his lapel. He embraces it — literally.

I fly the American flag every day to show respect for those very things that justly limit his power.

Flag Day should be a special day. But no, he uses Flag Day to give himself a military parade through our nation’s capital to celebrate his birthday. Of course it is only a coincidence that Flag Day falls on his birthday, a day which in 2025 also happens to be the 250th anniversary of the United States Army.

What a convenient tri-incidence: Flag Day, the Army’s semi-quincentennial, and his 79th birthday. Why in the world would you have three parties when you could throw just one? We should be able to pull that off for a mere $45 million.

So, as the president debases the flag on this Flag Day, I will honor it by removing it from the front of our home, hopefully leaving a very noticeable blank space in our neighborhood where our friends and neighbors have long been able to count on seeing the red, white and blue on proud display. But at this address, our flag will not be associated with the most openly corrupt and illiberal American political leader in our nation’s history.

The colors will go back out the next day. I will once again fly it proudly as a symbol of devotion to democracy and the rule of law, the things that have made America a great nation, admired around the world, and a chosen destination for migration from all distressed nations — just as it was for most of our own forebears since the 16th Century.

We pride ourselves on America’s soft power — the ability to strengthen our influence by striving after peace, love, understanding, sharing and hope throughout the world. Sometimes we fall short, but still, it is the flag I celebrate every day of any year that our freedom endures — except when it is being used for authoritarian purposes.

“Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law.”

Read the words. It’s a beautiful hymn to God and country.

Don’t Despair: Good People with Grit Find a Way to Win

www.nytimes.com/2021/11/22/opinion/american-democracy.html

This is an article by Michelle Goldberg from the Nov. 22 New York Times. In it she discusses the various techniques the present day Republican Party has put in place to prevent Democrats from ever again influencing public policy in any meaningful way. I hope you will be able to open the article and read it if you have not already done so.

As she ticks off the things they have done over the last forty years, it becomes clear that what they have in mind is a one-party America run for the benefit of a white, male, evangelical Christian minority that won’t hesitate to use its Second Amendment rights to intimidate and suppress.

If you are a Democrat, things seem hopeless. And things look particularly grim if you are a Democrat who is non-white, or maybe someone who identifies as LGBTQ (will five letters do?), or maybe even if you are a woman, things begin to look pretty hopeless.

I grew up in a one party state. Yes, it was right here in Texas. It was the Democrats then. We went through the whole process of picking candidates to run against a Republican nominee in the General Election. The democratic primaries usually offered the voters real choices. But the Republican never won. And many of the Democrats who won could easily match conservative cred with today’s Republicans, including the racist part.

The Republicans never won, that is, until some rich Texans decided they had had enough when the Democratic Party started doing the unthinkable — electing liberals. And some of the conservatives the Democrats had elected to state offices moved into national office and began to act like liberals. Rich Texans decided it was time to build a Republican Party that could take care of business — literally. Continue reading “Don’t Despair: Good People with Grit Find a Way to Win”

Veterans Day and a Thought about Vaccinations and Masks

I read today that only one in ten adult Americans alive today have spent any time in military service. The other ninety percent are quick to “thank you for your service.” Yet a good many of them insist on the right to remain unmasked and unvaccinated during a deadly pandemic.

I wasn’t told about any such rights in 1968 when they lined us up and marched us between two rows of medical technicians who administered multiple inoculations through pressure pumps that pierced the skin without needles. One med tech leaned on us from each side to administer two shots quickly so we could move on the the next two shots. I don’t even remember how many shots we got that day to prepare us for possible service in southeast Asia.

Mine turned out to be unnecessary since I never went to Vietnam. Still, I have been protected against some unknown list of exotic diseases all these years. I haven’t had the plague yet. Thank you, Uncle Sam.

I try to imagine anyone that day claiming a religious exemption. He probably would have been sent over to talk with the chaplain. It would have been a brief consultation. Mine would have gone about like this: “Methodist? Hmmm. No, private, Jesus didn’t have anything to say about vaccinations. In fact, he talked a lot about sacrificing for others. Go get back in line.”

Maybe Veterans Day would be a good time for Americans to take their minds off their rights for a brief while and spend a few minutes thinking about duty and responsibility. No uniform is required to be a responsible citizen.

So, get vaccinated. Do it for a veteran you love. Do it for your protection and theirs. He or she may thank you for your service.

Open Mic Night at the School Board: I Play the Gray Card

Inspired by Michael Morris’s September 8 column in The Facts, I called the school district office and got on the list to offer public comment at the start of the September board meeting. I am not an open mic kind of person, but Mr. Morris reminded me of the importance, in a democracy, of speaking up when you have a reasonable opinion about how things should go in your community’s life.

As the day approached I thought about the possibility that the Justice for J-6 crowd may well be preparing to flood the board room with bikers recruited from Sturgis, South Dakota to chain whip anyone daring to appear at the meeting masked against “the Chinese virus“. At a minimum I thought I ought to choose my words carefully and write them down to keep myself on script.

So I wrote about two and a half minutes of my thoughts in which I appealed to my status as an elder in the community. Maybe they would’t beat up an old man wearing glasses, leaning on a cane, and talking about the olden days.

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