Idealists Among Us as Cream in Our Coffee

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Head note

Michael Moore, in an interview November 1 2002 said:

“I’m a citizen in a democracy. To call me an activist would be redundant. It’s not a spectator sport. If we all become nonparticipants, it no longer works.”

Preface: Trundling Towards a Hypothesis

You may have seen a bumper sticker saying our M.I.A. P.O.Ws (missing in action, prisoners of war) are not forgotten. And rightly so.

Question: Are our boys, our M.I.A.s, still being held in secret communist Vietnam prison camps? 
Answer: No point in arguing.

No, because, as a veteran says to Jodie, a daughter of a fellow veteran named Leon, 

“…Leon’s the conclusive argument. Your old man, and people just like him. I know those people. Brave, honourable people, Jodie. They fought there, and then they rose to power and prominence later. The Pentagon is stuffed full of a—s, I know that as well as anybody, but there were always enough people like Leon around to keep them honest. You answer me a question: If Leon had known there were still prisoners kept back in ‘Nam, what would he have done?”

(p 286) Tripwire by Lee Child, copyright 1999. (Note: If Major Jack Reacher was not idealistic about “getting involved” then we would not want to read a series about him)

Hypothesis: Every healthy armed forces needs its Leons, and every healthy civil population needs its Michael Moores, as roast beef needs salt. Good citizens. Idealistic.

Of course, any society could eventually lose its health, … as did first ancient Greece, then Rome. 

Introduction: I wonder what my dad would have thought, young, freshly back from World War II, if he had been told that in the 21st century Americans would declare war, but then not be participants, nor even spectators, nor even be sending a Congressional committee over to report back on whether the occupation was proceeding to fulfill the goal of instilling democracy. Maybe Dad would say such civilians don’t deserve the honorific of “citizen.”

Hello Reader,

Got idealism?

The Personal

The National

The Political

The Personal

I was thinking: Folk music is for idealistic people. It was a Nobel prize winning folkie, Bob Dylan, who sang “You’ve got to serve someone.” An idealist, to me, is anyone who serves abstract values to a “greater” degree… “not like some.” 

Take driving. I learned something years ago when my City of Calgary was thinking of spending more than a million dollars to replace all our speed signs, to give us new, improved lower residential speeds. We decided the money would be wasted. Why? Turns out most people don’t constantly glance at their speedometer to compare their speed to the posted limit, not like we all did at driving school. Instead, most people drive by what “feels right.”

“Oh,” I thought. “And here I was trying to serve the abstraction of “proper driving school standards.” But I don’t feel badly at driving as primly as a police constable. (By the way, someone told me you can spot police operating in plainclothes because they drive properly with their hands on the wheel at 10 and 2 o’clock) 

I am fine knowing, as Edward Llewelyn noted in his novel Word Bringer, that society needs a sprinkling of “proper” drivers to keep the rest of us from driving like swine. (A measure of prigs to prevent pigs) Oh, and in case you ask me: Yes, I “speed” to match the traffic flow, and yes I use the passing lane for passing, not for “slowly” cruising. I figure that’s only proper.

Recently I learned something new about idealists. One of my favorite bloggers, Penelope Trunk, often refers to her “Meyers-Briggs personality test.”  What I learned was that, according to Ms Trunk and her tests, many idealists take it for granted that other people all have ideals too, not realizing some others don’t live their lives serving ideals. 

The National

As for me, I can unapologetically be “bi-cultural,” meaning: I can be an idealist myself, while being aware of non-idealists. So on my blog, in the “about me” part, I have recently put that I am “an idealist” feeling nostalgia for the republics of Greece and Rome. The implication, of course, being that I would only say so because I don’t expect others to be idealistic. We can’t all be like George Washington, George Orwell and the heroes played by George Clooney.

As for the national level: I don’t think ideals should replace truth, but I do think we can teach ideals alongside truth. As I suppose the noble Greeks and Romans did, when they would say “everybody should leave their city-state a little better than they found it.” Those same Greeks, with their famously well-rounded schools, would say to their children and each other, “Not life, but a good life, is expected of every citizen.” 

Here in America, we can be talking to our children about how we value being free and brave, even as by our actions we are disabling these values: Yes, we are. Let’s face it: Everybody knows we are drastically increasing security at the expense of liberty. At long last, maybe, the idealists are too much outnumbered by the craven sort who crave safety. After all, Homeland Security, (H.S.) and the patriot act too, should have been scrutinized and reformed long before now, perhaps by a congressional investigative committee.  

This month I read how a senator was reduced to using the only power he had left: sarcasm. He asked sarcastic questions to H.S. This was regarding border guards no longer needing just cause or reasonable suspicion for going into cell phones and tablets. The honorable senator had no power. To me, the “smoking gun” to prove H.S. has gross, arrogant, unbelievable incompetence was when the head of H.S. claimed publicly, long after 9/11, that some of the 9/11 killers had crossed in from Canada. 

The Political

If all wars, including the one my dad fought against fascism in the Pacific and Europe, have lots of drum beating and flag waving, then surely that’s partly to bring us all up to the level of the idealists. Just as how waving pom poms with a peppy “rah-rah” for recycling brings us all up to a green level… 

With some idealists among us, like sugar in our coffee, we can drink the medicine before us—and then go recycle, and go drive on safe roads, too. You don’t have to involve the idealists among us, but for goodness sake… If you aren’t going to beat the drum, then don’t declare war. 

In other words: Leaving a War to the civil servants and armed forces is unworthy of any democracy. … 

If (judging by how apathy on the home front caused the mission to Iraq to be a fiasco) common people like us are passive, craving freedom from responsibility… valuing comfort over citizenship… valuing our private couches over our national War Effort then no wonder the senators would stay on their couches too. Yes, everybody did. Americans wouldn’t send an investigative committee over to Iraq to keep the United States accountable to their stated national mission, a mission so important that instead of withdrawing from a sovereign nation within six months of toppling the dictator, the U.S., instead, lingered to occupy Iraq: To Instil Democracy… Maybe, congress is like how the senators of Rome, in a shining city previously famous for bravery and virtue, at last came to choose their personal safety over keeping Caesar accountable.

Part of the reason the shining noble Roman republic declined into becoming a big dark spreading empire was this: By the time they surrendered to Caesar, the Romans had lost practically all their idealists. People like Cicero, “a pillar of iron,” became too few, too few.

“Only the good die young.” Well. Even today, as I have earned my white hair, I am still able to surround myself with music loving friends who are equally elderly and equally believe in ideals. That’s a comfort.

Sean Crawford

In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains

April, 2018

Nonfiction Footnote, regarding Iraq: 

Cue Hollywood movie trailer voice: “But they didn’t count on one man!”  A “homely American” who escaped the Green Zone and mingled with the locals, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, exposed his country in Green Zone subtitled Imperial Life in the Emerald City. 

(Basis for the Matt Damon movie)

Fiction Footnote, regarding a future society: 

I like how Robert Heinlein’s character Friday is so intent on being “professional.” This even though she is raised by cynical staff in a cold orphanage. In a future society lacking the ideals of “citizenship,” she ignores the losers around her to create ideals of her own, ideals of “professionalism.” I can relate.

Essay Footnote, regarding this blog: To reduce length, a big part of this essay is gone: It was cut and pasted into my essay Pre Patriot Day before September eleventh of 2018 (See archives)

Two Youtube Footnotes:

~ “Only the good die young” has me thinking of a childhood folk song. 

I remember our old radio set, a set with no shell, just naked vacuum tubes and the speaker, with a fuzzy wire strung up the wall then along the cupboard to serve as an arial. One day, as a new folk song played, my haggard mother, in her plain cotton dress, whispered aloud each last name of each of the four idealists. This would have been very soon after the murder of Robert “Bobby” Kennedy. If only he had lived, and been elected president, then I just know… he would have promptly got us out of Vietnam…

For her version of the song, Mahalia Jackson, the “queen of gospel” added the last names. Here she is on Youtube. (link)

~Like art? Like Speeches? There is a public art sculpture of two deceased public speakers, idealists, reaching across ignorance towards each other. It is shown at the end of this public speech video, with added music, of Bobby on the night Martin died. (link) 

Notes on Thrift and Service

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got respect for an old era?

Here are various notes to complement last week’s essay, entitled Baden-Powell’s Era is Gone, about the life and times of (back then) the only living man to have founded an international organization.

Understanding Boy Scouts 

From Chapter one of Scouting For Boys, (1908) after explaining chivalry, and how the code of chivalry is like the Scout Law, comes this passage: 

QUOTE

You Scouts cannot do better than follow the example of the Knights.

One great point about them was that every day they had to do a Good Turn to somebody, and that is one of our rules.

When you get up in the morning, remember that you have to do a Good Turn for someone during the day. Tie a knot your handkerchief or neckerchief to remind yourself of it.

UNQUOTE 

Last week, dear reader, I quoted about serving your country. It was from a larger section that began under the subheading Love Your Country:

QUOTE

My country and your country did not grow of itself out of nothing. It was made by men and women by dint of hard work and hard fighting, often at the sacrifice of their lives—that is, by their whole-hearted patriotism.

In all you do, think of your country first. Don’t spend the whole of your time and money merely to amuse yourself, but think first of how you can be of use to the common good. When you have done that, you can justly and honestly enjoy yourself in your own way.

Perhaps you don’t see how a mere small boy can be of use to his country, but by becoming a Scout and carrying out the Scout Law every boy can be of use.

UNQUOTE

Understanding Writers and Speakers:

~ Newspaper reporters can shorten a piece to fit on a page by simply lopping off the last paragraphs, but essay and fiction writers, in contrast, have to shorten their piece by plucking out adjectives, sentences, half paragraphs and more. Such a fun challenge. As Stephen King said, “(Second draft) equals (first draft minus ten per cent).”

Last week’s essay was written after I gave a five to seven minute speech at toastmasters: “Sean took seven minutes, fifteen seconds; perfect” said the club timer. It was both fun and frustrating to take out ALL the nonessential stuff as I was timing my speech. (I put back only a little for my essay) People could tell I had lots more I could have said. 

Two listeners said:

 “I want to know more about your knowledge/experience!”

“Your authentic way of sharing was engaging especially because you really know the history. Would love to hear more of your personal stories. You started with one at the start of your speech.”

Expanding the opening story: 

I had met the New Zealander at the Japanese Garden (no flowers) in Lethbridge. He informed me he had been to another Japanese Garden southwest of Edmonton that I had not known about—I’m going there! An international photographer, he had noticed me standing still, sometimes, to take in various angles—Soaking in the garden artistry is part of the meditation. 

As part of his being “being struck by B-P being from another era,” he said his grandfather could not remember the Boer War. Neither could mine, I guess, as Grandpa’s war was World War I. My dad was born during the year after the Armistice, in 1919. B-P died of natural causes during the second world war. According to Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, he was to be killed if the Nazis had occupied Britain. But as you know, the Nazis’ Operation Sea Lion failed because they failed to first win the Battle of Britain.

I told my toastmasters club how the statue of the man on horseback at Memorial Park, wearing the Scout hat, was from the Boer War. Incidentally,  Canada sent mounted soldiers from the Mounted Police. As best I can recall: The statue comes from a man found dead in a ditch, friendless, homeless, with no known relatives when he died. In his pocket was his Boer War army paper. People thought this ignoble ending to a man’s life wasn’t right. Eventually his relatives were tracked down in England, while Calgarians decided to honour Boer War veterans with a statue.

Footnotes:

~A blanket pin, like a scotsman’s kilt pin, was rather like a giant silver safety pin.

~A billy tin was when you took a big empty can for coffee powder, or tomatoes, and punched two holes, then attached baling wire, (like for bales of hay, or newspaper bundles) so that you could hold the wire on a stick over your campfire. Better than borrowing your mum’s pot and getting it all black. 

~I am old enough to have seen baling wire replaced by frayed brown twine, replaced by blue and white plastic twine. In the barn, after we undid a bale to feed our dairy cow, we would throw the twine over a post to be thrifty, for in case we found a use for it. During my adulthood, our university newspaper used flat white plastic for our bundles.

Nostalgia for Public (Boarding) Schools

I wonder: Baden-Powell was from a boarding school, which in Britain is called a “public school.” Were the poorer boys from regular schools, who went on to work in the factories, equally enthusiastic about serving their country? I have a few tiny doubts, but I don’t see how we can ever know. History is written by the literate class.

I believe it was common for “public schools” to have rifles, and train the boys in parade drill. I have that impression from George Orwell, from when he joined thousands of civilian volunteers going to Spain… 

—Another era: The big Spanish Civil War was some years before the ebbing guerrilla struggle in the movie Pan’s Labyrinth. Various brigades of international volunteers—brigades socialist, brigades communist, brigades anarchist—tried to stop General Franco’s army. The general, assisted by armed forces from Italy and Germany, sought to crush the republic and impose fascism. This was the war in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. And in Nicholas Monsaratt’s novel of a student going communist, This is the Schoolroom (link)— 

…Orwell said that when he arrived, due to his public school experience, he was made a leader right away.

~In the second part of the Doctor Who story (in the previous essay) the boys in school uniforms, with their strict teachers in flat academic caps, break out the school rifles: They mean to shelter innocent townsfolk, and defend their school against some murderous aliens. It was a nostalgia episode, showing sterner days. 

…Sad to think those boys—along with their whole generation—would all be gone to Flanders in a few years… 

…Strange to think entire societies, like individuals, can have blind spots… Orwell, who came of age after the war, wrote that his generation of schoolboys was a rebellious one, but they never knew why, not at the time. Like how my American generation, in the late seventies, would ask each other, puzzled, why we had less creativity and political involvement than our peers of ten years earlier. “Maybe because we have a less affluent economy” was the best I could reply, blindly, back in those post-Vietnam years.

Sean Crawford,

Once an army corporal,

Still proud,

September

2018