Our Military Industrial Complex

"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." ~ John F. Kennedy, Letter to Navy friend

This is a very interesting observation by former president John Kennedy, especially on the heels of President Eisenhower’s parting remarks expressing concern about the growing power of the military-industrial complex. It’s interesting because today we have a minority with a shot at the White House, as well as a woman within striking distance. On the other hand, where is the nearest conscientious objector?

Here is what I find especially interesting regarding the Sixties protestors who took a stand against the military-industrial complex. The very phrase itself originated in the mouth of a U.S. president.

A conscientious objector is someone who, for matters of conscience, must decline from military service. Usually it is for religious reasons, but some there are who simply refuse to do harm to others of the human family. In the course of history many conscientious objectors have been imprisoned, or even killed, for this adherence to conscience. It's a stain on our history.

The stance of conscientious objector is a challenging one. Few there are who would disagree that a brutal tyrant like Adolph Hitler would require being stopped, which presupposes a commitment to maintaining armaments of greater force. Conscientious objectors can be opposed to carrying weapons and doing damage to others, but may be fully integrated into an army as stretcher bearers or nurses, though others would oppose even this assistance to a war effort.

The attitude of a conscientious objector may also include a call for reflection on whether a war is just or unjust. Patriotism is challenged by this stance. Many patriots, standing beneath the banner “My country right or wrong,” demand a fully unified affirmation from the masses. To be perceived as unpatriotic is a form of anarchy or sin in their eyes. But a conscientious objector can love his or her country very much while calling the nation into account to higher laws.

Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy felt strongly that war was incompatible with Christian faith altogether, citing much historical literature to support his beliefs. Here is but one typical example of Tolstoy’s view. “The most ardent and sincere fathers of the Church declared the teaching of Christ to be incompatible with one of the fundamental conditions of the existence of the State: armed force. In other words, a Christian must not be a soldier prepared to kill every one whom he is ordered to.”
Dr. Francis Schaeffer, however, cites Charles Finney to lay out a case for Christians taking up arms against tyrants. In this manner he justifies the American Revolution in his book “A Christian Manifesto” which also provided the wind power that swept many Christians into political activism in the 1980’s. C. S. Lewis stated in one of his essays that two Christians serving their countries as soldiers might shoot one another simultaneously and meet immediately once more on the other side of the veil.

In other words, individuals can with good conscience choose a variety of paths, each becoming accountable for his or her individual choices and actions. If I may weigh in here, I would suggest that the important thing is that we have the fredom to have this dialogue and not have it taken from us.

War is a terrible thing, and even winning has a terrible cost.

As we look back on the turbulence of the sixties, it helps to keep in mind the context for what we saw and experienced. The warning from Ike (below) took root in the soil of many hearts and was transformed through song into a movement. Masters of War by Dylan, Pete Seeger's troubadorian protest stance, and the beautifully tragic appeal reflected in Joan Baez were all woven together into an anthem that found hearers whose consciences had not yet been seared.



Joan Baez sings "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

Reclaiming the Sixties

The Sixties, like all periods of our history, cannot be lumped into one homogenous experience. Yes, some things were shared universally. Our president was assassinated in 1963. Our values were challenged. Our cities burned. Viet Nam and the Deep South racism, so highly visible through the medium of television, scarred our national conscience. The values of the American Dream were called into question.

But as time has elapsed the Sixties became more associated with hippies, drugs, psychedelic music, and dropping out… all having the appearance more of faddishness than significance. The sense of hippiedom being a fad was reinforced by the rapidity with which Seventies youth embraced the Yuppie values of high fashion and glitz.

For the record, I became depressed by the new wave of Yuppie values. Perhaps because I truly bought into many of the key issues that had been brought to the forefront during the Sixties. These are the primary values that resonated with me, and which I still hold as valid.

1. Question authority. In other words, don’t accept everything you hear, wherever you hear it from… including here. Think things through, make your decisions because you have weighed things out for yourself. Even the Apostle Paul in the Bible said that his words should not be taken as authoritative until his hearers checked things out with the Old Testament truths that had been handed down.

This idea flew directly in the face of the prevailing attitude of the day, “My country, right or wrong.” No wonder the “hippie philosophy” created so much ire.

2. There is more to life than the material world. More than anything, the youth of the Sixties were especially misunderstood on this point, and in retrospect misunderstood their parents’ generation. We did not know what it was like to be raised during the Great Depression. When our parents gave us clothes and stocked refrigerators and gifts, they were doing something for us that seemed meaningful. My mother remembers living on navy beans for a while in West Virginia. Grandpa would come home with a hundred pound sack of navy beans. That was all they had, all they could afford.

And so, many young people in the Sixties had large homes in suburbia, surrounded by manifold blessings of the good life, and still felt empty. They learned through experience that there was more to life than things. Without love, even a castle is little more than collection of empty rooms.

And so, there was a reaction against materialism, against “things.” There have been many misunderstandings on this matter, but the message remains true that life is more than gadgets, toys and things. “Love is all you need” is a bit of a simplification, since I can’t pay my heating bill with “love.” But love for my family will sufficiently motivate me to do what it takes to provide for my family, which includes paying those nasty heating bills.

3. The “Beautiful People.” I remember sitting in the donut shop in Athens, Ohio with some other Ohio University hippie-type students and thinking, “These people are so beautiful, but in the ‘success’ world they would probably all be rejects.” The one fellow’s beard concealed a weak chin, another girl did not fit the Barbie mold, yet each was a person, a human being with special value. To the degree that we determine value based on outward appearance, race, economic earning power or social status, to that very degree we have become impoverished as a culture.

4. Increasing awareness of the power of the Military-Industrial Complex. Might makes right was not a value of the hippies. Flower Power, which is looked back on as something of a joke today, had at its heart a seed thought: ideas have power, too. Yes, there is evil in the world, and naivete was certainly part of the reason the seeds of Flower Power found such fertile soil in our hearts. But there were real issues being raised as regards what war and the military-industrial complex was doing to our humanity. On this, there is more to say, but we’ll follow up on that tomorrow.

Here’s a song from Bob Dylan’s second album which became somewhat of an anthem for that era. I remember singing it as part of our youth group at First Presbyterian Church in Pluckemin, NJ. Its questions still beg for answers today.

Blowing In The Wind

How many roads must a man walk down, before they call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand?
How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they are forever banned?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

How many years must a mountain exist, before it is washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist, before they're allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have, before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows, that too many people have died?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

NOTE: The image at top left, titled Reclaiming the Sixties, was created by Susie, the Down Home Creator. Please click to enlarge.

All the Pretty Horses

Watched All the Pretty Horses earlier this week, a much better film than I was led to expect. Having read Cormac McCarthy’s superb book this past year, I decided to pick up the film when I stumbled upon it at Blockbuster on Tuesday. Billy Bob Thornton directed this year 2000 film starring Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz. And whether it was short lived in theaters because of bad reviews or poor marketing, for sure it seems like a good “big screen” film with its Mexican vistas and panoramic camera work.

It’s a coming of age story with two teens from San Antonio heading south o’ the border to find work and, perhaps, adventure. John Grady Cole is the central character (Damon) in this story of innocence lost. The film remains faithful to the the book for the most part. And maybe that is what carries the film because it is a powerful story.

Some aspects of the movie were formulaic. The usual Hollywood plot twist occurs at 25-27 minutes.

If you watch any film on DVD, check out the elapsed time when the plot turns, and you will find, nine times out of ten, that this is so. It’s called writing by the book. The book, by the way, is Syd Field's Screenplay. This is the book 1990's Disney producer Robert Schwartz sent to me when I wrote my first of three Hollywood screenplays... none reaching the silver screen. Producers, decision makers, will turn to pages 25-27 to see “what happens” with the assumption that any screen writer who knows what he’s doing will make this part of the movie into a plot twist. Instead of reading a whole screenplay, the length being one page per minute of screen time, they take a short cut. Once you see this skeletal frame, you may have difficulty closing the curtain again for a while.) Anyways, Thornton’s film follows the formula. And if you wish to take an original approach to writing screen plays, you'll discover this is why the best creative screenwriters have had to go outside the system.

Damon got very critical reviews for his performance here, but I did not expect a lot, so I ended up surprised. The romance between Cole(Damon) and Cruz has suppressed steaminess that is believable. The film does a good job of portraying the collision of cultures in their relationship. Like the book, his heart is cut out and filleted by the whole series of events that proceed naturally from the opening decision to go south.

McCarthy’s characters are superbly crafted in his books and the settings so vivid you are transported easily and longingly. In the film, the scenes and settings are honest replicas of reality, and one is not distracted by any false notes anywhere in the film, other than the fact that Damon and his friend Lacy Rawlings look a bit older than the 16-year-olds they were purportedly portraying.

Of the images on this page, I painted the horse head last year in the spring, acrylic on paper. The photo was taken in Kodak Ektachrome near a river west of Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the spring of 1981. It was a beautiful horse. (As always, click to enlarge.)

As regards the book, here’s a paragraph from a reviewer at amazon.com that summarizes my impressions of the book:

“Many people compare, fairly or no, Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses" to William Faulkner's literary work. What is neglected is the strain of Flannery O'Connor that runs throughout the novel as well. At any rate, "Horses" more than stands on its own as a startling achievement. It's prose is more accessible than Faulkner, and its themes less esoteric than O'Connor. "Horses" is an immaculate novel, dealing with the extreme facets of the everyday and the ways in which people become who they are.” ~ Melvin Pena

9-11 Remembrance

“The eastern sky is clear, but fierce looking clouds threaten us from the west. It may not be a pretty day.” ~ Journal entry, Sept. 11, 2001

I thought it might make an interesting blog entry to look back at my journal to see what I wrote that tragic morning when the towers fell. The note above was penned a little over two hours before the first plane hit. I’ve not looked back on this entry till now, and it’s uncanny what a prescient note is sounded in these words.

The events of 9-11 remind us that we live in a broken world. As Robert Burns once observed, “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.”

Rather than post more words, let’s pause for a moment of silence and remembrance.

Did She Really Disappear?

Celebritydom existed long before television. The brightness of Edison’s light still shines in America. Many others have carved out monument sized memories in the national consciousness. But in aviation, in the early decades of the twentieth century, there are really only a handful of superstars. with the Wright brothers, Eddie Rickenbacker, Charles Lindbergh, and perhaps Howard Hughes heading the list. No list is complete, however, without including the remarkable Amelia Earhart.

Perhaps her star shown with special brilliance because women were finally getting some recognition on the national stage. After her historic 1932 flight, as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, she became a media sensation.

In 1935 Earhart set her sights on one truly great adventure, a trip around the world in a twin engine Lockheed Electra. In 1937, along with navigator Frederick Noonan, Earhart set off to reinforce her superstar status. Tragically, her plane disappeared without a trace and she was never seen or heard from again. Or so the story goes.

This winter, Hillary Swank is slipping into the bigger than life role of Amelia Earhart to bring this woman’s achievements and heartbreaking end to the silver screen. Or at least one interpretation.

Another project has been underway, serving as the contrary yang to Swank’s ying. I am referring to researcher Tod Swindell’s efforts to assemble a documentary that seeks to tell the real Amelia Earhart story.

Swindell’s version of the story goes like this. Amelia Earhart was so uncomfortable with the media adulation she’d received for her cross-Atlantic flight and other successes, she simply had to come up with a creative solution that would enable her to re-establish a private life outside the public eye. The disappearance which took place in 1937 had been orchestrated over a two year period that would enable her to get all in place for a new, alternate identity.

It sounds pretty far out, until you allow Swindell to lay out his case. True, this theory has surfaced before and been rejected for various reasons. But Swindell claims that incontrovertible evidence has now emerged.

The success of Earhart’s escape down the gopher hole required complicity from other people in high places.

History produces cover ups like an untended garden produces weeds. And it is not uncommon for Hollywood to get the story wrong in an effort to tell a good story.

I’ve been in contact with Tod Swindell since first discovering and writing about the Amelia Earhart alternative story. (Burden of the Public Eye) Here is a short interview with Swindell as he strives complete the project which has been a burning passion of his over many years.

Ennyman: How long have you been involved with The Irene-Amelia story?
Tod Swindell: I have been involved with Earhart investigative research since 1991. She was my maternal Grandmother's hero. 'Gram' (Doris) told me Earhart stories as I grew up. (Doris was three years younger than Amelia, raised my mother and uncle alone.) So I grew up with an instilled interest.The website, www.irene-amelia.com is entirely mine. My two partners died in recent years. They were Joe Gervais and Rollin Reineck, WWII vets who I befriended in the mid 1990s, and came to love and admire greatly for their Earhart research achievements. The interesting thing, I find, is how even though it is obvious in a hidden historical sense, how Gervais was correct about his ID pin on the former Earhart in 1965, since WWII world society has been left to accept Earhart's loss as an everlasting mystery only. That is to say, historical dictum has done well to convince all the Gervais claim was a hoax, or an outright fraud, where in truth it makes great forensic historical sense, and if one does look into it with true objectivity, he or she realizes such a thing.

E: You’re currently producing a documentary on the Irene-Amelia story. How’s that coming along?
TS: I'm currently seeking funding to complete my documentary which is about 70% filmed. I have two French narrators, a man and a woman. The final documentary version will feature French voice over narration with English subtitles.

E: What is your marketing plan?
TS: To finish producing the film on Hi-Def with silent partnership, have a color print made, seek distribution while entering it in festivals, hopefully land a book contract and feature deal through said efforts. The deadline for Sundance entries is late October. But there are many, many festivals.

E: And how long is the documentary?
TS: 70 minutes.

E: How does it compare to Expelled or Michael Moore's stuff?
TS: I think it's a different animal, but it does shed some distrustful light on our national media and on our national historical dictum influences. As mentioned, it is to be narrated in French with English subtitles. I wanted it to sound like a foreign take an American historical issue.

E: Is it a made for TV documentary?
TS: Yes, but festival and four walls worthy, too.

E: Do you envision trying to get an Oscar on this project?
TS: Absolutely.

E: Ultimately, what’s you’re motivation here? What is it that drives you to go to these lengths to put your convictions out there like this?
TS: To me the truth is the truth and it cannot be changed, and I have a duty to share what I have learned and what I know. This was the point of building the website, and remains the point of still trying to complete the documentary. For the website begins to let the truth be told in a public sense, and the documentary should lead to the feature and book efforts. And yes, there is a script and a nice booklet presentation for the documentary.

If you get a chance, visit Swindell's Irene-Amelia website, dedicated to unveiling the curtain that has shrouded the Amelia Earhart story. Maybe we’ll never know the truth, or maybe we’re discovering it and find it simply too hard to believe. Earhart's disapperance certainly one of the great unsolved mysteries of the past eighty years. Where's Sherlock Holmes when you need him?

To learn more about this amazing woman, check out these two short YouTube videos.

Lost Friends

Those early years we often don’t fully appreciate our friendships. I moved away from Maple Heights, Ohio and never really stayed in touch with anyone. Our lives move forward into a new trajectory… and we meet new people.

But as we get older, and begin to understand ourselves a bit, we are less haphazard in our friendships. We begin to seek out like minded people with values or interests similar to ours. It takes time. New interests or changes in geography test these friendships. And as we are flung forward by fate and circumstances, and choices, for better or worse, we disconnect and reconnect with many people of greater or lesser influence upon us.

Unfortunately, like the Robert Frost poem about two roads diverging, many of the wonderful people who were once part of our lives get left behind. Occasionally it is due to our own neglect, or failure to value those treasured people.

As we get older, we value the good in others more deeply, especially when there are those rare connections that seem like true gifts. But it is with great pain and dismay that I remember all the really special people whom I failed to value, and even sometimes hurt through my own insensitivity and self-centeredness.

Here’s a song about old friends by Dylan from his second album, The Freewhelin’ Bob Dylan. As I listen to it again I am impressed at the maturity he demonstrated in these early songs.

Bob Dylan’s Dream
by Bob Dylan, in a tone most mournful…

While riding on a train goin' west,
I fell asleep for to take my rest.
I dreamed a dream that made me sad,
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.

With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon,
Where we together weathered many a storm,
Laughin' and singin' till the early hours of the morn.

By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung,
Our words were told, our songs were sung,
Where we longed for nothin' and were quite satisfied
Talkin' and a-jokin' about the world outside.

With haunted hearts through the heat and cold,
We never thought we could ever get old.
We thought we could sit forever in fun
But our chances really was a million to one.

As easy it was to tell black from white,
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right.
And our choices were few and the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split.

How many a year has passed and gone,
And many a gamble has been lost and won,
And many a road taken by many a friend,
And each one I've never seen again.

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,
That we could sit simply in that room again.
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat,
I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.

If you have a friend whom you have known all your life since grade school, I consider you most blessed. If you have a friend whom you have not stayed in touch with because you moved away, get back in touch… and promise to meet again some day.

The Late John Brockman

It’s Short Story Monday and here’s another short short from my past archives. Interestingly enough, according to the “real” John Brockman, the past does not exist, so I’m not sure where precisely these former stories came from. It would be a strange thing if the universe were created as a whole piece of cloth in every new instant, unto perpetuity. Yes, truth is stranger than fiction but even that would be a hard nut to swallow.

Contemplating the nature of time/space reality does become fascinating the more one digs into it. When the bills come in tomorrow’s mail, however, even though you hope they’re a fiction you pay them anyways, just in case… In fact, one who stops paying his or her bills because they were for services in the past, which purportedly does not exist, would soon be considered a nut case. And being commited to a nuthouse would be a real hard nut to swallow.

Aw, nuts. Let’s just move to the story.

On The Late John Brockman

He passed away and left us his legacy: a finely crafted volume designed to relate the truth. He called it The Late John Brockman. Since all our experiences of the Present come through the senses, and this delays our direct experience of them by a fraction of a moment, then by the time we experience the present, it is past. Since the past does not exist (because it is gone), so are we.

He wrote the book before he was dead, but said that we are all dead because we live in the past and the past is gone, does not exist. He explained it like this. There is a time delay between the thing perceived outside our bodies and the actual reception in our brain of that perception. While it is infinitesimally small it is, nevertheless, a delay. Sight, sound, taste, smell, and the tactile senses -- all undergo the same phenomenon, a space of time is required for transmission from fingertip to brain acknowledgement, from retina to inward scene. The external world is past. He took a whole book to scientifically demonstrate what I have here reiterated twice.

In the end, John Brockman pronounced his death.

Unfortunately, the tome failed to produce an income and his parents pressured him to secure a job to pay his bills. (He had borrowed three thousand dollars to produce the six hundred hardbound originals that were offered to a disinterested public.) He refused to take employment, and his father refused to feed him.

There were other disagreements. He told them they were dead and that it did not matter whether they loved him or not because everything is meaningless once it is part of the irrelevant past. The oceans of time are too salty to drink for one who is so fully persuaded of their brininess. His mother became ill over her son's hardheartedness. His father and mother fought much and regretted many things they said to each other.

On a cold December night he left the house barefoot and without a coat. The next morning his blue body was found in the forest behind his home where he had nailed his hand to a tree.

I don't know why I am writing all this. Perhaps because his book made an impression on me once, though I never stopped paying my bills. Nor have I forgotten that there are consequences for behavior.