All Posts Tagged With: "history"

Ah the postwar boom. America’s Golden Era . . .

Several years ago I learned that the United States government carried out a program of forced sterilization on Puerto Rican women during the post-World War II era. Initially, I was shocked and appalled. Why would the government of Puerto Rico with the support of the U.S. government force sterilization on women?

The primary motivation behind this was eugenic. Puerto Rico was overpopulated (it still is) and birth rates were high. The government couldn’t get people to emigrate fast enough and Uncle Sam was worried about another few million people in one of its colonies. Basically what happened is what happens in China today: poor women were tricked or coerced into having abortions or being sterilized. Sometimes it was the only family planning option offered. At others there was no consent.

This came crashing down to me about fifteen minutes ago when I got a call from my father. My grandmother, his mother, died about a year ago. My father had always been very close to her and so, when she died, he took some of her personal effects, mostly letters, back to California with him from New York. He was nearly in tears and bitterness clung to every word. He skipped pleasantries and simply began speaking.

“Sometimes” he said “I am so pissed off at what the government has done.” Read more…

In honor of those from my home town, Tonica, who served in all of our wars, since and including the Civil War, I’d like to publish a link to my article from last year, Farmboys on the Wall.  I will be attending a SF convention this weekend with a military theme where I will, given half a chance, be reading it aloud.  Looking it over now, my eyes filled with tears, just as they did when I penned it, originally.

My father, my brother, and my son all served in the United States Army.  While I often disagree with the internal affairs of our nation, I understand that a government and its military are essential to the continued survival of any people.  Those who believe that violence never solved anything should, as Robert Heinlein said in Starship Troopers, “ask a Carthaginian.”  Violence has solved too many things over the history of humanity, in most cases in ways unpleasant for the less-prepared.

There is no person greater than one who is willing to place their body, mind, and life in front of those who would harm another.  We must never forget that–nations who do, do not last very long afterwards.

To the living veterans of our nation, thank you.  To those who have given their lives and cannot read this, you are in my prayers, always.

I miss you, Mike, every day.

I was a junior in high school, and I had gym class my first period. A friend of mine had his first period open and was able to stay home for that hour, and as we all were talking before our second period class started, he told us a small plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. It sounded like a minor accident and I didn’t give it much thought as class started. A little while later they made an announcement over the PA system that there had been a terrorist attack in New York and they were going to put the news on in the TVs that were in all the classrooms. We sat at our desks and watched events unfold. They had put it on ABC, so it was Peter Jennings reporting. We ended up staying there through some of our third period. Eventually, after the Pentagon had been hit and both towers had collapsed (I’m not sure if we heard the reports of United 93 crashing in Shanksville, but I do recall hearing some of the false reports of car bombs at the State Department and fires on the National Mall, and the report that the Sears Tower had been evacuated), they turned the TVs off. We moved to our third period class, which was American history, and our teacher, Mr. Perlow (my favorite teacher of all time), led a class discussion. Classes after that continued as normal, though I remember students looking out the windows at the sky to see if any planes were out there. Then we went home and I watched the news with my mom, and my dad when he got home, the rest of the day.

Everybody probably has individual moments that stand out in his or her mind from that day. One of mine is when the report came in that the Pentagon had been hit. The magnitude of what was happening sunk in a lot when I heard that, and the realization that this could keep going and get much, much worse. That was the moment for me when worst-case scenarios started leaping to my mind. It was the moment that defined terrorism for me.

MSNBC this morning decided to run the NBC news coverage from that day in real time. I watched it for a while until I had to go to class. There’s something morbid about running it and about watching it, but it is also fascinating to look back and remember what it was like at the time. Watching it has a powerful way of bringing back the emotions of that day.

Looking back on it seven years later, having observed our national response up to this point, I am overwhelmed with a feeling of moral outrage. It would be easy to say that today is not a day for political debate, that we should focus solely on memorializing the dead and recalling the incredible spirit of national unity that immediately followed that day. It would be easy, but it would also be wrong. In the years since September 11, the United States has committed devastating moral wrongs. We have weakened our commitment to the rule of law. We have waged senseless war with a country which had nothing to do with 9/11, and we have made virtually nobody better off by doing so. We have indefinitely detained prisoners. We have tortured prisoners. We have cast aside our historical commitment to a world order governed by rules instead of naked power. We have shunned allies. We have fomented hate around the world.

These decisions – some of which I supported and most of which a majority of Americans supported – are moral obscenities. And there is absolutely no certainty that we will recover from them. It would be foolish to ignore the reality that whoever this country elects as President in November will play a critical role in whether the United States redeems itself or continues a slow and dreadful decline. And on this day of all days, it would be a disgrace to not say so. Too many thousands have died in a futile and childish attempt to do justice to those who died on that day. Too many have been punished for crimes they did not commit. Too much damage has been done to our ideals. On this day, we must remember not just the events of that awful Tuesday morning. We must also remember everything that has happened since that day, and ask ourselves honestly whether we can be proud of the choices we have made.

Today is the 25th anniversary of one of baseballs most famous tirades. *Language Warning*

Here’s the background from the YouTube clip:

On April 29, 1983, during Lee Elia’s tenure as the Cubs’ manager, the Cubs suffered a one-run home loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. After the game, he lashed out at Cubs fans for their fair weather support of the team. (Their consistent booing and heckling at Wrigley completely unnerved Elia.) A member of the press secretly recorded this “off-the-record” session with reporters.

Seventy five years ago yesterday, on March 4, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in to begin his first term. He delivered his famed inaugural address where he declared:

“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

My grandfather, like many of his generation from rural Midwest, credits FDR and the New Deal from keeping our family from starving. This speech reminded me that our country has made it through far tougher times. More importantly, it ignited a fury that burns against the politics of winning by making people afraid. Candidates that drum up fears of economic devastation, of never ending war, or of terrorism, should be rejected. We should all hunger for a rebirth of FDR’s optimistic, uniquely American, spirit and resolve.

Update: The brilliant and lovely Dr. Rachel Maddow has a similar post up today. She says, in part:

In January 1941, at a time when the world was at war and the United States was more threatened than we had ever been in our history, FDR stood before the US Congress and hailed freedom from fear. That remains the paradigm of Democratic leadership in a threatening world.

When a politician looks at risks to our country and sees an opportunity for political exploitation, rather than an opportunity to rally the nation around our unified strength and fearlessness, that politician spits in the face of Democratic leadership and patriotic values.

If there’s one thing we ought to have learned from the George W. Bush presidency, it’s that there’s a difference between Democrats and Republicans on whether the American people should be encouraged to cower in fear.