Hope for the Despairing—Maybe?

I am spending this Super Bowl Sunday in my little motor home (Odysseus) at Monterey Pines (an RV Park of the Naval Post-Graduate School) in California.  My wife is with her mother and sister today, so I am enjoying a time of solitude.  

I thought of my friend, Lowell, this morning.  Whenever something “bad” is going on in our nation or in our community, Lowell always reminds me of something (he says) I told him many years ago.  He says I told him that our nation and our people have been through many difficult times and survived, and we will survive the present crises, too, whatever it may be.  This led me to think of my period of history that, in a few days, will span a period of 75 years.  This history includes a barely discernible memory of World War II or at least its aftermath, along with an  acquaintance with many of those who fought in that war.  In 1960, for example,  when I first enlisted in the Air Force, I came to know several survivors (still on active duty) of the nefarious Bataan Death March.  I remember (vaguely) the Korean Conflict (two of my teachers were wounded veterans of that ordeal).  I recall watching Queen Elizabeth’s coronation on black and white TV.  I can still see vividly in my mind the newspaper headline announcing the death of Joseph Stalin  and beneath those words a photo of the scary fellow in his casket. I can remember the Cold War era and the air raid drills we practiced in school and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Why, a man even walked on the moon in my span of history.  I lived through the “Polio Scare” and the discovery of the Salk vaccine that abolished that fear.  

I have lived through the Civil Rights Movement, the Viet Nam War and the protests against it, the return of the POW’s (several are personal friends), the Watergate scandal, the lies and cover-ups of presidents (both Democrat and Republican), the Pentagon Papers, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.  I saw the Berlin Wall built and I saw the Berlin Wall torn down.  I remember Fidel Castro’s rise to power in Cuba and the Cuban Missile Crises of 1962. So much history—more than I can possibly share in this blog.  The point is that  I’ve survived it all!  You have survived it and our country has survived it!  Our presidents have not been perfect leaders, indeed, some have been downright scoundrels, criminals and liars (Tricky Dick Nixon and the controversial Lyndon B. Johnson had serious issues with honesty).  So now, we have a tweeter president, who constantly lies, denigrates his opposition,  ridicules the press, and generally treats other nations and people like dirt.  I hope the words Lowell remembers me saying years ago will hold up under this present onslaught on our democratic way of life.  I hope we can survive—and in my best moments I think we will.

We must hang in there against the impossible odds!