Drinking From the Corrupted Cup

I remember, as if it were yesterday, in another commentary I described my first office, upstairs over a shoe store, space which I had redeveloped at my expense in order to have a cheap rent.

I always arrived at the office before anyone else, made sure the heat was on, everything comfortable. This gave me time to go through the mail before the first appointment. I heard a strange noise on the stair steps, as if someone dragging up the steps, I went out in the hallway and looked down the steps and a large black woman was slowly dragging herself up the steps. When she got in the office, winded from climbing the stairs, she appeared to be about sixty, overweight, her much abused Sunday hat on. her clothing rather tattered, cotton stockings, torn shoes.

As an eye doctor, I knew that the eyes are the windows of the soul, hers were sad and downcast. She said, “Doctor, Ms. Elmore who worked for you told me to come and see you. So I caught the bus from LaGrange (a small town about ten miles east).” She said, “ a friend met me at the bus station and brought me to your office. I buried my husband yesterday, he grieved himself to death, because of the loss of our only child. Our son Darrell went to war in Vietnam, he had graduated from high school and this was his way of getting a college education, which he wanted more than anything in the world. Now they tell us that he is MIA. I have here the last letter I ever received from him, we had a letter from the army, and I wrote my congressman, but no one seems to know about anything. I understand that if he had been killed his body would have been brought home, but we have had nothing. I just get the run-around every where I go, trying to get answer. My friend told me that you were a high ranking army officer and that you could probably help me.“

I got my pad and made notes, PFC Darrell Carlson Martin, his mother Ms. Loretta Martin, his service number, unit, everything I felt I would need for communication. When she left, there was a renewed vitality in her eyes, her eyes which had been so dead, had come alive, just from her experience with me. In the meantime, my secretary had come in and listened to the conversation, she told her, “if anything can be done, the doctor can do it.” Of course, there was not much I could do. I went to the veteran's office, located in a brick building behind the court house, and talked with the veteran's officer. I wrote the congressman from her district, Senator John East, whom I knew very well, and one or two other contacts in Washington. I would write her, sending her copies of all my correspondence, giving her encouragement, but as we know, so many MIAs have never been accounted for, to her or anyone else. She had told me, “he loved his unit, he would not run off from anything, and his commander had told me that he was an exemplary soldier.” As far as I know, she never heard anything from anyone, never received any compensation. This is the usual story involving sons of the poor, those without political pull.

I think of this type thing every time I experience drinking from the corrupt cup of government...so much money spent just lining the pockets of those who worked for government and even more treasonous, money sent to other governments such as Israel and Egypt. We are told that $12 billion goes to Egypt every year, tainted money, to keep Egypt from aggravating Israel who also gets $12 billion a year. We know that this money goes to the tyrants in power, not to the people who need it. At tree tops in Kenya, Africa, I had dinner once with the chief United Nations representative for Africa, I asked him how much of the largess from private and national sources funneled to Africa ever arrives at the villages of the people who really need it.

I said,”I have seen the poverty in the villages, and this has been a burning question in my mind.” He said, “about 2% of the money sent to Africa from UN sources, US government, humanitarian efforts, actual reach the people who need it.” He said,”first, you have to pay off the corrupt leaders of a country just to go in and talk with them about it. Then they appoint members of their family to distribute the money...any left after they take out their part.” He said, “it is a corrupt mess, but we do what we can.”

I often spend weekends at my beach house on the ocean. On the way there, my driver and I stop and McDonalds for lunch, returning we usually stop at Hardees. In this world of immediate gratification, fast food, etc. I find that in order to save some money on the food, to get it in a hurry, you must, if you are willing, put up with dirty tables. Even though I am totally blind, it bothers me beyond words to explain to sit down at a table in a fast food place which is sticky, has crumbs, etc. Most of the customers will dispose of their containers. If I could see, and get around, I would go directly to the counter, and say, “give me a wet dishcloth, I want to clean some tables.” As long as the restaurant can get away with dirty tables, nothing will change, as long as governments can get away with just treating their citizens any way, nothing will change.

If we have the goodness of God in our heart, we know the closeness of God. Why have we so cheapened humanity? When we suffer, we can know something about His suffering, we have seen nations drink from the corrupted cup before. Stalin killed 25 million of his fellow countrymen; Mao, 63 million of his fellow countrymen. We knew it was going on, we did nothing. In fact, after WWI and after WWII (Marshall Plan), much money was sent to our former enemies while our own parents suffered.

While Americans were losing their homes, think of the money spent in Iraq, where conditions were probably better under Saddam Hussein. While American businesses have gone under, think of the money spent in Afghanistan, where conditions are no better than after the Russians left. Do Americans really care if General Motors went under? Would we really care if a stadium full of people were destroyed? Would we care if ten planes full of passengers crashed each day? This is what happens with the millions of babies who are aborted each day, the millions killed in warfare. In every form of news, we hear about the plight of women and children in other countries, Darfur, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. Do you realize that 41% of all pregnancies are aborted in New York City.

Addictive drugs are now prescribed to overcome addictive drugs. Oprah learned long ago that her programs, her greatness comes from trauma, people describing their problems in detail. Have we arrived at the place in today's culture, today's society, that we can just pass off any cup of corruption, like a former president, I feel your pain. They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things: Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us? For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him. (Psalm 12:2-5)

Farewell to Arms

I have taken the liberty of stealing from Ernest Hemingway, the title of his 1929 book, Farewell to Arms. Hemingway wrote about the Spanish Civil War, as well as other subjects involving man's battle with the realities of life.

Reared on a large farm in Eastern North Carolina where many centuries previously, Indians hunted for food, I had a large collection of arrowheads. I found an almost perfect Indian ax (since sold online). Early man first fought with stones and handmade axes, then tomahawks was made by extending the ax with a stick, then came swords (I recently sold my large collection of civil war swords) and then guns. Battles between men were much more neurological when they could look one another in the eye. Most of the casualties of WW1 were afflicted with bayonets.

In my lifetime, WW2 until the present, we have seen warfare change totally. First, it was artillery shelling from a great distance, then it was dropping bombs out of airplanes. We never knew the destruction befalling women and children, aged and infirmed, from such distances. Warfare has become impersonal. Then, as in Vietnam and now in the Middle East it is a matter of missiles, shells with depleted uranium, poisons of every description, which not only destroyed the enemy but the enemy's families, the enemy's children and the enemy's homeland making it almost impossible for life.

I have traveled through these Middle Eastern, mostly Muslim countries. Poverty stricken people, goat herds, men riding on donkeys with their wives and children walking behind. Even thirty years ago, at border crossings these people would have all their earthly belongings in large sacks which they carried on their backs...barefoot children walking on frozen ground. We actually have the audacity think these people will love us by making their lives even more miserable than it already is. The two Bushes, father and son, with wealth beyond imagination, brandishing a veneer of conservatism and Christianity, have never known the basics of life but would insult the very name of Jesus Christ by saying they are Christ-like.

Only those who have been involved in a war or seen the results of warfare can understand its horrors. Like the pew warmers, for one hour during the week, they just might hear about hell, but really don't believe anything about it. These same hypocrites may hear about war but don't believe anything about it. They may even see a disabled veteran, blind, wheelchair bound, forever tormented by the sights and sounds of war, further aggravated by an inability to get the health care promised when entering the military service. Only one who has seen the combative attitudes, the insolence of VA employees, will understand my evaluation of this most inept of all government agencies.

One would have thought that Senator Cleveland from Georgia when he was chief VA administrator would have straightened out the VA. The administrators who have followed him have been worse. I understand there is a waiting list now of nearly one million veterans. Nearly two million have been involved in the present warfare. Such disgusting spectacles as the situation at Walter Reed or the homicidal psychiatrist at Ft. Hood will bring into focus matters for which elected members of congress have been warned many times. I don't know which was worse, the black nurse who spat on me while a patient in the hospital or the chief of staff of the Army VA hospital who so objected to my suggestion about having a volunteer guide blind patients through the maze of a VA facility and who told me, “we are just waiting for you to die”.

I am still alive, still able to bring to your attention that there are as many well-paid civilian contractors involved in the present wars as volunteer patriotic service people, who are mostly there because they cannot find a job at home. (I understand that contracted CIA members are paid as much a $35,000 a month. Those of you who are WWII veteran, remember your $21 a month pay.) Mr. “Hope and Change”, global warming, bailout and sell out, ACORN organizing Obama, like his predecessor Mr. “Pervert” Clinton will probably just start shooting missiles at Yemen or some other place while at the same time handing out more millions. The reason the war in Iraq lasted so long and things are back where it all started, we were too busy handing out sandwiches with one hand while shooting at belligerents with the other. The number of vehicles grew in Iraq by 80% after our troops arrived. In my humble opinion, with all due respect, the cars already there, the people should have been put under curfew. How else could the IEDs be hauled around to kill our finest?

Mark Twain said once, “the prettiest site on foreign soil is the appearance of the American flag, on a ship, at an embassy etc.” When traveling the world, I always felt that my country would support me, come for me in case of problems. We have learned to our sorrow, and it cannot be disputed, that we left hundred of MIAs in Vietnam and Laos. Is it not strange that Senator McCain, a supposed war hero, as well as Senator Kerry have tried to block any efforts for rescue? It is reported that some families of MIAs have had, at their own expense, private investigators look into this worst of American shame.

The first president of our country said, “guard against the imposters of pretend patriotism”. Many politicians, poets, and even perverts talk causally about patriotism but when the terrorists, not abroad, not in Israel, here, start striking over and over we will know the privilege of patriotism.

In this Laodicean world, with compromised rules, whether on the employment ladder or getting re-elected, I have known a few real patriots: US Senator John East, US Senator Jesse Helms. I looked straight into the eyes of Senator Helms and said, “the next time there is a war, just catapult large bundles of money towards the enemy.” It seems we have laid down our arms everywhere, in favor of big bucks.