Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll isn’t forgetting HISTORICAL AMNESIA And a beautiful antidote. She writes:

The I.T. guys assert that all programs are only as good as their code. The computer – at least for now – cannot think for itself. It can only blindly follow the code. When the coder has made a fatal error that makes everything else go haywire, the I.T. guys refer to this as “garbage in, garbage out.”

This clearly does not apply to absolutely everything. If you examined the normal diet of us Baby Boomers as children (garbage in), you would expect us to be stunted, puny, and not very smart (garbage out). And certainly a case could be made for it. Haha. I can kid the Boomers, because I am the Advance Guard of them all, born in late 1946.

My normal breakfast from grade school through high school was a piece of toast. I had neither SEEN nor yet heard of the magic avocado. Toast was Wonder Bread which built strong bodies 12 ways! The toast was really just a butter and peanut butter delivery system. Then a small bowl of Rice Krispies or Sugar Crisps with a good teaspoon of extra sugar and real cream. A small glass of orange juice (from concentrate), a kiss for luck, and I was on my way to school. Walking, it goes without saying. Uphill both ways. In daily blizzards.

Where for lunch we got an 8 oz. carton of milk, another piece of buttered Wonder Bread, and entrees that ranged from Hot Dogs to Chili to some kind of gelatinous glop called Hamburger Gravy on Mashed Potatoes. Thank God for the Catholic kids! Fridays were either Fish Sticks or Mac & Cheese, both of which were kid favorites. After school, I might have an orange and a “Brown Sugar Sandwich.” Mama would put yuge hunks of cold butter on yet another piece of Wonder Bread and cover the butter with brown sugar. It was heaven on earth.

I didn’t have “dinner” until I went to college. We had “supper” at our house. Mama was an excellent cook and that usually involved a meat, a starch, a vegetable (often home-canned) and a dessert. A meal without gravy was a major disappointment. Once in a while it included a salad, which was iceberg lettuce with Western Dressing whose first listed ingredient was sugar.

Nobody had heard of either “fat” or “carbohydrates.” Yet almost nobody was fat. We spent our entire childhoods outside. The SATs of the high school graduates from 1964-66 were the highest of all years since. (Now, of course, we realize that testing of any kind is racist and uninclusive and inequitable since some people have the temerity to score higher than others.) But my point is that on less than ideal sustenance, according to the Eating Scolds, we thrived. Personally, I think it was the “love” in the food, but that’s just me.

We were raised to love America. We had Music Class in grade school once a week in which we sang patriotic songs and puzzling ancient folk tunes like “The Froggie Went A-Courtin’” and “Camptown Races.” Doodah, doodah. Wut?

We studied Civics in 9th grade and learned about the Bill of Rights, How a Bill Gets Passed (they never mentioned bribes, log-rolling or even lobbyists), and the three branches of government. Not once did we hear that “a pen and a phone” were sufficient unto the day for executive legislation or legislation from The Supreme Court.

In my first decade on earth (’46-’56), World War II, and to a lesser extent, Korea, were still very much in the country’s memory. Veterans were still thanked, respected, and appreciated. And almost every Daddy in my neighborhood WAS a veteran, though not all saw combat. The men did not talk much about their actual combat experience. Certainly not in detail. No vet I ever knew called himself a “hero.” The heroes were the guys who didn’t come back.

For more than half a century now, we have been hectored to have a “conversation” about race. But it’s never a “conversation,” just an angry monologue with a captive audience. I definitely believe we should have had more of a “conversation” about what it took to secure our rights and liberty from Valley Forge to D-Day and beyond. When you see the statues torn down, the history books banned, the substitution of distorted fantasy history for any sort of balance, how long before total Historical Amnesia sets in?

The “anti-racist” approach to American History now seems analogous to a marriage counselor saying session after session, week after week, year after tedious year: “Okay, now let’s hear more about why John is a terrible husband and horrible person. We will never suggest that Mary is anything but perfect and anyway, Mary has no agency. She is only a victim. Mary, would you tell us for the hundredth time how you feel about how terrible John is?”

And now we are blessed with an antidote that should be required reading in every high school. It is a perfect book for the high school level, but it is also a riveting page-turner for adults. And it comes from frequent commenter MTGeoff. Geoff Brown has written a beautiful, short book titled The Coxswain about a Coast Guard recruit who, after training, finds himself in the thick of it on D-Day, Omaha Beach. That’s a bit of a spoiler, but it’s featured on the back cover, so just go with it.

There have been many books about the War and especially books and movies about D-Day, and Geoff draws from them and acknowledges them. What makes this book so remarkable is that it is more of a diary than a novel in its form. We live inside the mind of a naive 18-year-old kid from Pennsylvania, the son of a World War One vet. He is a devout Christian – though not a pacifist — wrestling with the dilemma of how to avoid having to kill anyone and still help defend his country. He signs up for the Coast Guard not because he is afraid of being killed, but because he is afraid of having to kill.

I knew almost nothing about the Coast Guard. More than the first half of the short book is devoted to a fascinating discussion of the meticulous training. A lot of the lessons apply to any branch of the armed forces, indeed to life itself. What may seem like silly, pointless exercises are really a very well thought out plan to give every individual the highest probability of surviving.

Everything matters. From the way you make your bed (called a rack), to the way you wash the dishes on KP, to the drill routine. Our young protagonist, David Ryerson, wonders to himself why the petty officer is so, well, “petty,” and, as if reading his mind, the officer says, “Lotta your work will be out of sight after you do it. But it’s gotta be done right or maybe somebody gets killed. I ain’t kiddin’. I seen it.”

Excellence. Standards. Punctuality. Teamwork. Esprit de corps. Critical lessons for battle and for success in life. One example: you change the dishwater every 30 minutes and steam the huge pots in the mess hall with water so hot that it will blister even through gloves because a whole company down with dysentery is a disaster. More men in the Civil War died of dysentery and other disease than in battle and that carnage was almost unimaginable.

I never would have believed that long passages on knot-tying would have interested me, but the book is researched in such exquisite detail that I felt privileged to learn alongside the recruits.

Now, unlike author Geoff and his wife, I have never served in the military. The book was an inspiring inner journey for young Mr. Ryerson, but also a rather terrifying window into what it is like to be in the chaos of battle. Of trying to live for just one more minute and then, with God’s help, another one. There were pages where I realized I was forgetting to breathe. What do you do when you’ve lost your helmet and every single survival tool when your landing craft has blown up? Buy the book and find out! The book is so exciting that I hesitate to give too many more details lest I spoil it for real.

President Ronald Reagan spoke optimistically about Morning in America. A lot has happened since then, almost none of it good. The “garbage in” part is a relentless tsunami. I fear we are at least at Late Evening in America, if not ‘Round Midnight. In 40 years the leftists have labored mightily to make Americans ashamed of our country; thousands even hate it, though you notice the biggest haters never actually LEAVE because they know they are lying.

When an individual human being is relentlessly bullied and attacked and made to confess what a wretched person he is, the consequences to his self-confidence are devastating. It is no different with a country and its citizenry. And soon, I fear, there will be no counterweight, no memory of all the good America and Americans have done. Fight back.

So please, do yourself a favor and order The Coxswain by Geoff Brown off of Amazon. It is very inexpensive, barely more than one cup of Starbucks coffee, so order several copies for any young adults or vets you know. If even one young person learns what it has taken to keep America free, you will have done our country a service.