"Reflections on Turning Eighty"Baltasar

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essays from Essex

“Reflections on Turning Eighty”

January 31. 2021

 

“At twenty, a man is a peacock; at thirty a lion; at forty a camel;

at fifty a serpent; at sixty a dog; at seventy an ape; at eighty, a nothing at all.”

                                                                                                                Attributed to Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658)

                                                                                                                Spanish Jesuit, writer and philosopher

 

On this date eighty years ago, my mother delivered a baby boy, with the assistance of Dr. Robert Salinger, at Grace New Haven Hospital. It was 3:00PM; the baby was named for his father.

 

All babies, it was once said, looked like Winston Churchill. Whether that was complimentary to Churchill or the baby, I never knew. But what was true for many was apparently also true for me. Two days before the commencement of Operation Dragoon on August 15, 1944 (the invasion of Southern France), my mother’s youngest brother, my Uncle Joe Hotchkiss, was in command of LST 601. Churchill was there to wish the men Godspeed. He stood aboard a barge that came down the column where Uncle Joe’s ship was anchored. My uncle wrote to his parents of Churchill: “Smiling and waving, he passed within fifty feet. He was in his blue playsuit looking just as much like little Sydney Williams as he could.” 

 

…………………………………………………………

 

Regarding the rubric quoted above, it hurts that a man who never made it to sixty should refer to one who has turned eighty as a “nothing at all.” Of course, when the average person meets 10,000 people in a lifetime it means I may have met approximately 0.00014% of the world’s population. Those I do know or have known may have something to say about me. The rest could care less whether I am a peacock, a camel or an ape. So perhaps Gracián was right, to most of the world I don’t exist.

 

Nevertheless, I do, and I feel good. I am healthy and blessed in my family and friends. Yesterday morning I did my regular (five days a week) series of exercises, which includes fifty crunches and twenty-five push-ups. Yet, my grandchildren look at me, knowing I am a relic of yesteryear. I can hear them reworking those lines from Lewis Carroll: “You are old Pop Pop Williams, my grandchild said, and your hair has become very white. And yet you incessantly stand on your head. Do you think at your age it is right?” Well, my hair has been white for fifty years, and I do not stand on my head. Staying upright is my focus! Nevertheless, I look forward, with chin out, to whatever the future offers. Bring it on, I say! 

 

Of course, there are things given up as one ages. For example, I gave up skiing in my seventies. One advantage of giving up something like skiing is that time and memory exaggerate past reality. I never danced down the deep powder on Vail’s Bolshoi Ballroom with the grace I see in my mind. But so what? It’s my memory. We all have a little Walter Mitty in us. And age has other advantages. It excuses one from the complexities of high tech. When I had trouble logging onto the portal my accountant wanted me to set up for my “organizer,” my complaint brought forth the following e-mail response: “Bonny, please send Sydney a paper organizer.”

 

However, eighty doesn’t seem that old, when I look back at the speed with which the years have passed. Like a roll of paper towels, time unfolds at ever-increasing rates. Was it really seventy-seven years ago that I saw my father board a train in New Haven that took him to Texas and thence to Italy with the 10^th Mountain Division? Can it be that Seventy-five years have passed since I enrolled at Miss Lindeman’s school in Peterborough, New Hampshire, or that sixty-five years have gone by since I met John Harper, my roommate at Williston Academy? Has it really been fifty-seven years since the Reverend Dr. J. Burton Thomas, pronounced Caroline and me man and wife at the Church of Our Heavenly Rest in New York?  Can our youngest child be turning fifty this year?  Our grandchildren were born yesterday, so why are five of them in college? Where has time gone? Photographs remind us of what once was, just as in our memories the people we once knew live on. In his 1958 book Things Fall Apart, the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe wrote: “A man’s life from birth to death was a series of transition rites, which brought him nearer and near to his ancestors.” There is truth in that. At night, before nodding off, my mind wanders back to earlier days.

 

When I turned 30, my wife threw a birthday party. There was a sense of youth left behind for the more serious job of being a parent: recklessness, out; responsibility, in. Indicative of the age, a fight broke out in the dining room over something, the importance of which has evaporated. At 40, Caroline threw another party – less rambunctious. Our children were getting older. There is a photo of me in a cowboy hat, with a silly, bourbon-induced, grin, contemplating the onset of middle age. There were no fisticuffs, just a bunch of men and women having fun. There have been three other parties celebrating the passage of the decades, with the time between each, while numerically the same, getting shorter.

 

When we’re living through it, time passes quickly. On the other hand, the eighty years before I was born seems long ago. Consider what those years brought and how far away they seem: The Civil War and the assassination of Lincoln. Custer’s Last stand in June 1876. The assassination of two more U.S. Presidents: James Garfield in Long Branch, NJ in 1881 and William McKinley in Buffalo in 1901. Teddy Roosevelt’s ride up San Juan Hill, in 1898. Kitty Hawk, NC in 1903, with the Wright Brothers first flight. Doughboys sent to France, in 1917, to “make the world safe for democracy;” not realizing the war would give rise to Mussolini and Hitler. The “Roaring 20s” and the Great Depression. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and the start of World War II.  

 

In a letter to Edward Dimmitt, in July 1901, Mark Twain wrote: “Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.” I have been one to repeat the oft-quoted line that youth is wasted on the young, but I fear Twain is wrong for one fundamental reason – not knowing our fate helps keep us going.

 

Time is sobering, as it exhibits both the alpha and omega of life. In those eighty years before I was born, all but one of my great-great grandparents died, as did all but one of my great-grandparents. And my parents and grandparents were born. Since my birth, all have died, along with two sisters and one brother. In Hannah Rothschild’s book House of Trelawney, Tony Scott, an aging, bachelor art dealer, reminisces: “One of the worst things about aging is that if you stop, there’s a danger you might never get going again; muscles seize up and then every movement is uncomfortable.” We cannot let that happen. Walking with my wife in the woods around Essex Meadows is a life-saving antidote.

 

In his 2016 book of essays, Senior Moments, Willard Spiegelman wrote, darkly in my opinion: “We come into the world alone, with a cry. We exit alone, to confront the eternal silence. The fun, all the pleasure and adventure, lies in between.” More succinctly and less poetically, a friend used to make the same point: “It is not the destination in life that is important, but the trip.” But who knows? Perhaps the future is more exciting? John Kendrick Bangs suggested the party continues. In his 1896 book, Houseboat on the River Styx, he wrote of Charon, whose job was to transport ‘shades’ across the River Styx, from the land of the living to Hades. He takes command of the houseboat, which is filled with well-known personages, from myriad cultures and multiple centuries, who socialize together. The house committee includes Sir Walter Raleigh, Cassius, Demosthenes, Blackstone, Doctor Johnson and Confucius. Who wouldn’t want to mingle with that group? Bangs was having fun of course, but the dead do live on in the memories of those who knew them. After my Grandfather Hotchkiss died in 1947, my grandmother told me to remember him and to do so often. “For,” she said, “when you do, he will come alive, in your memory.” She was right. He does.

 

In “Morituri Salutamus,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow spoke to his 50^th reunion class at Bowdoin

 

“For age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress.

And as the evening twilight fades away

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.”

 

………………………………………………………

 

And on that note, with a future lit by stars, these reflections on completing eighty years come to a close. But I go on.

"House of Trelawney," Hannah Rothschild

                                                                 Sydney M. Williams 

Burrowing into Books

“House of Trelawney,” Hannah Rothschild

January 22, 2021

 

“The decline and fall of the House of Trelawney would mirror

the history of Britain; like the country, Trelawney was a

shadow of its former self, a mere elegy and an effigy.”

                                                                                                                                House of Trelawney, 2020

                                                                                                                                Hannah Rothschild (1962-)

 

Aside from my daughter-in-law Beatriz Williams’ novels, and the occasional Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher story, I prefer dead writers of fiction and live writers of non-fiction. Though I avoid current political biographies and autobiographies. While there are excellent writers of fiction today, time is short and there is much classical literature I have missed. I feel like Churchill, so little time and so much to read. 

 

Having read a review of House of Trelawney in the January 2 issue of the Wall Street Journal by Moira Hodgson, I made an exception. Perhaps it was my delight in the review, or the photo of one of England’s “Great Houses,” or maybe because my wife and I had just come off a second (or third?) viewing of “Downtown Abbey,” or even the Virginia Woolf quote above the Journal’s review: “High birth is a form of congenital insanity.” Whatever the reason, I am glad I picked up this eloquent and amusing book. 

 

Primogeniture assured that large estates in England would remain intact, as title passed to the first-born son. Daughters did not count: “The family tradition was to not waste education on girls; their youth was simply a holding pattern before marriage.” Trelawney, depicted as having had at one point four miles of corridors and 500,000 acres, sits on the coast in Cornwall. For 800 years, it had been passed down from Earl to Earl. But the males who inherited the castle became increasingly unfit. Now it was in total disrepair; its only hope – find a billionaire or open it to the public: “Once upon a time the family had seen it as their right to order and punish; now their only hope was to serve and delight.” The older Earl, Enyon, lives in unheated rooms in the castle with his wife, Clarissa. In his youth, we are told, he had been called “tres horney” for his number of sexual conquests. Kitto, his oldest son and current Earl, is dumber and more depraved than his father. He has not only lost what money he had, but also his wife Jane’s inheritance.

 

In the world Rothschild offers, women are the stronger sex: “Centuries of absolute power had dulled the male brain, whereas women, forced so long to cajole and manipulate, had evolved into far more complex and capable beings.” And in this book, while somewhat dysfunctional, women play the more important role. Jane, wife to Kitto, lives at the castle and does her best to hold it together, while looking after her three children, her in-laws and pursuing an artistic interest in producing prints. She is lonely: “Jane didn’t miss wealth, or youth; what she missed desperately was friendship.” Blaze, sister to Kitto and named for a birthmark on her face, is a math genius. She is unmarried, lonely, but has a successful career in the City, where she works as a portfolio manager for the very rich but despicable Tomlinson Sleet. She wonders: “Was it possible to hate and miss people simultaneously?” Her on-again, off-again, on-again love interest with hedge fund competitor (the one decent male in the story) Joshua Wolfe, weaves its way through the story. Clarissa, mentioned above, lives in the castle amidst opulence of past dreams, but in present day poverty. Tuffy, an odd, unmarried, younger sister of Lord Enyon, is an entomologist who wins the 2009 Caldecott prize for biology. The beautiful and disruptive Ayesha, teenage daughter of Anastasia who two decades earlier had been good friends of Jane and Blaze, appears from India, after the death of her mother. She flits through the pages like a beautiful butterfly. 

 

There are many more characters. To cite a few: Tony Scott, younger brother to the old Earl, is now an aging, unmarried art dealer who lives in a London “bed-sit.” He and his niece Blaze meet for hot chocolate on September 1, 2008: “The two sat in silence for a few minutes, one imagining opportunities, the other foreseeing disaster.” We attend the “coming of age” party for Ambrose, the oldest son of Kitto and Jane, a youth even more callow and incompetent than his father or grandfather. We spend time with Arabella, younger sister of Ambrose, who develops an interest in entomology from her Great Aunt Tuffy.          

 

The dateline for the story is early June 2008 to the end of May 2009, a time when the credit crisis almost brought down the world’s financial system. That, along with England’s antiquated class system provide backdrops to the story, which takes place (mostly) in Cornwall and London. We read of the destruction wrought by banks and their government enablers, of victimizers and victims, of newly created products, like Mortgage-Backed Securities and Credit Default Swaps. And we read of a dying aristocracy: “The dead only leave the room; they remain firmly in our lives,” says Joshua Wolfe to Blaze.

 

Hannah Rothschild is the eldest child of Baron Jacob Rothschild. Educated at Oxford, she served as a trustee for the Tate Gallery and chair of trustees for the National Gallery. Her art knowledge is displayed in the characters of Jane and Tony Scott. Rothschild is noted as a comic writer, and this book adds to her reputation. But it is also a tale about the risks of adhering to a past gone by, of dangers that lurk in financial markets, and of the importance of love, the value of families and friends, and why we must keep perspective in our lives.  

 

By the end of 2008, the worst of the credit crisis was behind us, though its effects lingered, and still do. By the end of this story, the troubles of Trelawney are being addressed, but the reader knows consequences will remain. The twists and turns of the story leave one smiling…but wondering: what next happens to Ayesha?

"My Last TOTD"

                                                                 Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“My Last TOTD”

January 17, 2021

 

“You don’t stop laughing when you grow old.

You grow old when you stop laughing.”

                                                                                                                                George Bernard Shaw

 

I have decided to stop writing Thoughts of the Day. To a few that will be a relief, to others a disappointment. My reasons are myriad, but in the end, they boil down to two principal points: First, I do not want my voice to become angry, which persistent political polarization will cause, and second, I like the wisdom of George Bernard Shaw, exemplified in the rubric above. When what was once fun becomes a chore, it is time to move on. Politics, while necessary, has never been “nice.” It has always been a “blood sport,” as anyone familiar with early American history knows. On July 11, 1804, Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson’s Vice President, shot and killed his long-time political rival Alexander Hamilton in a duel near Weehawken, New Jersey. Thus far, despite rising levels of vitriol, none of our major politicians have resorted to killing their opponents. Nevertheless, time moves on. I turn eighty in a couple of weeks, and, while I will still read three papers a day and peruse news on the internet, I want time for writing reviews and personal essays and to read more books, and I want more time with family and friends. I would like always to be able to laugh. 

 

Thoughts of the Day began in January 2008 and were, at first, aimed at financial markets. They followed a series of Market Notes begun in March 2000. They morphed into political commentary, as 2008 became 2009. In February 2010, at the sensible suggestion of one of my sons, titles were added. Six years later, in February 2016, rubrics were added as well. Between research, writing, re-writing and editing, each takes twenty and forty hours. In all, I have written over 1000 such essays – more than a million words. My idea, not always successful, was to emphasize reason over emotion – to view the world through a clear lens. The polarization of the electorate, and the meanness that is a consequence, has made the process more difficult and, frankly, less fun. And I have always felt that if one does not enjoy what one is doing, move on. Life is too short. In 1967, I left Eastman Kodak for the Merrill Lynch training program. Then, the future was bigger than the past. In 2015, I retired from Wall Street, with the future smaller than the past. Since, the future has shrunk further.

 

What I shall miss are the people I have met through these scribblings, people all around the world who care deeply about freedom and liberty, truth and tolerance, civility and equality, free markets and opportunity. At heart, I am an optimist who tends to view the glass as half full. Yet, I worry about smug politicians who spend money without regard to revenues; a media that advocates, rather than reports; schools and universities that promote a “cancel culture,” and that deny conservatives the opportunity to speak; giant, social media companies (not unlike Trusts of late 19^th Century), which have become monopolists that control content and speech, while protected from liability under Section 230 of the 1996 Communication Decency Act; and big corporations that have become “woke,” as they bow to shifting political winds. Keep in mind, unless commonsense prevails, censorship, identity politics and political correctness, all enshrouded in a miasma of hypocrisy, are predictors of Orwell’s 1984.

 

I appreciate your many responses over the years, both positive and negative. You gave me confidence and helped me think through issues more clearly. This decision does not reflect any changes in my opinions – my heart remains with the conservative cause, but I will leave it to others to take up the pen. We all have opinions. You have yours, and I have mine. We must sort through our differences to find common ground. That calls for civil debate and deliberation. Generally, I have found that both sides want the same thing – personal liberty and responsibility, equal opportunity, accountability, rule of law and tolerance for others. Differences most often lie in the means to achieve common goals. Yet our politics – and attitudes toward discussing them – have become over-heated. And I recognize I have been both victimizer and victim. However, I have tried to avoid unfair accusations and/or confrontations. Another quote from Mr. Shaw is applicable: “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

 

What I will continue to do is write short reviews of books I have enjoyed and personal essays. The forty or so personal essays that have been written over the past five years should be published this fall under the title of “Essays from Essex: Nature, Its Miracles and Mysteries.” An exciting aspect of this book-to-be is that my grandson Alex Williams has agreed to provide half a dozen drawings, including, I hope, the cover illustration.

 

None of us can predict what tomorrow may bring. It may be that the pull of political commentary will yank me back to my computer. But I don’t think so. I look forward to spending more time with my wife and, when this Coronavirus finally disappears, with our children and grandchildren, in their homes.

 

I pray that reason and civility will return to our national politics – that victors will be humble, and losers gracious, and that meanness and retribution will disappear. Despite our differences, we should never forget the great good luck that is ours to live in this country. And may our government in Washington never lose sight of the fact that it is the people who are sovereign.

 

Thank you for allowing me into your lives, and I will understand if you choose to be removed from receiving my future reviews and personal essays.

 

In politics, let reason replace passion; in our lives, let truth be our guiding light. Good luck and best wishes,

 

Sydney

"Will Cooler Heads Prevail?"

                                                                 Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Will Cooler Heads Prevail?”

January 13, 2021

 

“Traditional American democracy is ‘deliberative democracy,’ a process by which elected

representatives use reason and debate to shape public policy. Participatory democracy

tells the aggrieved: Never mind the legislature. Go to the streets to get what you want.”

                                                                                                                                Mary Anastasia O’Grady

                                                                                                                                Wall Street Journal

                                                                                                                                January 11, 2021

 

Sadly, we have moved away from the concept of a legislature deliberating, and respectively (and reflectively) debating what is in the best interest of Americans. The metaphor of the squeaky wheel getting the grease is more fitting in an atmosphere where the disenchanted or ‘victims’ take to the streets. This past summer’s Antifa and BLM protests turned into destructive and lethal riots in cities across the country. Last week’s riot, which emanated from a giant Trump rally, reached a crescendo when dozens of Trump supporters (and perhaps others) stormed the U.S. Capitol.

 

Why has this happened? In August 2014, Ashley Parker, writing on the front page of the New York Times, noted: “A generation ago, here in the Senate Dining Room, Mike Mansfield, a Democrat of Montana and majority leader, and George Aiken, a Republican of Vermont, met most mornings to have breakfast together, a scene almost unimaginable in today’s polarized climate.” Now, six and a half years later, polarization has worsened into a hyper-partisanship that is probably the worse since the pre-Civil War days. It is not only politicians and extremists who face diametrical opposition, families and friends have become isolated because of political differences.

 

The question is why? The United States has never been wealthier or militarily more powerful. Soldiers have been brought home from, seemingly endless, overseas wars. More young people are in college than ever before and now women outnumber men on campuses. Poverty has declined. Employment and incomes for minorities reached record levels a year ago, and the segregation of the 1950s is a distant memory.  The nation has become energy independent for the first time since 1957, according to the Institute for Energy Independence. Government and industry, working together created a vaccine in record time. Why is there no effort to look at what has been done correctly, and then build on mutual successes, rather than focusing on grievances? Perhaps it is an excess of leisure time? Perhaps the ubiquity of the internet, social media, C-SPAN and 24-hour-news no longer allow time for reflection.

 

As partisanship intensifies, hope for reconciliation fades. Calls for unity and healing are offset by acts of retribution and division. We see it in Washington, and I see it in responses to my essays. Democrats have used identity politics, as a means to reach out to minorities and women. However, by their nature, identity politics, which serve to divide, are racist and sexist. Universities, media and big tech companies have exorcised conservative speech.

 

Amidst this maelstrom, the Presidential Inaugural Committee announced their theme, one badly needed: America United. We can only hope this time unity takes traction. Every president’s inaugural has made similar requests, including President Trump’s, yet disunity continues to rise. Mr. Biden faces opposition to unity from his own party. Both Senator Chuck Schumer and House Leader Nancy Pelosi have called for the invocation of the 25^th Amendment or the impeachment of Mr. Trump. Do they believe that such actions will help unify the nation, when there is a week to Inaugural? Mr. Trump will be gone on January 20. It was his acts of self-destruction that caused Republicans to lose the Senate and that will tarnish his legacy. The small number of rioters who invaded the Capitol did more harm to Mr. Trump and the Republican Party than did four years of persistent Democrat opposition. Kimberly Strassel put it well in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal: “The pity is that Mr. Trump’s conflagration will mostly harm the Americans he went to Washington to help. They will bear the higher taxes, the higher costs of regulation, the higher unemployment, the loss of freedoms.” Is piling on in his last days the way to mollify the 74 million Americans who voted for him in November? 

 

A few readers have told me that they are so incensed by Mr. Trump’s behavior that he belongs in jail. But they were not so outraged by the behavior of the Obama Administration four years ago when agents from the FBI and the Justice Department used a phony dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton campaign and that alleged Russian intervention in the 2016 election, to harass and intimidate Mr. Trump and his incoming Administration. Most were silent during this past summer when thugs from Antifa and BLM killed people and destroyed property, including minority-owned businesses. We don’t need condescending hypocrites. We need people to take responsibility for their actions, and we need an honest accounting of events.

 

As conservatives, we must not descend into the rabbit hole of immoral equivalence. Just because Democrats behaved badly is no excuse for Republicans to up the ante. With Trump, because of the swamp that had become Washington, we willingly (and knowingly) made a pact with the Devil. In my opinion, Mr. Trump is not a bad man. He is flawed, but who amongst us is not? Conservatives pride themselves in a belief that morality is absolute, not relative. Gerard Baker, in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, wrote: “The path for a reinvigorated conservative movement is a narrow but fruitful one. It must articulate and address the legitimate grievances of Americans, while resisting the temptation to win them over with simplistic fictions.” Extreme partisanship sees the world as black or white, but grey is the dominant color.

 

Special moments bring opportunities. This is such a time. By the end of the day on January 6, with two weeks to go to inauguration, Mr. Trump was finished as a politician and his legacy was impaired if not destroyed. I write that even though Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and a distinguished civil rights lawyer, wrote of Mr. Trump’s speech to protesters: It [the speech] “was misguided and wrong but completely protected by the First Amendment.” No matter how culpable Mr. Biden may feel Mr. Trump to be for last Wednesday’s invasion of the Capitol, he should not remain silent. He should try conciliation rather than accusation. The late Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli once wrote words that speak to us today: “Without forgiveness, life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.” Mr. Biden has a unique opportunity, not to forgive Mr. Trump, but to reach out to the millions who voted for him. This will not be easy, as hatred for Mr. Trump has been a unifying factor among Democrats. But this moment will pass once Mr. Biden is inaugurated, and more pressing matters face him, and intolerance, once again, rules the way forward. 

 

Will cooler heads prevail? The odds would say no, but surprising things happen. One of the better comments I have read about that fateful afternoon of January 6 was from First Lady Melania Trump, a woman whom the media has largely ignored: “It is inspiring to see that so many have found a passion and enthusiasm in participating in an election, but we must not allow that passion to turn to violence.” Words that cool in an over-heated time.

"Unsinkable," by James Sullivan

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Burrowing into Books

“Unsinkable,” James Sullivan

January 10, 2021

 

“In the infantry, one bullet might find one man, but it didn’t work that way

in the kind of combat Jim was engaged in. What might get him was a torpedo

or a glide bomb, and if it got him, it was going to get a boatload of them.”

                                                                                                                                Unsinkable, James Sullivan, 2020

 

Twenty-five minutes can seem a lifetime. In those few minutes, Plunkett, supporting the Anzio invasion in late afternoon, January 24, 1944, dodged five German torpedos and held off a dozen dive bombers, before one 550-lb bomb hit the destroyer, killing fifty-three sailors, mostly young and mostly instantly. 

 

Among the dead was John Gallagher of Dorchester, Massachusetts, great uncle to the author. Gallagher lived through the evening, dying at 1:00AM on the 25^th. His last words were to his shipmate and fellow gunner Jim McManus: “I’m a tough Irishman. Those Germans can’t kill me.” “With that last pronouncement,” Sullivan writes, “it appeared that John had started back to Dorchester…and the broad veranda across the front of the house,” Thirty men were so obliterated they were listed as missing in action.

 

The Plunkett (DD-431) was commissioned in late 1940. The destroyer, Mr. Sullivan writes, “is the ‘minute man’ behind the stonewall, the grunt on point in the jungle…” It was a ship that met John Paul Jones request of being designed to get in harm’s way. The author adds: “…the ship was first and foremost a floating gun platform…” By War’s end, according to a memoir by one of the ship’s officers, Plunkett had “participated in every major invasion of Europe [from Anzio to Normandy], and it is believed to be the only major warship so distinguished.” Thirty-five years after it was launched, and now named Nan Wang, it was scrapped, somewhere in Taiwan. Yet, for its heroic action in Anzio Harbor on a late January afternoon in 1944 its Captain, Edward J. Burke was awarded the Navy Cross.

 

Mr. Sullivan takes the reader on an exciting, and personal, odyssey. Besides Gallagher, McManus and Burke, we meet (among others) Ken Brown, gunnery officer aboard Plunkett, first in January 1942 as a 21-year-old graduate of the Naval Academy, assigned to the ship, and then again seventy years later in Thornton, Colorado where he had retired. We first know Jim Feltz as a sixteen-year-old in Overland, Missouri when he had just met Betty Kneemiller. He joined the Navy at age seventeen. We meet him again, years later, back in Overland. At Anzio, Feltz was in the forward fire room when the ship was hit. Going topside, he was one of the first to hook up hoses and begin putting out the fires. In April 1944, while on leave back in the U.S., as the ship was undergoing repairs, Jim and Betty married, a marriage that lasted seventy years.

 

Approximately 10% of the American population served in uniform at some point during World War II. Stories that James Sullivan heard as a child at family gatherings seemed “so ordinary…that the details hardly qualified as something to talk about.” Yet stories from those backyard picnics germinated in Mr. Sullivan’s mind and became the genesis of this book, which is far from ordinary. And that is because his tale is based on on-site and personal research, during which he read diaries and accounts, and then reached out to living veterans who had served aboard Plunkett in World War II – a riveting read.  

"His Last Hurrah"

 Generally, I like to sit on an essay for a day or two after it has been written, to ensure that it says what I want it to say. In this case, I did not do so, as I decided time was of the essence. I may come to regret that – though I think not – because, in a sense, this is a requiem. At any rate, here goes:

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“His Last Hurrah”

January 7, 2021

 

“Like Hell I would!”

                                                                                “The Last Hurrah,” 1958 John Ford movie

                                                                                                  Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy), on his death bed,                                                                                                     when asked if he would relive his life differently.

 

Defending President Trump over the past four years has sometimes felt like being caught in a whirlwind. No matter which way I turned, something or somebody was coming at me. While most comments I receive are supportive, I have been accused of being insensitive, stupid, a racist and, if not a Nazi, something akin to a storm trooper.

 

Despite his obvious character flaws, I have defended Mr. Trump for five essential reasons: First, I believed (and still do) that Washington’s morass of arrogant and sanctimonious bureaucrats needed (and needs) disrupting. Second, his appointment of dozens of conservative judges and three justices. Third, his accomplishments in terms of the economy, particularly what he did for black and minority unemployment, and in world affairs, especially in the Middle East where, in 2020, he was instrumental in getting four Arab nations to recognize Israel. Fourth, he fought for public school choice and against undemocratic trends toward political correctness, identity politics, “cancel” culture and the prohibition of conservative speech on college campuses. And fifth, his courage in fending off attempts by Democrats to undo the 2016 election and their attempt to create roadblocks for his new administration in 2017 and beyond. And this he did while continuously being assaulted by a feckless mainstream media, and a social media industry intent on separating him from his followers. As well, I was impressed with Operation Warp Speed and how quickly, and against most expectations, the vaccine appeared. 

 

Yet there comes a time when everyone must recognize the world has moved on – that while political battles can and should continue, they should do so in different venues and under different commanders. In the last two months, Mr. Trump has been more concerned with his alleged mistreatment at the polls than with preserving the Republic and keeping the Senate in Republican hands. In the end, it was, to borrow a line from Eliza Doolittle, his toneless persistence and super-sized ego, in the face of all evidence, that “done him in.” He listened to those he should have ignored and ignored those whose advice he should have heeded. All political races are tough to lose, especially close ones where millions of dollars have been expended and personal sacrifices have been made. Politics, it has been said, is a blood sport. For every winner there is a loser. When he assumed responsibility for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy was quoted: “Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan.” In the case of Georgia, President Trump should question whether the losses by Senators Loeffler and Perdue just happened, or did his post-November election behavior contribute to their losses? I believe the latter. Either way, the nation will be worse off without a Republican-led Senate.

 

Nevertheless, I think his legacy will be built on his achievements, and by some of his speeches, like the one in Warsaw in July 2017 and the one at Mount Rushmore on July 4^th of last year. In Warsaw, Mr. Trump addressed a concern of most conservatives: “Finally, on both sides of the Atlantic, our citizens are confronted by yet another danger – one firmly within our control. This danger is invisible to some but familiar to the Poles: the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people. The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies.” The speech at Mount Rushmore attacked today’s culture war: “The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice. But in truth, it would abolish both justice and society. It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance, and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place of repression, domination and exclusion.” The speech at Mount Rushmore was condemned by the media, while the one in Warsaw was generally ignored. Both are worth reading in full to help get a measure of the man. But his legacy is at risk if he continues to wind up his supporters, as he did in Washington yesterday, in a futile quest for electoral victory. To tilt at windmills while armies have moved on is energy expended without a return. Humility in victory and graciousness in defeat was once an adage in school sports. It is not practiced in politics today.

 

Yesterday, on Washington’s Ellipsis, Mr. Trump said he would not concede. (In November, after the election, I wrote that I thought he would graciously concede. I was obviously wrong.) I hope he re-thinks that decision. The election has been ratified by Congress, with Michael Pence presiding. There is little doubt in my mind that Progressives have been moving the country leftward at an uncomfortable pace. However, it is crucial that the Right fight their battles within the dictates of the Constitution, even if the Left does not. The country is already divided, and Mr. Trump’s Wednesday’s speech did not help, even though he later Tweeted: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful.” His words came too late, however, as a woman was shot and killed inside the U.S. Capital, in the ensuing melee.

 

What is needed is healing, as Senator Mitch McConnell said, also on Wednesday: “The voters, courts, states, they’ve all spoken. If we overrule them it would damage our republic forever.” Vice President Michael Pence was correct when he said that Constitution constrains him from rejecting Electoral College votes. Republicans do not have the luxury of an unbiased news and social media, so they have to fight, but they must do so lawfully, and they must appeal to reason and common sense. The stakes are too high.

 

Frank Skeffington was an old-time, Irish Catholic mayor of an unnamed New England city, who was running in his last election. He was both sentimental and tough and had created a political machine that had kept him in power for years, despite rumors of corruption and abuses. He faced competition from the Protestant elite who had been driven from office years earlier. The elite enlisted the city’s Catholic cardinal in their bid to unseat Mayor Skeffington, which they did. Skeffington had a heart attack on the evening of his loss. It is when he momentarily regained consciousness that he uttered the line in the rubric that heads this essay. What is common to both Mr. Trump and Frank Skeffington is their refusal to face reality and determination to win at any cost. The consequence: a political loss – a last hurrah for Mr. Skeffington and likely to be one for Mr. Trump.

"Trump as Authoritarian?"

 Tomorrow we should learn who will control the U.S. Senate. For all our sakes, I hope Republicans remain in charge. The room for damage, with Democrats in control of both branches of Congress, would be dispiriting at best and potentially dangerous to our democracy of a free and liberty-loving people.

 

The attached essay is short – less than 600 words – but is one on which I have written in the past and, in my opinion, has great currency at the moment.

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Trump as Authoritarian?”

January 5, 2021

 

“Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can

result only in an officially enforced inequality – an authoritarian

determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.”

                                                                                                                                         Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992)

 

It is acceptable to criticize President Trump for policy decisions with which one disagrees. For example, one may prefer a nuclear treaty with Iran and a home state for Palestinians, rather than the Abraham Accords. Or one might see China as a mutually beneficial trading partner, rather than as a geo-political and military threat. One might see our government as a means of achieving equality of outcomes, as opposed to those who believe government should serve as a referee in a free-market society. It is okay to be upset with Mr. Trump’s personal behavior, his egocentrism and his butchering of the English language. One might argue that Mr. Trump’s post-election behavior has been damaging to the Republican Party and the democratic process. These are all factors and policies about which we can disagree, discuss and debate.

 

But those who claim Mr. Trump is a man with authoritarian instincts are simply wrong. Tuesday’s headline in my local paper, The New London Day, referring to last weekend’s hour-long call with Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and others, read: “Call Reflects Trump Power Grab.” The headline is presumptuous and misleading. While snippets, taken out of context, have been posted on social media and used for political purposes, I read the transcript and found it unexceptional, repetitive and, frankly, boring. It did not reflect a power grab. If President Trump were truly an authoritarian wannabe, why didn’t he issue federal mask-wearing mandates, impose lockdowns on places of gatherings and close schools when COVID-10 appeared? Why did he, instead, give authority to states? Democrats faulted him for not exerting more federal control. When lethal riots broke out in cities across the country after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, why did Mr. Trump not declare martial law? 

 

Politicians who want to seize power do not de-regulate the economy and provide school choice to students and parents. They do not reduce taxes, which give more financial clout to corporations and individuals. They do not encourage free-market capitalism, allow gun ownership, nor appoint judges who rely on the original intent of those who wrote the Constitution and earlier precedents, rather than on personal interpretations of current societal norms. 

 

The truth is that authoritarianism can come from extremists on both the right and the left. In my opinion, with the media so focused on the right, the greater risk comes from the left. The individual for whom we should all be wary is the one who desires to make the state a greater factor in our lives. That individual is more interested in dividing people, by gender and sex. They desire to re-write history and curb opposing opinions in schools and universities. Which Party is the author of such proposals? The best recent example of authoritarian instinct was President Obama’s 2012 video “Life of Julia,” where the government is portrayed as providing cradle to grave care of Julia. But as for Donald Trump, while he speaks intemperately his actions do not suggest an authoritarian figure.

"An Optimist's Lament"

 As for last year’s election, I recognize the “fat lady” has not sung her final aria. But I strongly suspect results will not change. The focus of those who believe in conservativism should be on the future, not the past. The political beliefs of the far-left have infiltrated the academy and shanghaied the media, with the sole purpose of gathering power through their version of a “thought police.” We live in perilous times. 

 

Nevertheless, I believe there is reason for optimism, but we must focus on the causes of the cultural shift that has brought us to this place. With that I wish each of you a happy and healthy New Year!

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“An Optimist’s Lament”

January 1, 2021

 

“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in.

A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.”

                                                                                                                                William Vaughn (1915-1977)

                                                                                                                                American columnist and author

                                                                                                                                Kansas City Star

 

On August 4, 1944, the Grüne Polizi, along with the Gestapo, raided the “secret annex” of an abandoned office building complex in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family had been hiding for over two years. Less than three weeks earlier, on July 15, 1944, Anne wrote in her diary: “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.” Ultimately, peace did come. The Nazis were defeated, and Europe has been free of wars for seventy-five years – the longest period in its history – thanks to the people of the United States. But peace came too late for Anne Frank. Less than a year later, she was dead at age fifteen, probably of Typhus, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Nazi-held Germany.

 

One marvels at Anne Frank’s outlook, when bleakness enshrouded her environment and hoped dimmed for millions caught in the Nazi’s web and in a world gone dark. As we reflect today, in far better circumstances than were hers, is there not a lesson for us, in our pandemic, fear--filled world?

 

Optimism is a state of mind. Perhaps a dream over reality, or naïveté over cynicism? In retrospect, Anne Frank’s optimism appears innocent or guileless. Yet, she lives on through her Diary of a Young Girl, because in spite of everything she experienced she had the vision to see that sunlight would return and the world would move on. In her optimism, she was wise, for the two – optimism and wisdom – are linked. Optimists draw from the ancient classics, the birth of Christianity, the Enlightenment, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the Industrial Revolution and the recent victory of democracy over socialism. All have helped man’s condition to improve. Individual freedom, democracy and free-market capitalism have lifted multitudes from poverty and early death. Optimism, it should be remembered, does not mean nostalgia for an earlier time, but the expectation of enhanced prospects for a better future.

 

With the exception of political divisiveness, this past year started out on a high note. GDP growth in 2019 had slowed from its pace in 2017 and 2018 but was still up 2.3% for the year – a remarkable achievement for the eleventh year of an expansion. Unemployment, including minority unemployment, was the lowest in fifty years. Incomes in 2019 for the lowest decile of workers rose at a rate higher than for those in the first decile. Interest rates had fallen, yet the Dollar remained strong. The Dow Jones Industrial Averages (DJIA), the laggard of the major indices, rose 22.3% during 2019 and was up another 3.5% through February 12. These factors favored the incumbent in the upcoming Presidential race, despite an impeachment and three years of Congressional harassment by those for whom Mr. Trump was a nemesis. As long as the economy did not fall into recession, the election would be his to lose. 

 

Then, the novel virus COVID-19 struck. It originated in Wuhan, China and spread throughout the world, turning 2020 into an Annus Horribilis. It was politicized and became a crisis the Left chose to use to their advantage. Politicians assumed extraordinary powers, especially governors and mayors in deep-blue states. The consequences of their actions caused the economy to tank, as people responded like lemmings, obedient to the harsh directives issued from leaders more intent on power than concern for the afflicted. While “following the science” was touted as the excuse for grabbing more power, personal liberty was abandoned, and only the science that supported political preferences was allowed. Infected patients in New York and New Jersey were sent to nursing homes, killing hundreds of residents. The virus lived on surfaces until it didn’t. Masks didn’t work until they did. It became okay to protest police brutality, but not to attend school or church. Fear of liability from class action lawsuits, with no restrictions on the size of settlements, caused universities, colleges and schools to shut down campuses. Governments refused to treat people like adults, preferring the signaling of virtue to an “infantile” public. Lockdowns and shelter-in-place mandates were issued. The reaction to the virus was a gift to the Chinese and other enemies of the West, in that it showed how easily they can, without firing a shot, subvert a free people into an Orwellian populace. It was also a gift to Democrats, who never let crises go to waste.  

 

The economy went into freefall when lockdowns were implemented. First quarter GDP declined 4.8%, with second quarter falling 31.4%. By March 23^rd, the DJIA had fallen 37% from its February 12^th high. The cloud of despondency that enveloped the nation provided a silver lining for the Democratic Party, as Mr. Trump’s seeming invincible economy had been fractured. Once President Trump called for re-opening the economy, the response was quick – too fast for the Democratic Party that had nominated the cognitively-challenged (and corrupt, as we have since learned) Joe Biden. Third quarter GDP was up 33.1%, with the DJIA up 7.6%, with tech stocks doing even better. Colluding with the Democratic Party as fall neared, mainstream media focused on bad news about the virus; they suppressed news of Hunter Biden’s financial dealings with foreign governments, downplayed progress of the vaccine (whose approval was announced a week after the election), and they ignored the fact that House Intelligence Committee member Eric Swalwell (D-CA) had had an intimate relationship with Chinese spy Christine Fang.

 

It was imperative to far-left Democrats and the Washington establishment that Trump go, as it was for their minions in the media, and those in universities who believe capitalism is evil and that speech, when not “Woke,” should be shuttered. Efforts to stifle the Administration had fizzled:  the Mueller investigation found no Russian collusion; Tweets to his 88 million followers were often banned, and impeachment failed. His successes were overlooked – the rise in employment and wages for minority workers; prospects for peace in the Middle East, with the Abraham Accords; making our European partners pay more for their own defense; rolling out the vaccine in record time; confronting China for interning Uyghurs, disbanding democracy in Hong Kong, stealing technology and building military bases on man-made islands in the South China Sea. Ignored as well was the State Department’s Clean Network Initiative, which has been joined by 50 countries representing two-thirds of the global economy, to offset China’s Huawei 5G network. The election was Democrats last chance. But it wasn’t just Trump that Washington and the nation’s elite were after. It was a return to a way of life disrupted by Mr. Trump, which had been rewarding to politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and globalists, especially those in finance and technology. He was, as he once told an audience, “just in the way.” Any means used were justified by ends demanded. 

 

There is no question, in my opinion, that the election was rampant with fraud. There are too many “coincidences.” The question is, was fraud sufficient to overturn the election?  Sadly, we will never know. Mr. Biden will be sworn in as President and Mr. Trump will leave office. The President was not beaten by an individual, but by a system he had wounded but not destroyed. Keep in mind, however, election fraud is not the disease; it is a manifestation. The disease that infects America has many fathers: a decline in religion and in in the nuclear family, schools that teach to the lowest common denominator, universities that segregate by identity. It is a consequence of an emphasis on self-identity and victimization, and the trivialization of moral values. It is a result of hypocritical politicians who see public service as a path to private gain. It is a disease that has been abetted by a media more interested in advocacy than truth. President Trump was demonized, not because of his character. He was demonized because, like Hercules who fought the Hydra that dwelt in the murky swamps of Lerna, he confronted Washington’s arrogant bureaucracy, whose swamp denizens outnumber the heads the Hydra was able to grow. While the swamp persists, it has been damaged. Mr. Trump’s legacy will be his battle for justice and liberty for forgotten Americans. 

 

With Progressives in control of much of Washington and with their plans to impose more regulations, raise taxes, use identity politics, manage the teaching of history, and curtail conservative speech, it is difficult to be optimistic, which is why the story of Anne Frank is so prescient. What she faced was far more frightening than what we confront. Every generation has its summonses, ones we must obey but do not choose. We cannot control our parents, or the time and place of when and where we were born. Toward the end of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the hobbit Frodo says to the wizard Gandalf: “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf replies: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”  For those of us who value free expression, who believe in the sanctity of the rule of law and in free markets, we thank God we were born in this Country. For all its faults, it is the freest and most successful nation on Earth, which is why so many want to come here. But we must never lose sight of the fact that freedom, so hard to obtain and so difficult to maintain, can be so easily lost.

 

As to what the New Year will bring, I have no crystal ball. But I worry. In nominating and then electing a corrupt, cognitively impaired 78-year-old white man, Democrats may be hoisted on a petard of their own making. Will the press question Mr. Biden’s mental faculties? Will they investigate his family’s corruption? Will they place Kamala Harris on the throne before 2024? Will China’s sins in terms of human rights be exposed, or will they be given a pass by those who see China as a place to mine for dollars? Will the new Administration abandon Israel for a nuclear pact with Iran? Will England go to the back of the line? What about the economy? How many closed small businesses will never re-open? The economy does not need more government stimulus. It needs to open. Neither stocks nor bonds appear attractive, with the market selling at record highs and interest rates at record lows. Federal debt is at record levels, and most “blue” states have retirement liabilities they cannot meet. The Federal Reserve’s purchase of the federal government’s debt suggests a lack of buyers; thus, the value of the Dollar may decline, bringing inflation with it, in a stagnating economy. Even with an economic rebound, it seems unlikely we will return to the record employment and income numbers of a year ago. Regulations and taxes impede, not enhance, economic growth, and we will have more of both. With Trump gone, hate-filled media will recede, so temperatures will moderate, but will campuses become open to diversity of thought and opinions? Will city schools and corporate boardrooms search for excellence, or for racial and gender diversity? Will the flawed 1619 project replace the history of our founding? Will decency, respect and tolerance make their way into the public square?

 

These are questions without answers. But I am drawn back to the optimism expressed by a fifteen-year-old Jewish girl in a cramped, hidden apartment in Nazi-run Europe seventy-six years ago. While my optimism for the immediate future wavers, I am filled with hope that the American people will rise to the challenges they face, that common sense will overcome the foolishness of today’s “woke” (and ephemeral) culture, and that 245 years of liberty will not easily collapse. “Hope,” as E.B. White wrote in a letter to a Mr. Nadeau on March 30, 1973, “is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time.” Amen, and Happy New Year!