WILLIAM JAMES’ SWAN DIVE INTO INSANITY

One more try on this topic.  To grasp the sheer insanity and evil of William James’ philosophy strains the senses and rationality to the point of mental disorientation.  I’ve never been able to finish this exposition, so this time, instead of trying to start at the beginning and build his twisted, Escher-esque metaphysics, I’m going to leave that part of it to you, my readers.  (What?  I have readers?  No way!)

James’ metaphysics, or model of existence, held that there are an infinite number of “realities,” called “Multiverses.”  Each multiverse is created and ruled by its own god (lower-case god).  His provenance for this is that people disagree passionately and steadfastly on things, which “proves” [sic] each of us lives in a unique “reality.”  Furthermore, existence, or reality, is not finished; it is literally under construction at every instant.  If it were not so, there could be no change – no revision or correction of old theories.  (Heraclitus first came up with this baloney when he said a man can’t step in the same river twice, because the flow of water creates a new river instantaneously.  [Note 1] Don’t get hung up on this!  It’s stupid and self-refuting, and only professors and their victims are capable of swallowing such crap.)

So all of these gods are constantly at war, trying to get their children a better deal.  Ever heard the phrase, or the movie title, “Children of a lesser god?”  Well, that’s James’ influence.  If you are a child of a lesser god, sucks to be you.  However, there is a way for even us metaphysically impoverished miserables:  the power of our faith.  Since each multiverse was created by the will of the associated god, if we can throw the full weight of our faith and will behind our god, sometimes we can tip the scales in our favor.  “Reality” is created by consciousness, and so it can be changed at a whim.  Since “reality” is constantly changing, what we “knew” an instant ago can no longer be trusted.    The knowledge we bring into every instant of our lives is obsolete at the threshold of the next instant.  James called it “Antecedent knowledge,” which is another self-refuting absurdity.

Here’s the segue into epistemology, or the model of knowledge – the branch of philosophy that examines how we know anything, and how our knowledge relates to existence.  Ever been in a discussion about politics, morals, economics, art, or any other abstract topic, and your opponent demands, “How do you know that?”  Well, there you are, instantly up to your so-called, alleged eyeballs in epistemology.  Don’t worry.  All that BS is BS, and need not be confusing.  I’ll show you. [note 2]

Back to the fact that folks disagree.  If two people are created and nurtured in different multiverses, their views, or models, of reality are hopelessly, irrevocably incompatible, viz the proverb about the blind men examining an elephant.  One got the trunk and said the beast was like a snake.  Another felt the leg and said it was a tree, and so on.  Each of those chaps was experiencing reality – the elephant – through the filter of his blindness and past experiences.  So it is with us and our multiverses, and the great, inescapable filter is our culture. “Culture” is everything we experience in our lives.  Everything!  Race, age, gender, finances, nationality, religion, handicap, talents…  everything!  We can never escape the mental, or epistemological, prison of our culture.  If we find someone with whom we agree on most things – ‘cause agreeing on all things is impossible! – it means they may also  be children of our own god, or at least the spawn of our multiverse.

People from different cultures – which is all of us! – can never agree because their very means of perceiving and understanding “reality” is permanently, totally, irreversibly determined by our cultures.  We have only three alternatives:  one of us can surrender our world view to the other, we can fight it out and let the strong prevail, or we can simply avoid each other forever.  This is the unspoken truth of multiculturalism.  It is not tolerance or acceptance of other cultures!  Multiculturalism is the theory that culture is the only thing that exists as unchangeable!  Remember when I said reality is under construction, so we can’t trust what we knew at the top of this page?  The one and only exception is our cultures.  Multiculturalism teaches that we can never understand the culture of another person. [Notes 3 and 3B]

I bet some of y’all are thinking, “There’s no way that’s a thing!   That’s too friggin’ insane!”  Well, consider ethics.  Ever hear, “That may be right for you, but it’s not right for me?”  How about, “We don’t say that’s wrong; we just say it’s not the way we do things here.”  (I have actually, LITERALLY heard that one in reference to cannibalism.)   Ever heard someone claim the dichotomy between “universal truth and personal truth?”  Now let’s tie this ethical garbage back to epistemology:  it may true for you that it’s bad for me to stick a knife in your belly, but it isn’t true for me.  And just because it was bad yesterday doesn’t mean it’s bad today – or since lunch.”

James actually wrote, “The moral is the expedient, and the expedient of the moment.”  So since reality is created by what we think, “Whatever gets me what I want right now is the expedient of the moment, and, by definition, moral.”  James called his philosophy “Pragmatism” for this very reason:  whatever works is moral, right, and good, but it only has to work for me, in this moment.  Because reality is under construction, and our antecedent knowledge is null and void, there are no such things as immutable principles, whether in physics, math, morals, politics, economics, or anything else.

Let’s go back a few paragraphs to where I said we can affect the course of existence by throwing the full weight of our will and faith behind our god.  Talk about the “pie,” model of existence, where one person’s slice comes out of another person’s!  (In the Marines, we call this, ‘Semper Fi.  I got mine, screw you.”)  This is a critical point!  The course or development of reality is not affected by what we do because action takes place in the realm of volatile, unknowable, capricious flux.  No, if we would alter reality, we can only do it through supporting the consciousness of our god.  Every person who disagrees with us counteracts our faith.  The very fact that they disagree threatens the very course of our multiverse.

Again, if you think that’s so insane no one could ever truly believe it, consider the rabid response of liberals to any opinion that contradicts their own.

How did James’ madness become such a force in American life?  In the 1920’s, a professor education at the University of Michigan, John Dewey, took James’ philosophy of Pragmatism, with its multiverses, hordes of gods, multiculturalism, Heraclitian flux, and absolute, utter amorality and applied it to a model of public education.  These two men, James and Dewey, are responsible for the putrefaction of American education and the spread of that intellectual gangrene across generations.

If you’ve hacked your way through this, perhaps you can see how difficult it was to write, and why I had to skip over so much.

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[Note 1]  Heraclitus was a Greek who lived around 500 BC.  He proposed that nothing exists but change, or “flux.”  Since everything that exists changes over time – trees fall and rot, people die and rot, stones are broken up and eroded – and since much of that change is imperceptible to Man, the belief in permanence is folly.  See how this relates to James’ BS?  Heraclitus failed to understand the Law of Identity, which says that all – that’s all – the features that make a thing what it is are part of its identity.  A tree is a tree, and one of the physical, very real features that make it a tree is that it can die, fall, and rot.  It’s not a different tree; it’s the same tree at a different time and under different circumstances.  His famous statement about stepping in the same river twice does not comprehend that part of what makes a river a river is that the water moves.  A water molecule does not become a different molecule with every millimeter it travels.  We can’t really blame ol’ Heraclitus for missing this;  Ayn Rand hadn’t written “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” for a few millennia hence.

[Note 2]   If James’ position that we are totally, absolutely, incontrovertibly determined by our culture, and we can never comprehend anything from outside our culture, how could he have ever formulated that idea?  See [Note 3] below – he would have to know, for certain, what he was commenting on, and with equal certainty, what is true.  No one but a professor or someone with multiple college degrees could swallow such feldercarp.

[Note 3] I promised to show you why James’ claim that we don’t know anything is baloney, so here you go.  In order to say whether a statement is true or false, you must have access to two things:  [1] the statement and  [2] reality.  Therefore, in order for James to claim anything is false, he must know, absolutely and with certainty, [1] what we think, and [2] whether it matches reality.  His theory is self-refuting, because if it were true, he could never have formulated it!  

[Note 3B]  My favorite perversion of this perversion is usually snarled, “How do you know some mad scientist hasn’t planted electrodes in your head to make you think you know stuff?”  Jeeze.  Talk about intellectual pie!  (“Pie” is an artillerist’s term for an easy target – “easy as pie.”  No extra charge for that one.)  How much very real, definite, complex, precise knowledge would be necessary for creation of electrodes, for planting them in the cognitive spaces of the brain, and, in fact for the existence of “mad scientist?”

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque

RACE, SLAVERY, WAR, AND TRUTH

Joel Patrick, “The Black Redneck,” shared a short clip of a White man with a Confederate flag saying his family was defending their farm.  A man off-camera asked, “Who was working that farm?”

The White fellow answered, “My family worked it! They were poor!  Do you know how much a slave cost?”

Brother Patrick explained that a tiny percentage of Southerners own slaves, but the most profound thing he said was that Blacks weren’t enslaved  because of their race, but because they were available.  I felt compelled to provide some supporting fires.  [WAR]

.Now I’m SURE AS HELL *NOT* defending slavery! But understanding where we were is the only way to understand where we are. So here’s some relevant trivia.

Fewer than 10% of Southerners owned slaves, and as Brother Patrick said, a lot if them were Black.

There were more anti-slavery societies in the South than in the North.

Several Southern states, including Virginia, had discussed manumission for years before the war.  At the end of the War, there were STILL slaves held in four NON-SECEEDING states.

Slaves captured by Union forces were not freed; they were called, “Contraband,” (as in captured property) and either put to forced labor building fortifications, etc, for the Yankee army, or put in concentration camps.

The Confederate government discussed exchanging military service for freedom almost from the beginning, and passed into law such a measure shortly before the end of the War.

Nathan Bedford Forest outfitted a regiment of Cavalry out of his own pocket, and promised his slaves if they’d serve with him, they’d be freed, win, lose, or draw. He kept his promise, and not one of those Freedmen deserted.

Forest wrote to President Johnson, suggesting he outlaw and destroy the KKK. He did NOT start the Klan! He donated a great percentage of his wealth to the education of former slaves.

The enlistment of Blacks into the Union army was universally called, by those Yankee soldiers, “Sambo’s right to get killed.” More than once Black troops were sent against Rebel lines to run the Johnnies out of ammunition before the White Boys were sent in.

Was the North fighting to end slavery? Lincoln said REPEATEDLY that he had no intention of interfering with slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation specifically said that if the Confederates would stand down their armies and send representatives to Washington, THEY COULD KEEP THEIR SLAVES!  Read the damned thing!

When the EP was made official, in Jan. ’63, the 15th Corps of the Army of the Tennessee mutinied and headed home to Illinois.  Gen. John Logan stopped them by assuring them they were fighting to preserve the Union, and were not risking their lives for the N…..  At the same time, the state of Vermont darned nearly seceded from the Union because they weren’t sacrificing their sons for the Blacks.

There were terribly violent race riots in Detroit and NY City to protest the horrendous slaughter of White boys for the Blacks.

In 1860, more than 80% of the Federal treasury came from Virginia and North Carolina. Could that have had something to do with the North’s aggression?

Again, I am *NOT* defending “The peculiar institution,” no matter what it was called. I’m just saying that the belief that the North was fighting to free the slaves and South was fighting to keep them is BS.

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque

WHITE PRIVILEGE – RACIST MYTH

Sadly, my the beliefs and attitudes that grew from these experiences, both good and bad, have caused some people who have been very dear to me to sever our relationships.

I suppose it was my white privilege that made me sneak off into the woods at night at Camp Lejeune, instead of sleeping in my bunk and getting my throat cut by the Black gangs.

It was my white privilege that made me leave the mess hall in Vietnam minutes before a Black Marine tossed in a grenade because the 1st Sgt. (also Black) wouldn’t let him go to the head of the line.

It was my white privilege that told me to leave the open air theater at Lejeune minutes before Black Marines pulled a drive-by on the place.

It was my white privilege that told me to take a step back a split second before that Black Marine slashed at my throat with a razor that night on Okinawa.

It was my white privilege that caused the Black Marine who shot at me with a .30-06 to jerk the trigger that afternoon in North Carolina.

But was it my white privilege that moved me to open my heart to the message of The Holy Ghost that we are all – ALL! – the children of the same Heavenly Father?

Was it my white privilege that softened my heart and let me forgive those guys, and to truly grasp the fact that racism is a corrosive poison in the soul?

Was it my white privilege that allowed me to recognize that the rage and hatred that tormented me all those years was placed in me by Satan, and that he gloated and rejoiced at my foolishness?

I’ll have more to say on this in the near future.

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque

KEYNES, WEALTH, AND MONEY

Keynesian liberals don’t understand the difference between WEALTH and MONEY, or the concept of exchanging labor for wealth. “WEALTH” is stuff you use: food, clothing, shelter, transportation, etc.. “MONEY” is a medium of exchange that allows us to move around and effectively exchange our LABOR for whatever WEALTH we choose.

If the average starting wage, for a 40-hour week, is $500.00 a month, an average starting apartment will be about half that. If the starting wage is $10,000 a month, an average starting apartment will be about half that. A loaf of bread has cost about 1/3 hour of starting wage since I was 10 years old, though the average starting wage has gone up from $1.00 an hour to $7.25 an hour.

Your standard of living is not determined by how much MONEY you make, but by what WEALTH that money can be exchanged for. MONEY is not WEALTH or standard of living, and there is no direct equivalency. WEALTH is directly equivalent only to labor, and more specifically, to productive labor. If you are producing goods or services that are worth only a hot dog for every hour you spend at work, it is foolish to think your labor is worth a steak per hour, and if you successfully demand a steak per hour of wage, the price of steak will immediately jump. You will still be stuck with a hot dog per hour.

Obviously, this simple fact is not selling well in Keynesville, and it’s all Trump’s fault.

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuqueruqe

JEFF COOPER SPEAKS TRUTH

The words of Col. Jeff Cooper, rifleman, Marine, philosopher, and one bad SOB with a forty-five.

“Weapons compound man’s power to achieve; they amplify the capabilities of both the good man and the bad, and to exactly the same degree, having no will of their own. Thus we must regard them as servants, not masters – and good servants to good men. Without them, man is diminished, and his opportunities to fulfill his destiny are lessened. An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.”

And you can take that to the bank, except in gun-free, Democrat-run cities. In those, you’ll get mugged.

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque

FREEDOM VS. SODOMY

The distinctions between fascism, communism, socialism, progressivism, NAZIism, liberalism, etc. are an intellectual feint – a squirrel, if you will – to distract people from the real issue. At an operational level – that is, in the way in which all of these affect our daily lives – there are no meaningful differences. They all enslave the individual to someone. Either you are a free or you are not, and that is the only political reality worth discussing. Under none of these systems is the individual human being free. As it was explained to me, though not in these sanitized terms, the only difference between them is who is sodomizing you, and the only difference between a radical and a moderate is how deeply the sodomizing member is inserted.

This false dichotomy and the uncountable billions of hours wasted wrangling over whether some two bit punk like Obama is a socialist or a fascist or a communist is one of the few really clever things professors have ever invented.

Post Script – I was telling a group of about a half-dozen males about having a reproductive organ inserted into the terminal end of one’s digestive tract, though I was not using such SFW terminology!  One of the fellows commented, in an exaggerated swishy manner, “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” 

It was bound to happen, I suppose.

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque

A CUP FULL OF ROT AND PUSS

In any group of people that is large enough to be called “society,” or “a population,” there will be a certain percentage of individuals who will, if opportunity presents itself, prey upon their fellows.  Indeed, some will become expert at creating such opportunities.  Though I’ve no statistical evidence to support such a belief, it seems that the percentage of such naturally- occurring predators has probably remained relatively constant throughout history.  And throughout history, the numbers have been kept somewhat in check by natural selection – that is, by organized law enforcement and direct action by their chosen victims.  The latter has been especially effective in keeping down the numbers of stupid or careless predators. which has had the less-than-positive effect of improving the species by disinfecting the gene pool.

In America, we have had our own population of predators from the very beginning, and, true to form, the law and armed victims have kept that population small.  It seemed gradual to us, but in the context of the entirety of history it has happened with jaw-dropping suddenness,  that those proven methods of pest control have been taken off the market.  It’s not that they’re less effective; it’s that their use has been progressively proscribed.

The use of deadly, or even physical force by Law Enforcement has been the object of increasing restrictions, some of them downright stupid.  For example, in my hometown, Albuquerque, NM, USA, the police are no longer allowed to carry nightsticks, chemical mace or pepper spray, or Tasers.  Politicians who have almost certainly never faced, at close range, a real threat to their lives, have declared those things to be cruel and unusual.  The result is that our cops have but two choices:  let the suspect go or shoot him.  That’s it. Absolute non-enforcement of the law or deadly force, and any officer who chooses the latter will endure living hell and possible prison time.

Self-defense by citizens has been denounced, condemned, wept and wailed about until to posit the moral imperative of self-defense, forever axiomatic in civilization, is an invitation to slander, cancelation, and, ironically, to violent assault.  In a word, much of American society holds self-defense morally reprehensible – whether with a gun or judo. (ref: the case of career neer-do-well Jordan Neely.)  Some communities in Massachusetts, in the 1980’s, forbade citizens from taking ANY action against home invaders if there were any avenue of escape, at all.  One politician suggested setting the curtains on fire, so the neighbors would see the flames and call 911.  I’m serious!

In addition to the banning of effective pesticides, almost every government in America has made it more difficult to get convictions of heinous crimes, while simultaneously reducing penalties to the point of absurdity.  To wit, during Bill Clinton’s administration, the average time served for 1^st degree murder – PREMEDITATED, DELIBERATE MURDER – was less than 12 years.  In Albuquerque, we had a chap who had been convicted of 2^nd degree murder twice, of kidnapping and rape at least once, and arson at least twice.  After all that, he had served less than 15 years in prison.  If that weren’t preposterous enough, he was found, during a routine traffic stop, to have a pistol, and though there was no evidence he had ever committed a crime with that pistol, they threw him away for 25 years.

So while the leakage into our population of predators has continued, the expulsion of them has dropped tremendously.  It’s not that Americans are so much more violent than any other society; it’s that we are allowing the number of vermin to grow almost unchecked.  Oh, “But wait!  There’s more,” as the barkers on TV shout.  We are now supplanting our own robust population of predators with some really nasty suckers from the southern border, and they have been declared even more immune from arrest and prosecution than our native-born cannibals!

The situation is absolutely irredeemable – can’t be fixed – because we are asking the wrong question and debating the wrong solution.  Those who know me will gasp to read this, but the solution is NOT more armed, trained, and aware citizens.  The fact is that we can’t kill the vermin as fast as they are multiplying.  Now, you know I am all in favor of any citizen who so desires to take arms, learn how to use them, and brook no nonsense.  But the question of the right of the people to keep and bear arms is not the right question, so it will never produce the right answer.  In fact, closing the border to all unvetted border jumpers (I REFUSE to call them “immigrants!”) would not solve the problem.  In fact, arresting and incarcerating our home-grown predators won’t do the trick, either.  We already have more people in prison that any Western nation, but what we’re doing isn’t working.  So if arming the victims, closing the border, and jailing them by the tens of thousands more won’t do the trick, what the hell IS the answer?

Glad you asked.

There is a movement in American society to devalue human life – to set at naught the life, safety, and freedom of the individual human being.  Did you know that, on 27 June, 2008, the US Supreme Court ruled that the nation’s police have no responsibility to protect individual citizens?  They are bound by law to protect SOCIETY, but not citizens.  Thus, it is the Law of the Land that human beings – breathing, laughing, loving, working, individual human beings – have no value to the legal system of this nation.  But wait!  There’s more!  That principle has been taught by generations of professors, by the teachers they have produced, and by the parents whom those teachers educated.

To put it bluntly, a very significant portion of the American population doesn’t give a flying rat’s empennage about PEOPLE.  They go on about “…for the good of Society…” and, “…for the greater good…” and how, “…the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…” but when you ask them, “Who the devil IS this Society?”  They’ll just stare at you like a cow at a new gate, then explode about what a racist-homophobe-fascist-Bambi-killer you are.  You’ll be lucky to get away without throwing blows, for they have also been taught that anyone who disagrees with the official doctrine is a mortal threat to be dealt with in the harshest, most permanent manner.  (This is directly and explicitly from The Philosophy of Pragmatism and Multiculturalism, as originally elucidated by William James, and codified in the Progressive philosophy of education of John Dewey.)

What is so terrible about serving “Society?”  Well, what or who is this Society?  It’s a collection of individuals.  When people talk about sacrificing for the good of society, what they really mean is cutting some people’s throats for the benefit of other people.  Anyone who identifies as a member of Society is immune from all suspicion or prosecution.  Anyone who does or says anything that puts them outside of Society is fair game for any kind of disenfranchisement or abuse Society deems appropriate.

Whenever a collectivist of whatever flavor talks to you about “Society,” you can bet your bottom dollar they are talking about everyone but you.

So how do we fix this?  Truth?  We probably can’t.  It took us over 100 years (since WWI) to get here, and that was starting with a pretty intelligent, well-founded philosophy of individual rights.  If we start today, it will take at least that long to flush the rats out of the sewers, and I suspect there are more of them than there are of us. Not only that, but when we start – IF we start – they will react violently and with decisive power.

We’d have to take a page from the Progressive’s book and start at the top of the educational food chain, with professors.  Just as they began by corrupting a few professors, and letting the corruption and puss roll downward, we’d have to do the same with the purification. Starting with professors and politicians, anyone who talks about society’s superiority to individuals should be fired, lose all tenure, pensions, and licenses.  Then, just as the Progressives did, we’d have to gently water the garden and wait for it to bloom.  And make no mistake, they will resist by any means possible, including massive civil unrest and massacre.

But, that’s my take on it.  No amount of armed resistance to crime by citizens or law enforcement will save us because the cannibals will breed faster than we can shoot them.  Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do that!  Oh, my!  No!  But it would be like using a flyswatter to control the flies at a feedlot.  “Pissing against the tide,” is a phrase my Drill Instructors used. If we don’t reform our laws and system of punishment, if we don’t change the entire thrust of our educational system, if we don’t “cleanse the inner vessel first,” as suggested in Luke 11:39 – “And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.,” we can never hope to stop the typhoon of festering putrefaction that rots in our nation’s soul.

Wess Rodgers – Rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque

THE VALLEY OF SORROWS

REVIEW OF “VALLEY OF SORROWS,”  by L. ERICSON – Outskirts Press, 2023

(A word on the execution of this book:  it is the best-edited, most readably printed of this genre I have ever read. Well done, Outskirts.)

In the last few years, we have seen a number of personal memoirs come out of the war in Vietnam.  Like the experiences of the men and women who served in that mess, their memoirs differ hysterically from each other.  You could talk to a hundred REAL veterans (as opposed to the stolen valor posers, whom I utterly LOATHE) and you’d think you were hearing about 100 different wars.

But there were some things in common:  We were all incredibly young (Ericson was 18, and a week after my 22^nd birthday, a PFC called me “Gramps.”)  We were all totally unprepared for the experience.  We all felt, to some degree, that we were isolated and probably forgotten by “the World.”  We were all worn out, worn down, and worn threadbare, and exhausted.  We were all reduced to the lowest common denominator in that we served the men at our sides.

And we were the very best America had ever fielded.

Ericson’s valley was the Que Son Valley, a feature cleaving the mountains of the same name, about 30 miles south of Da Nang, which is ‘way up north.  He was a combat engineer with the 3^rd Battalion, 5^th Marine Regiment, 1^st Marine Division.  The 5^th is the most decorated regiment in the history of The Corps, a bit of trivia with which the regiments of the North Vietnamese Army who called The Valley home were not the least bit impressed.  From my station, a few miles north of the Que Son, I spent many a night on perimeter guard, watching the manifestations of fierce, deadly conflict in The Valley.  During the day, I could hear the distant thumps, and see the Phantoms and other aircraft making their runs down behind the ridge that obscured my view of The Valley, itself.  I wasn’t out there, but there was never a doubt in my mind that it was one hell of a nasty place, and I was almighty glad to be where I was!

Combat Engineers are responsible for sweeping roads and trails for mines, blowing or disabling mines and booby traps, blowing up tunnels and other enemy works, in addition to being Marine Riflemen.  Other duties include attending wounded,  bagging the dead, and carrying the bodies on ponchos to the helicopters.  The Valley was not the triple canopy jungle like we saw in other parts of Vietnam.  It was hilly, brushy, cut by rivers, partitioned by rice paddies and dikes, and covered with elephant grass, swarming with a host of  bitey, stingey, blood-suckey, poisonous, disease-bearing sonsof….  creatures.  The enemy, NVA regulars, were tough, expert, professional soldiers who tested the Marines in every way.

Ericson has distilled his year in The Valley into 90 pages of poetry, written in the plain, everyday language of American teenagers, or of the sparse, moody, haunted old men they became.  Not a foul word will you find (Well, he called his M-14 “…a bit of a whore…” but it is a term of endearment with no canal context.)  His poetry tends to unrhymed, sometimes unmetered verse that has the same charged, casual flavor of campfire or tavern conversation.  Casual phrasing that calmly has the reader nodding solemnly and saying, “I’m hip, Brother,” just before it slides a bayonet between your ribs.  It’s a stroll down a lovely path that has a few punji pits, or the odd bouncing betty.

I was not a combat Marine, so my experience was quite different from Ericson’s, but in his poetry there are enough references for me to recognize the truth, and to say, unequivocally, “This is the real thing.”  Don’t expect the Hollywood BS (That’s Baloney Sauce) like “Apocalypse Now,” “Platoon,” or even parts of  “Full Metal Jacket.”  There’s no bravado, none of what we called, “Gung Ho” propaganda crap.  There is, however, a poignant, unmistakable satisfaction, even pride, in being a Marine who did his duty – who went where he was  sent, did what he were told, endured what was necessary, and fought a skillful, determined, tough-as-nails enemy to a standstill.

No, these are the honest, often excruciating and contradictory memories of a man who has seen more than any teenaged kid should ever see, described in trip-hammer phrasing that just causally says the damnedest things.

It’s not a fun book, but, Oh!  Dear Father in Heaven, is it an exquisite expression of the travails of a generation.  This unique memoir will find an honored place, perhaps at the right of the line, on any bookshelf of the Vietnam War.  And to all my brothers and sisters, of whatever nation sent you, well done, welcome home, and may God lend His peace to your hearts.

Semper Fidelis.

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque