Vietnam and Voting....Today Started Way Back Then And Moved Fast Forward to Today

Noon:  5 Nov. 2018
This blog entry is seminal to my thoughts for a few previous years.  It seems that they appropriately coalesce clearer grasp in understanding  my own journey.  For some  for some cosmic reason a paradigm shift in view happened on the day before a Mid-Term elections 2018.  So many related things (all big things being relational in nature all the way down to the conceptual children they give birth to) fell into place in my mind.  Not because I commanded them to fall into place but they took command and assembled themselves relationally and took commanded of me by compelling me to see them.

Much more to follow this because it lays out the new road for me to follow with the passion and commitment like the literal and figurative roads I have followed until now.

There is a fork in the road and I am taking it!

Yesterday I put a long neglected pile of papers in order.  All day log!  In the pile I found a note to myself written long ago...like years.  Like it was waiting for me patiently.  I do require patient waiting.  The nuns always said I had great potential. Probably wondered how long it would take for me to find it!

Note:
How often I have found
where I should be going.

Only by setting out
for somewhere else.

This is my 1,359 post to this blog.  Are we there yet?  Maybe so if I can figure out where.....where is.  I seem to know where my moral compass points the way.

This is where it started this morning at 4:00 am and took me to noon but it felt like a rocket ride to the the moon.  I have humbly thought of the free range wanderings of my mind like a monkey climbing a tree to the moon.  Intial progress is rapid.  Beyond that I don't get any farther than a banana.  It is like metamorphosis that the monkey suddenly discovers that it really was a three stage butterfly!  Length of time to metamorphosis? About 1 minute.  Conceptual paradigm shift time time to recognize the new face instead of vase?  Split second! What split second locked into in the blockchain of time that was a fork in the road becoming the new main fork:  Back a couple of minutes ago.  Time to validate the new fork abandon it and return to the pre fork old road blockchain? A few days.  Countdown has begun!

Written as it flowed through my fingers to the keyboard on one seamless (to me it seemed) stream only paused for a phone call that added to it.  Probably has some mis-spellings and gaps in logic.  My mind was jumping fast and leading me on like a self driving car.



4:00am  Nov. 5 2018
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brent-taylor-pleaded-with-yanks-to-vote-before-he-was-killed-in-afghanistan_us_5bdf9505e4b04367a87dcbc1

In 1966 I volunteered to go to Vietnam.  The entire graduating class in my branch of navy specialty was assembled in the auditorium.  The assignment detailer that would soon review our wish lists had come from D.C. to talk to talk to us.  It was a time of leading rapid build up and logistics always lags in that scenario.  He laid out that scenario and asked for volunteers to go.

He offered a strong inducement.  Those that volunteered would receive preferential future assignment positions after the 1 year (to the day) tour of duty.  Not mentioned was the obvious fact and and inducement in the minds of many:  Volunteering was the risky best first step on a future path of advancement.  That future best path had been laid out by the staff over the 6 month course of training from which we were soon to graduate.   The best and brightest among us, the ones that would go farthest in the navy were the ones selected to go to the the most challenging job.  The position of Department Head on a navy Destroyer.  It was called "Independent Duty".  Others would go to "Dependent Duty" reporting to a more senior officer in our specialty.

Suddenly the plotted course of direction and speed that would become our future path of advancement had a risky choice for those on board for the long cruise.

"Please rise your hands and see me after you are dismissed."  I think it was half the class.  Perhaps the other half saw a better course:  Fewer and perhaps better qualified officers would be competing for Independent Duty.  That choice never entered my min then.  Never entered my mind until today when I revised today my thoughts then that caused me to raise my hand.

There was. time gap between my graduation from college in June and my scheduled entry into Officer Candidate School in November to be followed by 6 months of specialty training.  Boys State had posted a counselor job offering on campus after graduation.  Top high school students attend this exercise in government affairs focusing on a mock state level election where voting districts are counties. Each county had its counselor.

The format of Boys State teaches basic government structure and political operation.  The attendees were the best and brightest from their Michigan high schools.  I was not the best a brightest in college but I was four years ahead of them.  It tested what I know about government and politics!  Students don't really know how far ahead of them a teacher is.  Maybe only one day but they probably believe on faith that it is more.  I was probably 3 days ahead in knowing and understanding many things with a new degree in my hand in 1965.

One thing I knew that would be important to them in the future that was not being taught but loomed on the horizon for all of them was Vietnam.  My navy training would begin in November and put me in an assignment position in June that would most likely relate to Vietnam.

After some evening review of the events of the day and planning for tomorrow I offered to talk about Vietnam for anyone that wanted to meet in an unused dorm room. Left unsaid was that situation developing there that might possibly be in their future as well most likely in mine.  I had a business degree and had learned to extrapolate developing markets into the future!

Dorm rooms are small and it was full of attentive smart kids.

The college paper had published a full page map of Vietnam in one of its final June issues.  I had kept that map for my own reference.  There was probably some editorial comment associated with it.  Students at MSU were dividing up into two vocal croups at that time.  That was also a trend that growing over time and could be extrapolated into the future.  One of those two groups were the hippies.  Small but vocal at the time.  The other group did not really have a common identity name then.  Peaceniks later. We all thought that majority thought was the best thinking.  Maybe in retrospect that is what "Boys State" was all about?

I taped the map to the wall.  A violation of dorm room rules!  Maybe I used it at the time to make the point that sometimes rules need to be broken and why for the common good of all to see the map?  Can't remember but I should have.

The map of Vietnam was divided by color.  I pointed out the DMZ and explained some of the history that created it.  French colonialism, WWII, re-unification intentions and our freedom beliefs solutions.  That system of government is really what Boys State was all about.  The foundation laid down by our Constitution extended to our global policy.  Not only for our own benefit of self protection in a Cold War world but the  benefit of all people in all countries.  We wanted as many of the good guy countries on our Democracy team as possible after the divisions of WWII.

The boys were graduates or close to the high school graduate class of 1965.  I was in the same graduating class on 1961.  For background I went back to where I was in 1961 and how the world looked to me then and what was really important. 

I offered them my 1961 view of a key event setting the course of our country that brought us to 1965.  It was President Kennedy's Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs , May 25, 1961.  Those were then, as he said and also now "Extraordinary Times".  The link was to an archive file.  The same message to Congress is at this YouTube link today.  He had vision.   If someone has proposed the idea of a Youtube to him then I am sure that he would have said it was an excellent idea.  Let's go there next after the moon.

Kennedy's message at the YouTube link would have, if he is watching, disappointed him.  He left a legacy to carry on.  A torch to pass.  Seems like the flame of  truth and purpose to show the way to us today is rarely seen, understood or valued.  Symbolically it burns on with hope at his resting site.  His spirit is not resting.  It inspires hearts and minds of many today.  In mine.  The measurement of views on Youtube are some indication of social valuation.  These are those measurements that I found today at that link

Published: January 6 2015
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I was aware of those times in 1965 but probably only heard the news reports as Kennedy talked about them to the nation in 1961, a month before my high school graduation.  The link offers the opportunity to listen to what he said as well as read the text.

If I could go back in time I would say to those younger boys:  Listen up!....listen well this is your future speaking to you.  The wonders of the Information Age offers me now to time travel back to May 25, 1961 and Listen Up to everything he said.

This past summer I listened again to many of the things he said while I stood on the floor of the Texas Book Depository.  Things that set the course of my life and brought me to standing where I was listening to him again from the view point of where his own voice was silenced.  I heard his voice in the background exhibits.  A voice and spirit that continues to speak to us all.  An overwhelming experience for me that words fail me to express.  I found a visitor's book in which to write them.

Back to the past of 1965 that took me to this future.  The past is prelude to a return from the future.  I returned to Vietnam in 1996 and traveled from Hanoi to Saigon on my bicycle. That is another round trip time travel story to be told at many physical and conceptual levels.  Maybe something created by a poet regardless of the 1st, 2nd or 3rd person they tell it from..like it is.

Back in 1961 in an MSU dorm room some of the boys grew more serious and attentive at the point where everything focused on the map.  I had placed the framing around the map.  It is only now that I grasp the importance of framing real and conceptual things on a map and the Information Age tool that we have given ourselves today.  I have wondered since then how many of the best and brightest of those in the room were looking at their roundevous point?  The unique thing about a rondevous point is where time, place person person ultimately meet in life becoming history.

After the post WWII partitioning of Vietnam the intent was to reunify it and restore it to a single sovereign nation by the democratic vote expressing the will of its people.  War is future looking restoration of justice.  A just peace.

North Vietnam saw that a vote expressing the will of the people would not go their way.  It would restore South Vietnam's freedom under another regime in much the same way that French colonialism  imposed itself previously on Indo China.  

North Vietnam therefore was framed as resorting to unfair manipulation any future vote because it saw the result would not go its way.  Until there could be free and fair elections the USA view was that  there could be no elections until they were conducted in a free and fair manner .  The USA intervened in Vietnam in the name of freedom and  justice.  A just war is future looking restoration of justice as a last resort when other means fail to create it.

Peace was not my profession.  Defense was my profession.  The performance of my duties were expressed in the oath of office.  Oaths are not, must not, essentially be ambiguous in nature.  Especially one that says this is where I will stand and defend until I can stand no more.  A code that willingly offers the last full measure of devotion to fulfill if and when necessary.

It is an ultimate commitment to a value.  One that carries with its willing future honorable fulfilment of duty.  It is absolute yet a matter of choice and conscience.    Since my retirement I have struggled in retrospect to resolve my reply "Thank you or your service".  It is of course for past service.  The Code of Conduct Article VI is now wording that was not what I rememberer memorizing in 1961.

Code of Conduct Article VI: 

What was my service in Vietnam and the career that followed it?  David Poyer writes about courage, dedication and conscience of a fictional navy officer.  One as conceptually inspiring as John Paul Jones but taking us into the depths of the heart and soul  of a Navy Officer where doubt and uncertainly about nature of war and peace. Uncertainty that must resolve into action when the time for action is required.  That time may be a split second with no thought or equally deliberate action after examination over a longer period of time.   

Author David Poyer express the performance of duty and its responsibilities, obligations and accountability in the forward of a book.

Let This Be Dedicated To Them Both.

To Those Who Forge The Weapon,

     Trusting In Strength,

        and

     Those Who Renounce It,*

             Trusting In Faith.

Those Who Lived Through The Time Of Trial Warn Us:

        Better To Have And Not Require

           Than

       To Grasp

             And Find The Scabbard Empty.

The sword of a Navy Officer is symbolic of dedication to the Oath and Code.  It is a ceremonial symbol.  All who went took its meaning with them.   The last line of expresses best my belief in what must always be asked and answered:

But Let Us Never Cease To Ask

If The Time Has Come

When We No Longer Need The Sword At All.