Oh, I just turned 60. This is an odd thing for any of you who have not experienced it. It struck me that I had quite literally done 30 twice, and then that struck me as even more odd and slightly disturbing. It was at thirty that I had reached a point of reflection back on my life, having lived a life, no longer considering my self a child, or at least, somewhat less childish than before. And it was at thirty that I actually began to embrace in an adult sort of way a kind of religiosity, albeit a secular humanist variety, that would eventually more reflect atheism than anything else, despite what my well meaning brother-in-law might offer, suggesting agnostic might be a more appropriate description of my beliefs.

I rarely give any kind of overt response to such comments, but it made me consider the role that fear plays in the construction of our own private cosmologies. Life seems far too brief and fleeting for that. Why should I choose self-deception this late in the game? It seems completely self-defeating. And I never cared for the term atheist. It always struck me as a far more dogmatic, reactive, restrictive position than simply being agnostic, but really, agnostic? I don’t think so. It seems like a waste of precious time to piddle around with whether or not there is some sort of deity out there, somewhat like debating whether or not climate change is taking place. CO2 stands at levels unprecedented for the last 400,000 years and the polar ice caps are melting. How long do you want to discuss this? And why? We’re all going to be in the ground too soon. Get a grip. How long do you want to be discussing this kind of silliness?

So anyway. I was following a tweet the other day by a twitterer that always has something cogent to offer when she feels like tweeting and finds the time. Artists (like writers) have better things to do than twitter, but this seems the essential point of the twitter question, “What are you doing?” which is an offer to post brief glimpses into the life, fleeting thoughts, considerations, speculations by people going about their busy lives. And artists, with their hands, minds and being so completely immersed in the creative process… are so utterly fascinating, so completely alive, that we envy the commitment, and if for nothing other than the sheer vicariousness of it, we happily follow them. Anyway, she tweeted:

A surrealist is a hippie without the isolationist fascism. : )

Oh, now that’s interesting. I had never really thought of hippies as fascists. Perhaps she knew something I did not, or had had a bad experience with some unsavory types that simply liked to dress like hippies (i.e. biker types or the criminal element). There certainly were those tag-alongs, just as there were the clean cut, jockish evangelicals that arrived later on the scene, both groups forgoing the Brilcreem and Beehives for the headbands and beads, the bikers continuing to go about their business beating up students, commies, coloreds, queers and Jews and the evangelicals opting for the more subtle approach, murmuring over them in prayer circles with the occasional, “Praise Jesus” interjected at the notion that they had somehow once again managed to yank yet another lost soul back from the brink of eternal damnation.

I distinctly remember thinking that both extremes were simple passing phases, failing in my youthful optimism about the human condition to appreciate the enduring power of fear and ignorance over simple, clearheaded, rationality. Yeah, fear and ignorance, that would be fascism. But then there was the isolationist component. I never thought of the anti-war movement as isolationist. The protests seemed to be more about stopping the napalming of Buddhists than the halt of multinationals. People didn’t want to be drafted to kill people who had never threatened them or their values, the elders on the other hand seemed to be threatening every value they had ever taught.

I don’t know. Why was I worrying about this? I was never a hippie… at least I never identified with the headbands and beads or made a ritual of painting my face and living on a commune. So why was I getting so reactive? But it did get me thinking.

Why did we protest? Why were we so pissed off at the pigs (i.e. the goons that protected the interests of the corporations that made their money off the suffering of millions and the deforestation the planet… and no, I was never particularly comfortable with the term). And wasn’t there a racial component? Didn’t Black soldiers die in disproportionately higher numbers than Whites? This was the position of the Black leaders of the time and we didn’t question it. Why should we? We were young, and young people think in simple terms, right and wrong, good and bad. We knew who the good people were, and we knew who the bad people were. The good people were smart and protested and the bad people were ignorant and favored killing people even though their religion told them not to, but then they were ignorant so it made complete sense. So I Googled it to see if I could find the actual casualty numbers by race.

It turns out there are a bunch of sites and blogs that are quick to point out that the casualty rate for Blacks in Viet Nam were only slightly higher than their proportion of the American population. And unsurprisingly these sites and blogs all cite the same statistics in exactly the same way. A number of the blogs toss out terms like “the fallacy of” and “Liberal Media.” Ouch. What was going on? Could they be right? How could that be?

Of course it turned out that they were wrong. Disingenuous is the word we use now. The truth was that the Black leaders were correct. And why would we think otherwise? Do we really think they would make up something like this? Logically, something had to have been going on for them to even have had the thought in the first place, an impression, an inkling at least, and then for them to go public like that with something that could be so easily be disproved, surely they must have foreseen that eventuality and actually checked the numbers that were readily available. The only way for the bloggers to make sense of such an apparent disparity in the data was to blame Liberal Media. It’s so easy to believe, and it doesn’t require any depth of thought, no analysis of the numbers or of the history.

Prior to 1968 Black casualties were running at a far higher percentage than the bloggers and historical revisionists like to report. Representing 10% of the U.S. forces in Viet Nam, by the end of 1967 Blacks accounted for 22% of the casualties and 14% of the fatalities, and in the period 1961 through 1966 Blacks in the Army accounted for nearly 20% of all combat fatalities.

So by 1967 Black leaders correctly represented the war to that point as racist, the view by some leaders that it amounted to little more than White people killing Asian people (who had not attacked or threatened them) and using Black people in disproportionate numbers to accomplish it. That’s not Liberal Media distorting statistics to push an agenda, it’s simply a fair observation, an attempt to interpret what was seen to be going on up until that point in the conflict, and it was after all their future, their young men that were sent in disproportionate numbers to the front of the line.

Under such criticism and the prospect of public scrutiny that was sure to accompany it, the military began radically adjusting the racial mix of soldiers put in harms way to bring the numbers more in line with the Black population back home (11%) but even with that spread over an additional eight years of fighting they were only able to bring the disparity down to that 12.6% that the bloggers and revisionists love to cite, and remember, the percentage of Blacks in the military at that point was 10%, not the national average of 11% that the bloggers present.

The sad part of this is that the median age of soldiers killed in Viet Nam was 20, the mean only 22, with 70% of those killed never having had the chance to be married, too young to have any idea of the forces directing their fate, this… another war of choice.

And the great failure of the peace movement and many of the young people that comprised it, was not in that they protested or even that they mistreated their brothers and sisters that served, but that in their youth they lacked the focus and direction to bring them home sooner. For the tragedy of war is perhaps not so much with those that have died, for they are dead, the tragedy will always be with those that have survived, the horrors endured, the things done, the inevitable outcome of putting people put in places and situations they should never have been.

And having done 30 twice now I can say that, no… a parent does not send their children out to play on a Saturday morning with sharpened sticks, simply because bad things are certain to happen, and similarly, ideally, people under 30 are not sent out into other people’s neighborhoods armed with with guns and rockets, because bad things are certain to happen (and that from one who can appreciate guns and rockets, but that’s another story).

“Friends are enemies sometimes, and enemies friends” – Rumi

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