Sixty years ago
today, I first breathed the air. My early memories are spotty. My
first memories of this planet were formed in Hawaii. Deep blue ocean
and white-maned waves. The vivid colors of tropical flowers. Watching
a Marine jump team, led by my father, miss the Pacific Ocean because
they misjudged the wind. Dinner at a restaurant with deep red menus
and a koi pond just outside the window as we prepared to fly back to
CONUS.
Vietnam and the
Marine Corps were a big deal in my early life. I knew my path from
about the time I was ten years old. Graduate high school, go to
Vietnam, then college if I survived. I got lucky. America left that war before I was
old enough to enlist. My only experience of Vietnam came through the
effect it had on my father. I remember watching the news with him one
night as the communists advanced. Some town my father knew was
mentioned. His face went white and he slowly stood up and went to his
room. I knew better than to intrude on him. He didn't just know the town. He’d known its people.
America began waking
up then as if from a bad dream. Although times were kind of hard in
1976, I enjoyed the Bicentennial celebrations, and life felt pretty
good. I joined the Marines myself. Just a four-year hitch, but I
stood my watch. A few years of hard labor after that, putting on new
roofs and fixing the old ones in my home town and the big city across
the river. I put roofs on houses that my grandfather had helped
build. Like him, I helped build America
Some bad times then,
but soon personal computers started to become a big deal, and knowing
how to use them led me to a pretty good career as a technical writer.
It’s been an
amazing time to be alive, because so many things have gotten better,
but it’s also been frustrating because so many things haven’t.
The rise of fascism,
led by a Republican Party I used to support, has brought back a lot
of the worst parts of America, the parts I thought we were leaving
behind. Vicious bigotry and prejudice. Political corruption. Arrogant
ignorance. We’ve gone from a nation that put men on the Moon and
brought them back alive to a nation where a substantial part of the
population worships stupidity.
We’ve changed the
composition of the only atmosphere we have, and that’s screwing up
the climate.
Long-term, I’m
optimistic about humanity’s prospects. Short-term, we’re in for a
rough ride. It’s getting rough because although our technological
capabilities have gotten better, we don’t seem to have gotten a lot
wiser as a nation, and we desperately need to get wiser. We can’t
maintain a modern nation if we don’t start rejecting the worship of
stupidity, the tolerance of ignorance, and the dishonesty of
corruption. We have to be smarter, people, and no, I don't necessarily exclude myself from that.
It’s been an
amazing time to be alive, but a frustrating one too. As my sun sets,
it’s rising for the young people, and we can’t stop the progress
of civilization now. For their sake, we have to keep going.
