Morning Thoughts: Ships

C.W. and I were talking …

He kept asking me what the hell had gone wrong. I said I didn't know, so he went outside to play with the dogs. He likes dogs. He says the Fallooninians hold them in higher esteem than they do homo sapiens. After he left, I started thinking and made some notes.

In my adult life, I’ve viewed my country, in the sense of a collective entity, as a nation with flaws, and capable of making poor decisions, but one also capable of making sublime ones: the elimination of slavery, the civil rights acts, the Marshall Plan, the de-fanging of Joe McCarthy, the efforts to remove glass ceilings for minorities and women, the efforts to afford human rights and respect to our LGBT brothers and sisters, and the care of “the least of those among us."

I’m old enough to remember the first time I saw an African-American brother allowed to sit in a movie theater or restaurant in the American South, and the first time I worked with female chief executive. I remember the first time one of my gay brothers-in-life felt safe in proclaiming to the world the sexuality that nature provided him.  (I wonder if anyone else is confused by the tendency of right-wing evangelicals to assign their own actions, particularly their shortcomings, to “God’s will” but insist on referring to the sexual physiology of others to “choosing sin).

Anyway, we’ve not fully achieved what should be moral imperatives in our country’s governance, but I do believe we try. Although the path gets blocked at times, we seem to bumble through. Our country has often benefited from wise and enlightened leaders. 

Now, I see a country increasingly run by a minority of mean-spirited, cruel, anti-knowledge creatures elected not on capabilities but on artificially created hatred of their perceived enemies . As the old salts used to say when the top-heavy ship on which I served rolled in a storm, “It will right itself.” Here is a story I wrote using my old Navy ship, the USS Hunley, AS-31 as a metaphor. The old girl always enjoyed a steady hand.

I hope my country shall, for I do love it so.

She was top-heavy and could roll in a storm.
She always righted herself. I hope we do.

  

321. Hate

Have you ever had to try to explain our penchant for hatred to an alien? Well I have, and it isn’t fun. Especially when the alien pops up in the form of a Marine Corps drill sergeant. There he was, sitting in the back yard under a tree with a Budweiser, one of mine. He took a sip and motioned for me to sit.

“I want to talk to you,” he said.

“That’s no surprise.”

“Sit,”

I obeyed. That’s always the best course of action when he gets like this.

“Tell me,” he said, “about this instinct your species has for hate. There seems to be a lot of it going around these days.”

“I’m not an expert on the subject,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I try not to engage in it.”

“Oh?”

“What?”

“I happen to know that you hate that little button on your vehicle key that makes the horn start honking if your thumb happens to press against it.”

I said nothing.

“And,” he said. “I know you hate Windows 10.”

“Not as much as I once did.”

“And you hate those daytime television shows that have women screaming nonsense at one another.”

“Only when I walk into a room and one happens to be playing.”

He ignored me. “And I happen to know, from talking to your friends, that you hated the year that you spent sentenced to something called ‘Vacation Bible School,’ when you were a child.”

“It was actually only a week or two,” I said. “I tell folks it was a year for dramatic emphasis.”

“You hate speed bumps.”

“They are a sign that civilization is collapsing,” I said. “And what, may I ask, is the meaning of all this?”

“The Elders want to know if it is true that your next presidential election will be decided on the basis of hate.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “There is still time.”

“Sit up straight,” he said, barking it at me with a startling degree of vehemence.

As I straightened, he said, “You, yourself, do have your good points.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. You don’t seem to hate people.”

“I try not to.”

“Even people you consider your enemies. You may feel a strong aversion or intense dislike for some.”

“Yes,” I said. “I do detest some. But my mentor, The Galilean, forbids me from hating them.”

“Even those on that fake TV news show?”

“Even those on Fox News.”

“Back to your mentor,” he said. “Why doesn’t he forbid the hating of your president, and other people of color?”

Youthful exuberance and good communications
seem to be essentials for spreading hate. - C.W.  

“He does,” I said.

“Do those who claim to worship him know that?”

“Yes, but many decide to ignore him.”

“Choosing the satisfaction of hate over the promise of salvation seems odd,” he said. “But back to you. You don’t even seem to hate any particular food.”

“Well, there was something my wife cooked once. She called it ‘cornbread gravy’ and I can’t say it turned out too well.”

“May I ask her about it?”

“Please don’t,” I said.

“But you don’t hate any other food?”

“If you were a real military man,” I said, “you would know that you quickly learn to eat what is served and that being a finicky eater is a sign of weakness.”

“Speaking of weaknesses,” he said. “The Falloonian Elders are asking me if I think this growing fondness for hatred within your species will lead to its downfall.”

I thought. “There was a philosopher once,” I said, named Friedrich Nietzsche, who said, ‘That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.’ Maybe hate makes us stronger.”

He looked at me with surprise. “No,” he said. “it makes you stupid.”

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318. Sundown Reflections

“Oh man. Would you look at those curves,” I rushed in to see and found C.W. using my laptop without permission. That’s very much against the rules, since the incident with a certain website. “Holy cow, get a load of this.” He looked at me and said, “You naughty boy.” He gave me a wink, a ridiculous gesture in his present form of the teenage wonder kid.

I came around him and looked. “Get out of there,” I said. He had found some files of old photos I had taken when I fancied myself as a photographer skilled in black and white studies of the human form. Really. Just an artistic endeavor.

Honestly.

“Does she know you have these? He pushed my hand away and continued scrolling. “Man oh man,” he said.

I wrestled the laptop away and exited the folder he had been examining. “Just what,” I said, “do you think you are doing?”

“How old were you when you took those?” He offered his best impression of a conspiratorial look.

“None of your business. Now what are you doing on my laptop?”

“Writing a report.”

“To whom?”

“The Falloonian Elders.”

“About what?”

“The so-called ‘The time in the evening when the sun disappears or daylight fades-cities in America.' He paused. “How did you talk her into it?”

I ignored him as I was trying to decipher his last statement. “Do you mean “Sundown Cities?”

“That’s what I said. You need to get your ears checked.”

“Are the sunspots affecting your Galactic Universal Translator again? You need to get it checked.”

“My GUT is fine and I trust it above all as your last president used to say. It’s your conscience that you should be worried about. Ooo la la. He made that swarmy face again, sort of a cross between Joel Osteen and Eddie Haskell.”

It was my turn to practice ignoring. “Why are you interested in Sundown Cities?”

“I’m not. The elders are.”

“And why are the elders interested?”

“They saw a documentary about them.”

“A documentary?”

“Yes. They like to watch documentaries from Earth during the Tri-Moon Phase while there is much laughter and jollity going on. Hey,” he said, “maybe I could do one on young husbands who talk their wives into doing something silly and don’t destroy the evidence like they promised. I could call it ‘The Unused.’ Get it?”

“So what do you want to know about Sundown Cities?”

“Did they really post signs on the city limits saying “People of color, probably descendants of dark-skinned guest works imported from the African mainland, don’t let the sun go down on you in this town.”

“I don’t think that’s the exact terminology used, but yes, that was the basic message.”

“And if a person ignored the warning, what happened?”

“You don’t want to know.” I hit “delete,” and gave him a mock smile.

“You missed one,” he said.

“Oh.” I searched and then looked at him. “And where is it?”

“Somewhere in cyberspace speeding toward its final destination.”

“You better not have.”

“So,” he said. “Back to Sundown Cities and their signs. Do they still exist?”

“The cities do but not the signs, unless one is hanging on the wall of some aged mayor’s hunting lodge.”

“But the cities, they still exist?”

“Quite so.”

“How do they get the message across?”

Now I finally understand coded
 messages like "Good Schools." -C.W

“They have more subtle ways in modern times.”

“And I suppose the cities themselves are slowly disappearing?”

I looked up from my computer in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“I would assume they are not highly sought-out places in these more enlightened times.”

“Are you kidding me?” I pushed the computer away.

“No. Why? You don’t mean such cities still thrive?”

“Thrive?” I said. “They are some of the fastest growing places in our state.”

He started to say something but a piercing shriek shattered the air. “Jimmieeeee,” it said. “Don’t let sundown catch you in this house again.” I heard the scuffling of a chair at my wife’s computer station. I turned to ask C.W. what this was about.

He was gone.


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My friend The Galilean asked me to post this:
- The Alien C.W.