An Open Letter

© 1968 by Subafilms, Ltd., and the Hearst Corporation

It’s April 2025 and there’s a lot of craziness going on in the world… it’s amazing, in a bad way, and startling. And I grew up in the Sixties!

Where to start venting my apprehensions? How about our new administration in the Executive Branch here in the US? When President Obama took the throne in 2008 I really didn’t like his idea of ruling by executive order, and I like President Trump’s about as much. In 2008 I was the only white male US citizen in my Family Practice residency program which led several of my colleagues from other nations to assume I supported the Republican ticket. Pffft!! At least it gave me the opportunity to tell them that there wasn’t a political party in this country that accurately reflected my views, and explain for their benefit a few high points of the Donkey’s and Elephant’s respective platforms.

Should I start with the tariff kerfuffle? Frankly I’m surprised that someone who is supposed to be an icon of business like Mr. Trump would not realize that the world’s economies are so interconnected now that raising import taxes with broad strokes will backfire against the very small businesses he is purporting to protect. In fact, I can’t imagine that he doesn’t know that, so I’m forced to conclude there’s a different agenda at work. I hate to be a harbinger of doom, but if memory serves, some thousands of years ago the Egyptian pharaohs used economic disasters to trade farmers and merchants necessary survival resources for a measure of control of their businesses, and thus brought their entire economy directly under the thumb of Ra’s chosen.

And culturally… it seems kind of tragically ironic that a few years ago there were folks seething about the removal of statues of Robert E. Lee. They’re scrubbing our history! they cried. True enough, I suppose, but while I respect the Marble Model’s skill as a general and his dedication to decentralization of power (at least, political power), his choice of friends and the limits of their willingness to decentralize beyond the good ol’ boy circle was rather less savory. Did we really want a statue of that anywhere besides an actual battlefield?

Now the shoe is on the other foot and exhibits are being removed from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the National Museum of the American Indian. If it wasn’t right to do this for Lee & Co., is it right to do it now? Is it deserved? You tell me—do two wrongs ever make a right, or two stupids make a smart? Tit-For-Tat may be a cool song by Myth & Roid but applying it as a modus operendi rarely does anything good. It only will escalate a situation. But I don’t know, maybe your intent is to provoke your opponent so you have a reason to completely obliterate them. But maybe you should ask France what their tit-for-tat did for them at the Treaty of Versailles: twenty years later it got them a trouncing by the Nazi Blitzkrieg and half a decade of occupation by a mob of brigands that raped their people and looted their national treasures. Many of those scars can still be seen today. Never mind that their selfishness caused worldwide collateral damage to the tune of tens of millions dead, wounded, disrupted, and bereft of their basic human dignity. And then there were the buckets of cash and years of effort required to build the world back up. Resources that could have been used to advance the human condition, but instead had to be spent walking back from the edge.

And going back to President Obama, we’re here now in part because he also liked that executive order a little too much and felt he was justified in leaning hard to squash his opponents, rather than work collaboratively. I see too many similarities between us and the last days of the Roman Empire: one side puts up their guy who dictates until he’s torn apart by his rivals, who then put up their guy until he’s killed off by the first bunch, and back and forth and back and forth, and all the while the Visigoths are massing at the gate.

The one ‘good’ thing I can say about the changes happening on the Mall is that we still have the privilege of raising our own funds and building our own museums that the White House will have no control over. Stepping back from the Federal smorgasbord will be painful but in the end we will find out just how little we need Irrelephants and Jackasses in our daily lives. And if Washington continues its efforts to reduce its size at least their power will decrease as well. That’s one difference between us and Berlin in 1933: Hitler and the Gang were increasing their reach, and once that boulder starts downhill it’s hard to stop. Reducing power is rather a self-limiting operation. Like a cartoon vacuum monster.

What about gender identity? Is it really that much of a bother to have more than two codes for gender on a passport? I don’t think the government is going to run out of ink anytime soon (not judging by the way they issue laws even on a good day), or computing power. If the military can build a cool fire control system that can target dozens of threats at once and fit it on a single airplane I think they can manage six or eight codes for a data field. I mean we got through theY2K thing all right. If the purpose of a passport is to identify a person for the benefit of another country, having a gender on the document that is at odds with their appearance and bearing seems more than a bit counterproductive. Unless your goal is to hold up their passports while you ‘sort things out’ to keep them from leaving the country—but if you don’t like them here, why keep them? But this question brings up memories of railcars full of Jews heading to Poland. Adolf Eichmann could have just let them leave but felt he was doing everyone else a favor by rounding them up for disposal. It’s a truly terrifying prospect that we may be looking at this again. On the other hand, according to the ideology I grew up with, the Second World War was a ‘good’ war that put an end to such horrors, and Tall, White & Handsome Eisenhower was the hero of that story. I don’t know how the political right would reconcile Ike’s drive to rid the world of the Swastika’s blight with a similar bent of their own. I’d rather not find out, though. I’m really hoping that the reduction of power takes hold before the shackles do.

So, what to do? Speak up! We still have voices. That’s the problem with acting fast: if you don’t land your punch on the first blow, you’ve tipped your hand and now your opponent knows your intent. A basic principle of karate is the idea of ‘block and counter’: you stop the attack and immediately follow with one of your own. For another World War Two reference, ask Admiral Yamamoto about Pearl Harbor. He missed the aircraft carriers. They went on to take out his own at Midway. And it was all downhill from there.

So write your congressman. I know you may think that’s pointless, but they actually do know what side their bread is buttered on and like getting a paycheck with those sweet Congressional perks. Enough letters will get them moving. Don’t trust the courts to set things right for us. I’ve been generally less than impressed with their skill in their own field (see my post here, and don’t forget that at least one shipload of Jews fleeing the Nazis, the ironically-named SS St. Louis, was denied a landing in the United States due to ‘completely legal’ immigration quotas). And don’t stop there. Write on your blogs. Post your tik toks. Stand outside the edifices of power with signs. It’s an unfortunate axiom of our society that appearance counts more than almost anything (except money); use these things to your advantage.

That being said, getting emotional and screaming isn’t going to further anyone’s cause. People quit listening when insults start flying. This not only applies to the folks on the other side of the fence, but especially to those sitting on it that you’re trying to convince to join you. Be calm and rational. Even if things go to hell in a handbasket (and they might, see my post here) at least your legacy will be that you were the voice of reason. The climate activist Michael Shellenberger wrote an excellent and well-reasoned book called Apocalypse Never about climate change that makes this point very well. I highly recommend it, and you can buy it on Amazon here. And don’t be adverse to sidestepping an obstacle. Like I said above, we can still build our own museums. We can still post our own thoughts to the World-Wide web. Here’s yet another WW2 reference: MacArthur beat Imperial Japan in part because he was just as willing to circle around Japanese strongpoints and isolate them, as take them on face-to-face. Once past the hard spots he hit the soft underbelly. For another karate reference, we call that the ‘target of opportunity’. Better to step out of the BBEG’s way and kick him in the kidney as he careens past you than take one on the chin.

One of my favorite movies (I’ve got several, depending on my mood) is Charlton Heston’s Ben Hur. Ben Hur’s childhood friend Messala is now commanding the Roman garrison and is charged with countering rising Jewish unrest. “You ask how to fight an idea?” he asks one of his staff. “With another idea!”

I know it seems like we have a lot of problems in this world. We do. But I’ll tell you from the perspective of someone who grew up in the Sixties that we have come a long way, and while there’s been a fair amount of bottle-throwing we haven’t had another civil war yet. We do still have a good ways to go but things can get better and we don’t have to burn the house down to do it. But it will take consistent effort, level-headed thinking, strategic action as well as tactical, and patience.

Hang in there, folks. Most things we worry about never happen. So… I guess worrying works?