Popular Posts

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

A GOOD READ: "DECEMBER 1941" -- A BOOK REVIEW


A GOOD READ: “DECEMBER 1941” by CRAIG SHIRLEY  -- A BOOK REVIEW

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© February 29, 2012

The 1940s started out to be a simpler time, a quieter time, a less hectic time until December 7, 1941.  On that date, the Imperial Forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in Oahu of the Hawaiian Islands on a Sunday morning. 

Author Craig Shirley does the reader a wonderful service in highlighting those thirty-one days of that fateful month, claiming it “changed America, and saved the world.” 

For an adolescent boy in the middle of America, these were halcyon days of uninterrupted pleasure, a world of friends and sports, church and school, a time when he would rush home from school and listen to the latest adventures on the radio of “Jack Armstrong, the all-American boy,” “the Shadow,” “Captain Midnight,” and at night with his parents to Fibber McGee & Molly, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Amos ‘n’ Andy, occasionally, to the fireside chats of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and “The Ave Maria Hour” with his mother.

He lived in an industrial town on the Mississippi River in the state of Iowa, which would come to operate 24/7 in support of the military in WWII like similar small industrial centers across the nation.  When the president declared December 7, 1941 would be “a day that will live in infamy,” the sentiments echoed across the land.

Pastoral America was awaken from its sleep and became a roaring tiger.  If the reader is interested in why this was so, these 31 days of that momentous month will prove helpful. To give you that sense, I have taken the liberty to share the first eight days of December 1941 with the reader that provides the foundation for the rest of the month, and a blueprint of America at war for the next four years. 

December 1, 1941


Since dissolving its military forces in 1919, the US Army Air Corps had 51,000 trained pilots compared to Canada’s 500,000. 

The Great Depression still lingered on with unemployment still around 10 percent. 

Two percent payroll tax was enough to fund the Social Security Retirement System.  Pensioners at age 60 were eligible for $36 per month.  The vaulted “New Deal” of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was expanding and exerting a greater control of the national economy.

It cost ten cents to see a movie.  Men dressed up in suits and ties and hats, and women in dresses to go to the movies, where they could smoke during the movie if they liked, which most did. 

All men shaved except old men or psychiatrists, who might sport beards.  Movie stars such as Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, William Powell and Ronald Colman had pencil moustaches.  Movie actresses such as Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy and Greer Garson wore dresses with the hem just below the knee.  Popular movies were “Sergeant York,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “Meet John Doe,” “Dumbo” and “Citizen Kane.”  Moviegoers could also watch serials such as Captain Marvel, Dick Tracy, The Green Hornet and Jungle Girl. 

Radio personalities were Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, Bob Hope and newsmen Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell. 

It was the great band era with Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Harry James, Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington with singers Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Harriet Nelson, Bing Crosby and Louie Armstrong. 

Craig Shirley writes, “Everybody smoked cigarettes in 1941, and everybody smoked cigarettes everywhere.” Smoking Phillip Morris was important as “eminent doctors” said it was easier on the throat than other “leading brands” because “all smokers sometimes inhale.” 

In sport, Duke was pitted against Oregon in the Rose Bowl; Joe DiMaggio was setting a hitting streak.  Fiorello LaGuardia was the mayor of New York City.  Henry Luce headed Time and Life magazine.  Joseph Kennedy, ambassador to Great Britain, was increasingly an isolationist and pro-Nazi as was Charles Lindbergh. 

President Roosevelt managed a Lend-Lease program of arm supplies to Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain.  This meant that part of American industry was devoted to making tanks, planes, ships and guns for the British to the tune of $millions.

The United States maintained an embargo on Japan for its forces in China, and increased its economic blockade along with its allies Great Britain and the Netherlands East Indies, cutting off oil and other imports by 75 percent.

December 2, 1941


Senator Harry Truman of Missouri, a product of the corrupt Pendergast political machine, heads an investigation into waste and fraud in the defense industry. 

Citizens can buy Defense Stamps from the government. 

A Japanese expert writes why America would be no competition for Japan in a war: “The national debt, a spoiled child mentality, low national morale at the first defeat, and Robert Taft and Gerald Nye and Charles Lindberg will lead a revolt, Roosevelt is a buffoon, hesitancy, Americans excite and cool easily, disunity – with 20 million Negroes, 10 million unemployed, 5 million trade unionists, inflation.” 

A British psychiatrist said that the lower classes handled stress better than the upper classes. 

The Andrews Sisters had no Great Depression making $5,000 a week. 

Harvard found its incoming freshman had low reading acumen.  This forced this prestige institution to have a remedial reading course in reading fundamentals. 

The power of the movies was so disturbing to Pope Pius XI that he devoted a papal encyclical to it. 

The book “Total Espionage” was a best seller detailing the rise of the Third Reich. 

Retired General Robert E. Wood was chairman of Sears & Roebuck Company, and bringing it to new heights of economic power. 

The March of Dimes for polio was celebrated, no mention for FDR’s polio. 

Vice President Henry Wallace was cited for his liberal leanings. 

The House Committee on Un-American Activities claimed communists had infiltrated the government. 

The Panzer Division of German General Rommel, called “the desert fox”, dominated North Africa. 

Great Britain was drafting men from the ages of 18.5 to 50 into military service. 

Secretary of State Cordell Hull worried about Japan invading Thailand menacing America’s tin and rubber supply. 

Germany sunk 48 merchant ships and 11 naval craft in the Atlantic. 

America was churning out “liberty ships” as its merchant fleet.  The latest was called “Roger B. Taney.”  He was the chief justice of the US Supreme Court and gave the decided opinion on the Dred Scott Decision, saying, “Slaves were not people but property, and thus could not sue for rights.” 

Columnist Westbrook Pegler called members of Congress “miserable, fumbling, timid aggregation of political trimmers and panhandlers.”

December 3, 1941


Emanuel Neumann, an American Jewish leader, “Hitler has openly proclaimed the annihilation of European Jewry as one of his war aims.”  Secretary of War Henry Stimson voiced his support.  Edward R. Murrow of CBS echoed the alarm. 

Charlie Chaplin made “The Great Dictator” film, spoofing Hitler.  FBI director J. Edgar Hoover kept a file on the artist. 

Over 20 percent of those eligible for the military draft were rejected for bad teeth. 

Mexicans crossing the border who did not declare their intentions to become US citizens were exempt from the draft. 

At Sakes Fifth Avenue, Christmas ads were hawking lingerie for women, saying, “There is no shortage of pure silk.” 

Senor Walter George of Georgia states American taxpayers had reached their limit and borrowing to finance the New Deal and war effort could push off repaying the debt.

Nazi Germany’s war machine was two-thirds supported by tax revenue and one-third financing the debt.  Thyssen and Krupp families viewed Hitler, "the Vienna clown," but useful for their industrial and financial purposes, plus he had gotten rid of labor unions, communists and undesirables. 

Ireland remained neutral as its hatred of Great Britain finds some cheering Germany. 

Met Ott and Lou Boudreau are playing managers of the New York Giants and Cleveland Indians.  Boston’s Ted Williams hit over .400 for the season.  Rapid Robert Feller, who came to the baseball’s major leagues at 17, had another great year.

December 4, 1941


Japanese intelligence assesses the United States as weak. 

Women looking for employment are flooding the nation’s capital, Washington, DC. 

“Tessie the Typist” is in search of white-collar employment.  “Rosie the Riveter,” her blue-collar counterpart has not yet arrived on the scene. 

RCA uses a foggy night to test out its air raid siren. 

Ford in Detroit has already partially converted to making tanks and planes. 

President Batista of Cuba asks for emergency powers in case of war. 

Great Britain moved to declare war on Finland, Rumania and Hungary.  Joseph Stalin personally directed the Soviet Russian army against the Nazis. 

Tokyo rejects the Hull accords. 

German U-boat submarines sink the Reuben James in the North Atlantic with more than 70 US sailors lost, the greatest naval personnel loss since the Maine in Cuba in 1898. 

Nazis occupy Belgrade, but Serb guerillas are making the German occupation difficult.  German Gestapo set a policy of 50 hostages to be killed by firing squad for every German soldier or politician killed.  Nazi occupation of Paris finds population declining from 2.6 million in 1936 to 1 million. 

The US government’s “Blueprint for War” projected an armed force of 5 million men to be completed by July 1, 1943. 

Americans are rankled by the perception that FDR is autocratic and secretive and is massing the nation for war with Germany.  Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, outlined his foreign policy to a receptive FDR. 

A new ugly car rolls off the assembly lines that cost two-thirds less to buy and gets up to 50 miles on a gallon, and 40,000 miles on its tires.  The car sells for $447 with $149 down.  The Manhattan Auto and Radio Company are selling the car, which looked like it was made of paper mache. 

New cereals hit the market, Cheerioats and Kellogg’s All Bran and Toasted Corn Flakes. 

The Charles Dickens manuscript “The Life of the Lord” is to be serialized for Christmas in the Atlanta Constitution. 

The Los Angeles Times celebrates its sixtieth birthday. 

“The peripatetic First Lady appears on NBC radio at a town hall meeting.”  Margaret Bourke-White photographed her appearance.

December 5, 1941


Scientists have discovered the sun is 100,000 miles farther away than thought previously.  They are gathering intriguing information on “black holes,” theorizing that when a star collapses after a supernova, it creates a sufficiently dense mass from which even light cannot escape, deforming the fabric of space and time. 

Amelia Earhart’s fateful 1937 flight around the world is being investigated. 

A new material has been created, plastic, developed from polymer chemistry.  It is believed to have unlimited possibilities. 

Dr. Karl Menninger of the American Psychoanalytical Association says men seek war to gratify the subconscious desire to destroy and kill. 

The American military has developed a fantastic new gun that can bring down anything that flies. 

Americans have seen their life span increase through the auspices of public health: that is, sanitized treated water, improved methods of sewage treatment, and trash collection. 

In 1900, life expectancy was 44 years of age.  Now in 1941 it is 66 for women and 63 for men. 

Americans diet is still questionable as 50 percent of draftees are rejected for poor nutrition. 

Hitler claims he invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia for their own good. 

Syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann carries a lot more clout than simply as a journalist as he is thought to be a protean thinker. 

The consensus is that should war develop between the US and Japan, the US could not avoid war with Germany. 

FDR gave a blank check to Churchill with the Lend Lease Program, which no longer passed the scrutiny of Congress.  Historians look at this as a great finesses of the Roosevelt Administration.  It essentially saved Great Britain in its hour of greatest peril with little hope the debt would ever be repaid.    .  . 

The Young Men Christian Association (YMCA) gave dances and lectures for servicemen, as did Catholic and Jewish clubs. 

Eleanor Roosevelt lobbied for greater civil rights for Negroes including repeal of Jim Crow laws.  However, the District Court of Washington upholds a covenant not to sell land in Washington DC to colored people. 

Ugly free speech was upheld in New Jersey. 

French Resistance undermined Axis powers in Paris. 

FDR mourned the death of his mother. 

Young congressman Lyndon Johnson became the fair-haired boy of the president. 

Secretary of State Hull chillingly remarked to Tokyo, “If there is no sincerity then there is no need to continue the conversations.” 

Skirmishes break out between Japan and Russia.  Japan dispatches a ship to Panama to bring back its citizens to Japan. 

The New York Stock Exchange’s spokesman says, “Only a fool would bet on peace now.” 

Some 17 million men are declared draft eligible, only 1.6 million in the military. 

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, “FDR has a second class mind, but a first class temperament.” 

Since 1932, and the New Deal, the Republican Party has struggled for relevance.  It doesn’t appear to be changing with the nomination of Wendell Willkie in 1941. 

The Great Depression is still a part of American economic life. 

December 6, 1941


USS Arizona is the pride of the American navy.  The 31,400-ton battleship had her keel laid in 1916.  The American naval fleet is old with the Arkansas laid in 1911.  Seven aircraft carriers were newer, Lexington and Saratoga, 1925, Enterprise and Yorktown, 1936, Wasp, 1939. 

At Pearl Harbor on December 6, there are eight battleships, two heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, and twenty-nine destroyers, and a handful of PT boats, ocean togs, minesweepers, minelayers, seaplane tenders, repair ships, two general store ships and a hospital ship.  Three carriers are stationed at Pearl Harbor but are out to sea on maneuvers.

Japanese nationals are quickly withdrawing from Panama, Borneo, Malaya, India, Ceylon and Mexico. 

General Douglas MacArthur, always the optimist, claimed confidently that his forces in the Philippines could handle any military folly planned by the Japanese. 

A new $8 billion defense bill passes the House 309-5, but military facilities are skeletal.  At Camp David, there are 18 basketballs but no basketball court.  At Pine Camp, there are baseballs and bats but no baseball diamond.  At Camp Blanding, there are 50,000 men, but no recreational facilities.  The US Navy does a far better job. 

For the first time in nine years, unemployment is tracking down.  Guns take precedence to butter and social issues, which does not sit well with V.P. Henry Wallace. 

The Third Reich asked for reparation of German business losses in the US due to German businesses being black listed.  Senator Claude Pepper of Florida, “Hitler is a devil from hell!  You had just as well tried to make peace with the devil.” 

Jews in Germany can no longer sell their own property.  American Jews are not united against Hitler.  A leading Jew, Jerome Frank published “Save Americas First.”  He sees isolationism as the only way to save America.  Later, he admitted he misjudged Hitler. 

Wealthy Fascist Jews in the US claim, “Hitler is all right except for his Jewish mistake.” 

Brilliant but controversial Secretary Harold Ickes was seen by Clair Booth Luce as having the mind of a commissar and the soul of a meat axe.  Ickes was fueling fears, according to her, by closing gas stations on the east coast.  He then authorized the reducing of lead in ethyl gasoline, which meant it would take more gas now selling at 20 cents a gallon.

Campbell’s soups are popular with G.I.s, an institution established after the Civil War. 

Hitler launched a new campaign against Russia with 1.5 million fresh troops, 1,000 big guns, and 8,000 tanks.  Russia’s winter averages 31 degrees below zero.  Nazis have taken 600,000 Russian prisoners in the march, and over 3 million since the campaign started; all are being treated poorly, putting many to work in defense factories.

British Admiral Barry Domvile and his wife are arrested as Nazi sympathizers. 

December 7, Washington Redskins are scheduled to play the Chicago Bears for 1940 Championship (note: Martin Cruz Smith authors a compelling novel of the times in his “December 6,” 2002, where he looks at that day from the other end of the historical prism.).

December 7, 1941


The military authorities (US, British, Dutch) in the Far East, expecting a Japanese attack in Thailand, agreed military counterattack should be undertaken only if Japan should attack.

Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, in charge of the Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, has been obsessed about a possible Japanese attack on the island, but has been unable to gain traction with Washington, DC on the matter.  He reported that Japan would attack on the weekend and would not first declare war.  There had been only one black out drill on Oahu, and it was in May. 

On December 6, FDR sent a message to Emperor Hirohito with such words as “friendship” and “virtue” and “wisdom.”  Ending the message with “dispelling the dark clouds .. for the sake of humanity.”  No evidence exists the emperor ever saw it. 

Nazi Panzer Divisions are only 40 miles from the Soviet capital.  December 6 Navy Secretary Frank Knox confessed we don’t have enough radio technicians.  At 3.42 a.m., a midget submarine is spotted by a Condor on patrol outside the entrance of Pearl Harbor. 

At Opana Point Radar Station, the highest point on the island of Oahu, a huge group of planes was spotted on the radar heading for the island.  A call was placed at 7:00 a.m.  Nothing was done as it was thought to be a squadron of American B-17s due that morning.  As the planes appeared, they were met with neither antiaircraft guns nor planes to challenge them.  Then the call went out, “Attention, this is no exercise.  The Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor, all personnel to report to duty.” 

No announcement was made of the attack at the championship football game as it was against its management policy. 

The Japanese attack was at 7:35 Hawaiian time, 1:05 EST.  Japan used 353 fighters and bombers on Oahu, 3,500 miles from its homeland. 

Three battleships are hit; the Arizona is sunk.  A second wave of 171 Japanese fighters then hits Hawaii.  Films stopped at movie houses and announced the surprise attack. 

Reporters immediately attempted to pin the blame for the attack on FDR.  The president and his cabinet and Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall reviewed losses.  FDR said he would speak to Congress on December 8, but was not sure he would ask for a declaration of war. 

Eleanor Roosevelt was surprised how serene her husband was.  FDR huddled with William Donovan of the Office of Strategic Services, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner in WWI. 

Prime Minister Tojo of Japan assured the Japanese people they would win the war, as they had not lost a war in 2,600 years.  The Japanese attacked the Philippines, Wake Island, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore.  They attacked US Marines stationed in China, on Guam, Midway Island, Shanghai and Pearl Harbor. FDR froze all Japanese assets.  No Japanese are allowed to leave the US. 

December 8, 1941


Some Americans thought the attack on Pearl Harbor was another hoax like the ruse of Orson Wells, when in 1938 he aired the “War of the World” in which Martians landed on earth. 

The West Coast was 2,500 miles from Hawaii, the East Coast another 3,000 miles.  Japan attacked while America and the American military slept.  General Tojo of Japan blamed the Americans for the attack.  Ironically, Churchill and Great Britain declared war on Japan several hours before the US did.  Australia also declared war on Japan. 
The distance from Tokyo to Honolulu was 3,860 miles, Hawaii to San Francisco, 2,397 miles. 

There were fears of Japanese terrorist attacks on Washington DC.  Disinformation was more plentiful than information.  FDR believed Germany pushed Japan into the attack. 

The president tinkered with his remarks to Congress.  Originally, he was planning to say “a date which will live in history.”  At the last moment, he changed the word “history” to “infamy,” making it one of the great speeches of his presidency. 

The speech lasted six and one-half minutes.  A declaration of war passed the House 388 to 1, and in the Senate 82 – 0.  The debate lasted forty minutes.  The one dissenting vote was from Jeannette Rankin from Montana. 

Ted Williams gave up his deferment to enter the military and fly jets. 

FDR had 50,000 Japanese Americans picked up; later it would be well over 100,000.  Few Americans, including Congress, knew Japan had declared war on the US two hours after its attack on Pearl Harbor. 

General Motors declared all its plants would be exclusively defense plants.  A national call was made to amateur radio operators to network and plane spot. 

The Japanese had three to five thousand fighter planes, 1.8 million men in uniform; the naval fleet was the third largest in the world with nine aircraft carriers, forty-six cruisers, 126 destroyers, and seventy submarines. 

Most Americans could not find Pearl Harbor on the map.  About 3,000 died on Pearl Harbor. 

FDR showed very little emotion as he mapped out his war strategy. 

American boys grew up playing cowboy and Indian games in which you never shot anyone in the back, never sucker punched another person, dirty play and breaking rules was frowned upon, chivalry was in, ladies were treated with dignity, the US for all intent and purpose was a Christian country, and now its brutal soul was coming out of the genie bottle with a rage not known since the Civil War.

WHAT WAS DIFFERENT – HOW THE NEXT 23 DAYS PROVED THE RULE


In one sense, “December 1941” could be seen as a collage of the times, but this would miss the point.  The book shows a people pressed to the brink of disaster with the future uncertain but still able to function effectively.  Americans were calm, involved, focused, mutually supportive, and yes, even confident that they would survive and prevail, this melting pot of ethnicities coalesced around an idea, democracy. 

Disparate elements blended into a common purpose.  John L. Lewis of the mineworkers, a constant Roosevelt basher, offered the support of his miners in the war effort.  GM management and the UAW autoworkers buried the hatchet.  People on both sides of the track, rich and poor, forgot their social differences and worked side-by-side. 

Yet, the country still needed a scapegoat for Pearl Harbor.  The press first centered on FDR but that didn’t stick.  It then came to be Adm. Husband E. Kimmel.  Forgotten was that the Pacific Naval Fleet Commander had repeatedly called for taking the Japanese threat seriously, but was unheeded. 

He retired in disgrace, blamed for the planes being wing tip to wing tip on the ground and destroyed and for not using the sophisticated new radar system.  Little credence was given to reports that planes were spotted in squadrons from the Opana point Radar Station, but thought to be B-17 bombers returning to base, so no action was taken.

Revisionists claimed Japan wanted peace and Americans wanted war. 

The fact that the US was ramping up its industrial might for the past year in support of Great Britain with the Land Lease Program gave the country a running start to full industrialization.

“The mobilization of the political and business class to fight a highly industrialized global war, combined with the concentration of power into the hands of the Commander in Chief (the president), was profoundly changing what had once been Fortress America.  It marked the beginning of what would later be known as the Imperial Presidency.” 

Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers had supported a concentration of power in the executive branch of government during wartime.  FDR had more power than most notable dictators in history, including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

Prime Minister Tojo of Japan was nicknamed “The Razor” for his brutal and audacious leadership.  A surprising visceral hatred of the Japanese race surfaced at the time with university presidents describing the Japanese people as fanatical, infected with madness, and caricatured as short, squinty-eyed bifocal baboons.” 

FDR had been given several top-secret memos alerting him to the possibility of a Japanese attack, but it could not be imagined to ever happen.  Admiral Kimmel thought the president was being provocative when he moved the US Naval Fleet from San Diego to Oahu earlier in 1941.  A total of 1.177 sailors and marines went down with the Arizona.

On December 10, 1941 in FDR’s fireside chats he told the American people,

“We are now in the midst of a war, not for conquer, not for vengeance, but for a world in which this nation, all that this nation represents, will be safe for our children . . We are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows.”

The president’s health was not good, too little sleep, endless smoking of unfiltered Camel cigarettes, too much drinking, and too little exercise (swimming).”  The nation never saw his steel braced legs that allowed him only to walk a few steps.  The press was in collusion with the president in this deception.

The war in the Pacific does not go well with the Japanese sinking two British battleships, the Prince of Wales and Repulse.  The Japanese also claimed to have sunk King George V battleship.

Hitler and Mussolini gave ranting speeches promising the Fascist State would dominate for the next 500 to 1,000 years.  The German dictator saw the US rotting from within by a mongrel Jewish-Negroid race.  Germany declared war on the US on December 11.

General Douglas MacArthur gave the president assurance that he was in control of the Philippines as the Japanese invaders took island after island closer to that archipelago. 

The expression the “Fifth Column” was bandied about, which referred to subversive elements inside a country.  FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover assured the president that no such elements existed in the US when hundreds of such agents were found to be so embedded.

FDR made a pact with China’s Chiang Kai-Shek and his armed forces that were battling  the occupying Japanese army.

Unemployment continued to dip and was expected to be below 10 percent by the end of 1941.

In Europe, Herman Goring’s Luftwaffe fighters and bombers ruled the skies.  Blitzkrieg bombing of military targets in Great Britain had been unremitting, now its concentration would be on civilian targets to demoralize the British people.  By changing targets from military installations to civilian population centers, it gave the British time to rebuild its Spitfire and Hurricane fighter squadrons, which had been nearly wiped out.

A story was developing of African Americans fighter pilots distinguishing themselves in air battles with Germans and Japanese squadrons.  They overcame the Japanese and Germans, but had to overcome their own country as well.

General Motors, with a year’s work on Lend Lease, had nearly completed retooling all its plants to churn out machine guns, diesel engines for tanks and “Allison” engines for aircraft.  It ceased to manufacture automobiles until after the war.

Pan-American countries declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.

American public education in 1941 was judged the best in the world led by dedicated teachers, rote and repetitious learning with a mix of discipline and tenderness.  A high school diploma was hard-earned necessitating language skills, writing skills, citizenship skills, geology, biology, physics, mathematics, Latin, Greek, and extensive book reading.  Only 24.5 percent of Americans were high school graduates with 4.5 percent holding four-year college degrees.  The Palmer method of cursive writing was still taught, and many grammar schools still used the McGuffey Reader.

FDR appeared the perfect bromide for the American people in a time of uncertainty and fear.  He enjoyed an easy repartee with the press, who scribbled down his insouciant witticisms.  His energetic activism, irrepressible confidence, effervescent charm and reassuring fireside chats, kept the nation on track and on task, motivated to do its best.  Huge fines and jail time of up to 180 days were enforced for those who violated the rules whatever they were.

New Orleans cancelled the 1942 Mardi Gras.

The New York Times made a study of public opinion.  It discovered there is no disunity in the nation. 

Instead, there is a fusion of people of all groups, all classes, all nationalities, all races, into a feeling of national solidarity.  There is no panic only a quiet refrain, “They started it, we’ll finish it.”  There is no hysteria, only a cold slogan, “Remember Pearl Harbor!”  There is no isolationism or pacifism, only a united people, ready and willing to do whatever the president and the armed forces command them to do.  The American people are 100 percent unified in opposition to the Axis powers.

The stock and commodities markets are slapdash.  It is a smoking nation with smoking allowed everywhere and anywhere including on all flights in all sections at all times.  Coca Cola is Santa’s drink as it is the pause that refreshes.

As Europe became Nazified, people of all economic classes, especially Jews, fled for their lives leaving behind wealth and the possessions of a lifetime.  Among hundreds of thousands of refugees, there were thousands of Catholic priests and nuns.

The year 1941 marked the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Constitution by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1791.

Slang language always proliferates in times of crisis.  1941 was no different.

Coffee is “Joe,” sailors are “swabs” and “gobs,” soldiers are “dogfaces, and marines are “jarheads.  When a soldier tells another, “our bean grub is shrapnel, cream on a shingle, and ink with side arms,” he’s talking about a meal of baked beans, creamed beef on toast, and coffee with cream and sugar. 

Civilians joined in.  “Patch my panty waist” means being amazed, “hoytoytoy” is having a good time, “futzing around” is wasting time, “dig me” means do you understand, “yum yum type” is someone good looking, “shove in your clutch” means get-going, a “G.I.” is government issue, “SNAFU” means situation normal, all f---ed up!”

Citizens not only put triangle flags in their windows denoting they have a member of the family in the military, but “E” flags as well that indicate they work in a defense plant and have an “Excellent” rating.

Civilians were admonished to be careful of what they say, “Loose lips sink ships!”

Cigarette companies and the media endorsed cigarette smoking by men and women in the military.  In fact, one brand “Juleps” encouraged “chain smoking” their cigarette with “a hint of miracle mint” to clear the throat.  Spud cigarettes were also billed as good for the throat.

Bombing of London by Germany grounded to a halt in September 1940 after some 19,000 V-2 rockets had smashed into the metropolis.  Nazi Air Marshall Hermann Goering had said if Germany failed in the Battle of Britain, the German people could call him “Meyer,” an anti-Semitic slur.

THE MONTH OF DECEMBER 1941, WHY IMPORTANT


“December 1941” provides the reader with a reference point in our history. 

America’s leadership didn’t panic and therefore the American people didn’t.  December 1941 tested this mettle.

Since it was a surprise attack, and many were isolationists before the attack, December 1941 bombarded the public psyche with reports beyond the imagination. 

Daily newspaper headlines screamed with the horror of freighters and cargo ships being sunk, troop ships and military vessels under attack and often being sunk in shipping lanes across the Atlantic and Pacific.

Japan was swarming like a tsunami while German troops were scorching the earth like a prairie fire.  Germans were 40 miles from the Russian capital with over a million Russian prisoners of war. The picture couldn’t be bleaker.  Yet, less than five years later the Axis powers surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Forces.  

We are all familiar with the expression “the more things change the more they remain the same,” and “if you don’t learn from lessons of history, you’re doomed to repeat them.”

Seventy-one years after Pearl Harbor with sanctions against Iran, an embargo on their oil supply, and saber rattling in the Strait of Hormuth, the times echo the Japanese-American tensions leading up to the surprise attack in 1941.

President Barak Obama is forced for austerity reasons to cut the military budget and withdraw American military personnel from Iraq, and to draw down troops from Afghanistan, which is to be completed by 2014, different scenario but a similar problem

Author Craig Shirley ends the book with an epilogue titled, “A failure of imagination.”  He illustrates how this was the case with the 1967 Apollo One disaster when Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee were burned alive on the ground during a routine drill.  Astronaut Frank Gorman told Congress, “Senator, it was a failure of imagination …no one ever imagined … we just didn’t think that such a thing could happen.”

Shirley writes, “No one in America imagined that the Japanese would have the cunning to attempt such a feat, and yet they succeeded because of a failure of imagination on the part of those in power in Washington, both civilian and military.”

As I closed the book, I sat and reflected about another book, a book that seems, at first blush, light years away from this geopolitical situation because it is an engineer’s perspective.  I wondered if its premise had been available, which of course was not possible, would the outcome have been the same?  The book is William L. Livingston’s DESIGN FOR PREVENTION (2010), a book that takes in the social, cultural and political aspects of the problem solving as well as the engineering design of prevention.  It is not limited by a failure of imagination because it follows first principles of natural law..

*     *     *




Tuesday, February 28, 2012

ARIGATO (THANK YOU) FROM JAPAN EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS -- YouTube -- DIFFERING PERSPECTIVES

  
ARIGATO (THANK YOU) FROM JAPAN EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS – YouTube --DIFFERING PERSPECTIVES

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© February 28, 2012

REFERENCE:

It is the nature of my role to evaluate information, received directly or indirectly in terms of my admittedly limited perspective, but nonetheless a perspective that I share in the hopes that it stimulates thought.  It is always encouraging when that happens.

A READER WRITES:

Jim,

This reference is surely one aspect of American exceptionalism as it shows our treatment of former enemies.

J.D.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=SS-sWdAQsYg&vq=medium  It is a video on YouTube of the devastating earthquake in Japan on March 11, 2011.

*     *     *

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

J.D.

This is touching.  And shows the US and others in a good light.  But what does it teach us, which I think is the more important question.

The morality of the times takes a backseat to our inherent connection to each other in natural disasters, circumstances we feel beyond our control, joining us together as one human species, where our collective response is immediate, comprehensive and humanitarian.

That tenuous connection, no matter how much we celebrate it and look to it for self-approval, does not always extend to our day-to-day lives in our quest to lift ourselves out of ourselves.  We look to these moments to self-forget.

Self seems forgotten when we operate almost instinctively as brothers and sisters across wide oceans and different cultures.  

Where is that moral fiber in the mundane day-to-day existence of ups and downs, loves and hates, hopes and despairs that visit us then?

Are we a race that is most comfortable in tragedy, when those victims of disasters could just as well be us?  That is my wonder.

The news today is the price of gas is up, the president is out to lunch, Dow Jones Industrial flirt with 13,000; then there is the daily scream of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Syria’s civil war, NATO workers killed in Afghanistan, all of which are symptoms of global moral frustration with an inability to identify much less deal with root causes.  .

Is the only time we can get out of the rut of playing the same tune over and over again when tragedy strikes on a disturbing level, as it did today in Ohio in a small community when a sixteen year old walked into a school and killed one student, critically wounded two others, putting still two others in serious condition in the hospital.  

The talk is that the school didn’t have metal detectors for the school’s 3,100 students to go through.  Most schools, some estimates 90 percent of all schools in the United States have no such metal detectors.  Would that have made this school safer?  Would that have avoided this tragedy?  Have we reached the moral depravity that sixteen year olds take out their angst by killing others?  Have we come to worship guns as the ultimate avenger?

A nine-year-old boy in a local Florida school had a gun in his backpack and shot a nine-year-old classmate in the stomach, putting her in the hospital.  The boy’s bail was first set at $250,000 but reduced to $50,000.  

Where were the parents in this affair?  What’s more, what are the parents like that make guns an integral part of family life?  There are 310 million Americans in this nation and more guns than people with guns in the home.  Many women carry guns in their purses.  We have become an unlicensed army of personal defense, why?  Do we not trust each other enough to walk out of our homes and expect to return unarmed without carrying a weapon?  Has paranoia replaced moral authority?

Author Daniel Pink wrote a powerful book on creative thinking, “A Whole New Mind” (2005).  He has written a subsequent book that we are a less violent society.  Tell that to Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles, or tell it to my Tampa where we have gun violation virtually every day, often with police officers killing or being killed as our streets have become a war zone.  

My recent missive (“One Day It Will Be Writ, “America, What Have You Done to Your Children?”) disturbed some.  It was not meant to disturb but to indicate our decline in moral confidence.  Others reassured me that America was safe as a superpower for a while as China and India are years from becoming new hegemonies.  The piece was not about America’s power, but about America’s values, which I see in decline.  

The strength of a nation may be measured in guns and butter, but a nation’s survival is measured in its moral values and how healthy they are.  A nation can be glutted with guns and butter and still collapse like pin-pricking a balloon if it doesn’t have the helium of morality maintaining it to full inflation.  In anticipation of the question, yes, a nation’s morality is as tenuous as an inflated balloon.

A person like me writes out of anger and frustration, and is used to being dismissed as ranting and seeing the glass half empty.  A glass is not a suitable metaphor for a nation’s morality.  The index of morality is how it deals with what is, how it husbands its fears, how it rises out of its anxiety to think well of itself and therefore well of others, how it develops the ability to think and not let others tell it what is worthy of thought.

My problem is that we never seem to learn from our tragedies.  The Indonesian tsunami of 2004 with a wall of water a hundred feet high killed 230,000 people.  What was learned?  The communities along that fault line have been rebuilding commercial enterprises ever since as if it never happened.  

The earthquake in Japan and the subsequent nuclear disaster is yet to prove that Japan has learned from it.  The land is so contaminated it will not be suitable to build there for hundreds of years.  Will Japan heed this fact?  We shall see. 

Nearly ninety percent of the world’s population hugs the shores of bodies of water across the globe.  Yet, people insist on living precariously along these waters.  As difficult as this is to perceive, we live more desperate lives person-to-person because of our fears, faulty moral compasses, and lack of responsive and reassuring centers, and I’m not talking about a center of gravity.

Be always well,

Jim

PS  J.D., I've never been comfortable with this idea of exceptionalism.  But I do like the moral authority we display when tragedy comes to others. 
*     *     *


A PROFESSOR RESPONDS:

Jim,

Thanks for this note.  You have provided me the best counterpoint to something I want to share with you.  Here is a powerful questioning of what it is we do not as well as we could...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUEGHdQO7WA

This video is from Sam Richards a sociology professor at Penn State.   It is shocking and an unsettling presentation of how we as a nation are seen by others.

Now I have, thanks to you and John the other half of reality that will help my own students to see what challenges we have in creating a new future for the world.
 
I have been struggling in thinking of showing this video that is focused on Iraq and Oil since it is making a very strong case for what we must consider in terms of a future we want to create. 

Now with the second video, equally powerful, I can show my students what it is they can think and do about creating the future that their children will inherit.  

I am using each week more and more video links that are like these two.  Short and powerful in presentation but also helpful in framing a conversation of the roles my graduating seniors here at University of West Florida may be able to create for themselves in a world that needs their help.  

I call this new generation the next "greatest" and tell them that this is no more a choice for them than it was for my parents and their grandparents or for many of their parent's parents.  

We have to step up to the challenges and their lives may well be measured my how well they respond to the cries for creating a better world than the one they inherited.   

I must run off to class and so thankful, once again, that I opened your email.   These two videos side by side should create a space for learning; we must depend on this next generation so I want to do my best to prepare them as our next greatest generation.  

Ken
*     *     *

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Ken,

Thank you for your comments, and as always, your upbeat and enthusiastic support for your students and their futures is reassuring. 

I listened to Sam Richards’s video, and have no problem with his concept of empathy.  

Empathy is not quite "self-forgetting" as proposed in my piece, and therefore not quite a complement to Professor Richards's thesis.  Tragedy is a spontaneous empathetic response whereas the professor proposes a reasoned behavioral response.  That gets a little tricky.

China, incidentally, was in 1820 far superior as an industrial/military complex than the United States so that historical reference at first threw me off in his presentation.  We were somewhere around ninth in the world in terms of Gross Domestic Product then with little prestige to boast about.  China, on the other hand, as you well know, feels where it is now is where it has always belonged.  . 

That said the professor was walking a risky course using generalizations vis-à-vis the US and Moslems, particularly those in Iraq, which have been since our “liberation,” as much involved in civil war between the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis as playing havoc with US troops.

Using coal with China and oil with Iraq as metaphor seems a little archaic.  Geopolitically speaking, dominant powers since ancient times have had the largest standing armies, not only to insure their stability, but also to control the distant aspects of their hegemony.

Empathy is good, but as Jon Huntsmen put it today on Charlie Rose, “We’ve lost our mojo, and need to get it back.”  He went on to say we are in a funk with stalemated wars, a stalled economy, a divisive government, and a lack of vision as to what the next step forward should be.

Ideas have always been more complicated for me than what I hear from sociologists. 

Before demonstrating empathy “to step into another shoes,” I would like us to revitalize our own center in self-acceptance, self-respect, and self-initiative.  That is where our moral confidence has always been, and where I see it presently lagging.  Listening to Republican candidates for president, especially Senator Santorum, you’d think we lived in a theocracy and not a democracy, something that colors the vision of those the professor would have us demonstrate empathy.     

Empathy for me means I will accept (tolerate) your values, beliefs, behaviors and interests if, and with me there is always an if, if I feel I can do it with safety.  But violate my safety, no matter how you argue my collective society is the focus of your scorn, and I’ll be of a totally different mind. 

Richards says he “understands” terrorism.  I don’t.  Nor do I apologize for being on guard when my tentacles forewarn me my safety is in jeopardy.  We aren’t one-dimensional beings.  Theocracy tends to look at us as being so.

Granted, it is a difficult void to fill with the correct behavior in all situations.  It is why I developed the “Fisher Conflict Model.”  Self-demands and role-demands make empathy multidimensional and problematically dependent upon the situation. 

It would have been nice if Richards had mentioned how difficult it is to be empathetic with ourselves.  The seven deadly sins cloud empathy on both sides of the coin.  It is why I salute you in your important work, and don’t envy you trying to do in person what I try to do with words.

Be always well,

Jim

*     *     *

Sunday, February 26, 2012

ONE DAY IT WILL BE WRIT, "AMERICA, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO YOUR CHILDREN?"

ONE DAY IT WILL BE WRIT, “AMERICA, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO YOUR CHILDREN?”

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© February 26, 2012

David Brooks, New York Times columnist, and Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, and also a New York Times columnist have pieces on the opinion page today of the Tampa Bay Times (February 26, 2012).  Brooks writes about “America is Europe,” and Krugman writes on Mitt Romney “A Keynesian in the closet.”

Brooks contends that our social welfare system is just as great if not greater than Europe’s in his column, but much of it is hidden so we don’t see it.

Krugman insists that Mitt Romney is very much a Keynesian liberal while purporting to be a fiscal conservative.  He harps on Romney’s answer to someone in Michigan while campaigning, saying, “If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you can spending, you’ll slow down the economy.” 

A-ha, the Nobel Laureate says, that is right out of the Keynesian playbook, which holds that full employment and a stable economy depend on the continued governmental stimulation of spending and investment through adjustment of interest rates, deficit financing and the like. 

We have been doing that for at least the last eighty years, and without a defensive war (WWII), stupid war (Vietnam) or preemptive wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), all of which are artificial stimulants to the economy, and ultimately come to haunt the republic in mounting deficits, we might see ourselves as little better off than Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Greece today, nations staring bankruptcy in the face.

Brooks implies the American economy is self-deluding, while Krugman insists Mitt Romney is insincere if not mendacious.

From my view, it is pretty obvious both are right as we have programmed ourselves and our children not to be prepared to face our own respective natures much less the world we have created and are now forced to live in.  Mendacity has become the stick that stirs our collective drink.

*     *     *

We became intoxicated with this drink when social engineers, social, educational and child psychologists of the 1930s thought they had discovered the magic bullet.  Children suffered from low self-esteem and workers suffered from inattentive bosses.  I have written volumes on this subject, suffice me to say here they essentially killed initiative and truth for ordinary souls, which includes most of us.

It was not always so.  I write this in A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA (soon to be published) in a chapter called “Watershed Moments.”  It represents an internal dialogue in which Seamus “Dirk” Devlin writes to his eldest son, Robbie, who at the time is nine, as part of his inheritance when he dies:

After my fifth birthday, we were a family for the first time with my mother and father seemingly materializing out of nowhere, living in this little house at 1931 Roosevelt Street.  It became a watershed moment when I attended Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School in the fall in this dirty industrial river town of Crescent City on the Mississippi River. Perhaps because of that experience, one never knows, I’ve had affection for the smell, the grime and chaos of the city but disaffection with authority as this watershed moment left me with minor scars, but learning scars nonetheless.
           
There I was toward the end of first grade standing before the principal and my teacher with my parents at my side.  They came as the result of a letter claiming this mandatory meeting was of the “utmost importance for the future of your son.” 

My da reacted as if he were stabbed when my mother told him the purpose of the meeting.  He yelled at the top of his lungs, “What the shit is this all about?  I don’t have any goddamn time for this!”  The fact is he had a lot of time.  He didn’t have a job.  World War Two was on but he was still looking for a job.  My mother smoked in silence, finally saying, “We will honor the summons, Seamus.”  I had the same given name as my da although most people called him Duncan, a nickname.

They accompanied me the three blocks to the school from our rented home on Roosevelt Street.  No one said a word walking to the school, as they were both quietly smoking.  I remember the face of the principal and teacher.  They looked like two porcelain plates with painted smiles.  The teacher stood.  The principal sat.  He spoke. 

“Your son must repeat the first grade,” he said evenly, “He cannot seem to manage the work.  We think this best socially and academically.  We didn’t want you to learn this from a report card.”

My da sprung from his chair, equipped with a seventh grade education, ready to bolt, but my mother put her hand on his shoulder and gently guided him back into his chair.  “What do you mean exactly when you say he cannot do the work, or that he’s not,” she struggled for words, “socially adjusted?” She then said almost in a whisper, “Could you be more specific?”

This seemed to ease the tension in the principal’s face.  He then explained in some detail my failure to learn to read, to do simple arithmetic, to participate in class, to play games with other children.  He gave examples of my limited social skills, and resistance to any type of encouragement. 

“So you’re saying my kid is stupid?” my da said with fire in his eyes.  He turned to my mother, “just like his old man, right?”  She ignored the cut.

“You ask if he is stupid, no, he is not stupid.  Is he slow?  We are not even certain of that.  What is clearly evident is that he is not here.  Because he is not here he has not been teachable.  I’m sorry.  If you cannot read, or won’t read, you will be severely handicapped in the second grade and beyond.  That is our concern.”  My teacher said nothing, only nodded in agreement. 

It was as if the schoolhouse of brick and mortar fell on my da’s head, and killed his spirit.  He had no fight.  He slumped in defeat.  Neither parent protested.  Their son had failed.  They knew a lot about failure.  When the teacher offered to demonstrate my incompetence, both parents threw their hands up in surrender, and shook their heads wildly from side to side.  It was too ugly.

Then the cruelest moment of my life occurred.  The teacher despite their protest handed me a Dick and Jane reader, and said, “Read this, Seamus, pointing to a page with Dick and Jane in happy animation running with their dog, Spot.  I didn’t read, although the rhythm of the happy picture danced in my head, Dick, See Dick.  See Dick run.  Run Dick run.  Jane. See Jane.  See Jane run. Run Jane run.  Spot. See Spot.  See Spot run.  Run Spot run.  It was like silent music that caused me to smile, and then frown when I saw all the horror in their collective eyes. 

Silence stormed the room like a chilling spike.  It was a fait accompli.  Teacher and principal looked at each other, then at my parents raising and lowering their eyebrows like fluttering curtains.  The teacher drove the chilling spike into my parents’ heart.  “It is for the best,” she said levelly.

My da never got over that setback.  It dogged him for the rest of his short life.  My mother accepted it as only a workable problem.  She would dedicate herself to first repair the damage by seeing that I learned to read by lifting the shadow from my private sanctuary, and then by going one step further to make me a reader, like herself.  She could easily manage a book a day. 

It was that day, she told me several years later that she was going to make me special, to demand the world take notice.  School became my temple and knowledge my God.

Several years later, I found myself in another watershed moment when I flunked out of medical school.  Medical school wasn’t my first, second or third choice as a career, but it was my da’s only choice.  He revered doctors who had been his boyhood friends from the other side of the tracks. 

My first choice was to become a Roman Catholic priest.  It was also my mother’s first choice.  She and I often talked about the career I would have.  We could see me in the red lined cape of a monsignor, and then the red cassock and white surplice of a bishop, and perhaps one day even a Doctor of the Church as a Cardinal. 

My second choice was to be a professional baseball player.  I was a good all-around athlete and not great in any sport, but more proficient in baseball and basketball than any other.  I was a catcher in baseball, the easiest position to make it in professional baseball.  Although a position I loved with masochistic zeal, so brutally demanding is the position, I couldn’t hit for average, and had only an adequate throwing arm.  Where I excelled was in handling pitchers as a defensive backstop and hitting the long ball. 

My third choice was to be a moral philosopher and artist and write books on how I experienced life.  From my earliest recollections, I loved being me.  One becomes what one is, and that is why everything that I’ve written over the decades is an uninhibited self-presentation of boundless self-mirroring.  In truth, it is because I’ve always treated myself as a laboratory, as far back as that fateful meeting at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary when I was six.

If my flunking first grade gutted my da, my flunking out of medical school killed him.  Medicine is what he wanted for me because he could see it as a way to feel his life had not been lived in vain.  Technically, he died of a rare blood disease, multiple myeloma, but his spirit died sixteen years before, after that failure.  Already down, the body couldn’t get up from the canvas after the second failure.  He died three days after his fiftieth birthday, wasting away, a five-seven man of 165 pounds reduced to one of 60 pounds when he perished.

This watershed moment might never have occurred had I not listened to my heart.  I liked the hygienic purity of science taught with the certainty of medieval religion, and excelled in it for that reason.  It found me graduating with Cum Laude honors with BSCE and MSC degrees before entering medical school, along with Phi Eta Sigma (freshman honorary), Omicron Delta Kappa (leadership honorary), Phi Beta Kappa (scholastic honorary), and Phi Kappa Phi (graduate honorary) keys.  So, why this failure in medicine?

The picture and sound were wrong.  Life is beauty and its music is a combination of visual perception and audible patterns.  Such imagery came to me in nonaligned ways.  It was natural for me to be ambiguous and unpredictable, to go against the grain like a chemical equation in reverse or a chimerical image born of imagination. 

Chemistry, physics and mathematics were my entertainment, but my heart was in liberal arts: Greek and Latin, English literature, Roman Catholic and European history, the American novel, American poetry, philosophy of religion, history of ideas.  Greek and Shakespearean dramas were squeezed in as electives that made me eligible for a Phi Beta Kappa key.


*     *     *

GREEN ISLAND is only novel but is meant to put the light on a troubled young man and his family in an even more troubled country, South Africa, at a time, 1968, Devlin calls, “The end of the American Century a little early.”  Devlin is confounded by all the artificial filters that have been concocted by society that prevent him from seeing reality, and so he bares his soul in writing as a catharsis.   

We preach equality when we know no such thing exists.  We can have equal opportunity, but we are not all equal, never were or never will be. 

We cannot make up the difference by giving everyone in kindergarten a ribbon of excellence when few are, but we can encourage others to strive for the excellence with which they are capable. 

We cannot all be leaders because few of us have the will, the determination or the instincts to lead, but we can be followers of what is right and good and true, and in that sense demonstrate leadership of the most rarest kind. 

We can’t all be doctors, lawyers or engineers, what’s more we are unlikely to want to be those things, but we can find our niche by listening to our own heart and pursuing what interests us, as there is no job or career or livelihood superior to another.  The key question: Does the life’s work I have chosen bring me happiness?  Evidence that it does is the happiness enjoyed by those around you.

Darwin was right.  Life is about the survival of the fittest, but the fittest can be nearly everyone if they are not afraid of pain, and will suck it up to ultimately realize their pleasure and potential in some kind of work; if they are not afraid of failure, as failure is the best teacher on the road to success; if they are not afraid of struggle, as life is struggle from birth to death, and to deny it is to deny life itself; if they are not afraid of stress, because without stress there is no life, but distress which can be avoided by taking life seriously and not ourselves, then meeting life’s challenges head on, whatever they are. 

In my novel, IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE: Memoir of The 1940s Written As A Novel (2003), I write:

“It was a time (1940s) when kids created their own play, as parents were too tired or too involved in the struggle to make a living to pay them much mind.  Clinton (Iowa) youngsters would never know such Darwinian freedom or its concomitant brutality again.  This is not a history of the times, nor is it a novel in the conventional sense, but rather recollections of a time, place and circumstance through the author’s self-confessed imperfect vision.  In the Shadow of the Courthouse promises to awaken that sleeping child in the reader of every age.”

My sense from Brooks and Krugman is that child has instead but put on Ritalin.

*     *     *


Wednesday, February 22, 2012

GOOGLE GLASSES, A NIGHTMARE ABOUT TO HAPPEN?



GOOGLE GLASSES, A NIGHTMARE ABOUT TO HAPPEN?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© February 22, 2012

Three quarters of a century ago, cartoonist Chester Gould created the comic strip, Dick Tracy.  The police detective was known for his spy wristwatch with its two-way radio mobile phone, his cigarette stamp ring, and a special pair of sunglasses that gave him facial recognition of a perk.

As a boy of the Great Depression Generation, we would think it cool to send away for plastic replicas of these devices, and pretend we were the great detective.  Later, Dick Tracy solved crimes with special cameras that would record images undetected by criminals, similar to what would become television.  None of these devices seemed anymore than exciting factoids of an imaginative cartoonist.  How wrong we were.

Today, handheld devices can send text messages, emails, surf the Internet, record conversations, take pictures and have conversations with people situated on the other side of the globe. 

On any street of a metropolis, you will find people walking with their heads down looking at these devices unaware of the people they bump into, or the dangers to themselves and others as they cross busy streets. 

Google glasses has the answer.  No longer will these preoccupied citizens have to have their heads buried in these devices, but will be able to look straight ahead and not miss a beat.  Moreover, google glasses will have many other features including GPS, facial recognition, taking pictures, recording conversations, texting, sending emails, surfing the Internet while walking by merely moving the head one way and another. 

With google glasses on, you can walk into a new restaurant and move the head and know what the restaurant’s health record is, and how it stands in the “top ten” restaurants.  You need never be lost as the GPS tracking system will tell you where you are and show you the most direct route to getting where you want to go. 

Nor need you ever be embarrassed not remembering the name of a person you haven’t seen in sometime.  By moving the head, the data will surface giving you the name, pedigree and pertinent data as if you were viewing the person’s FaceBook page. 

Imagine taking a difficult examination in physics, and not knowing or remembering the particulars of the theory.  Nod your head and the great physicist who did the original work and came up with the theory will appear right before your eyes, no problem.

If you thought this new digital age was moving too fast, or in fact out of control, think of our best and brightest huddled together in their snug cubicles at Apple, Microsoft, and Google, considering how to do Dick Tracy one electronic device better. 

The horrors of the past, which we read about in history books of the Nazi and Soviet Russia regimes, where neighbors spied on neighbors and reported the privileged information to the secret police, is now entering the realm of normalcy. 

A person with google glasses could be smiling at you recording what you are saying and at the same time taking your picture to confirm the time, place and circumstance.  Law and order and the court system are surely to take on a whole new dimension.  Dick Tracy gave us the mole.  Now the mole could be your best friend and you would be the last to know it.

Google glasses will be priced at from $250 to $600 when they come out.  I suspect the first day on the market ten million or more will be sold.  The only comforting aspect at the moment is that they are likely to be at first a bit cumbersome, as were originally personal computers.  One day, however, I suspect google glasses will be as difficult to detect as contact lenses.

We have allowed technology to increasingly invade our privacy until it is practically nonexistent.  The argument will be made that this is progress, and inevitable, and those supporting this argument may very well be correct. 

The problem is with the “cut and control” phenomenon, once you cross the Rubicon of “what was” to “what is” there is no going back.  And that is why I see this development as a nightmare on the cusp of the future.

A nightmare is a strong negative dream that can cause a negative emotional response of the mind.  This is not a dream.  This is reality, an act of commerce in which we could be entering hell without the necessity of dying.

*     *     *