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When America Became Great

When the Make America Great Again movement first began, I paid little attention because did not view it in a historical context. Lately have begun to do so. What I came to realize is that most America First and MAGA supporters are far too young to know the time when America became really great the first time.

MAGA is a child of The Greatest Generation. Tom Brokaw wrote about it in his 1988 book by the same name. This was my parents’ generation, and I know that generation well. Only if you grew up among these folks do you understand how great those born between 1901 and 1927 really were.

President Donald Trump grew up during that time, and I believe this is what he may recall when he says “Make America Great Again”.

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America had many great moments in the past 250 years. Many were dominated by great individuals or organizations, but in my view there were only two times when America was collectively Great. The first, of course, was 1776 and the following two decades. At the time of the revolution there were indeed British loyalists opposing the revolution, but the number of people seeking independence grew with the leadership of George Washington until it became dominant. The subsequent creation of our Constitution and Bill of Rights as well as other First Principals, by the men whose names we all should know, was indeed a time of great thought and wisdom.

The second period of greatness evolved from the Depression when, depending on whose account you read, America might have disappeared. Let’s take a look at that time.

Depression Unemployed at the Al Capone Soup Kitchen

The Depression followed the Roaring 20s decade of celebration following World War I, a time dominated by wild times, speculative investing and uneven distribution of wealth. Then the crash of 1929 brought a ~50% decline in GDP and at the highest point, 25% unemployment. Children like my father quit school to get a job, and the homeless camped in “Hoovervilles”.

Then came WWII.

During the lead-up to US entry, American sentiment was greatly divided. There were many who remembered and participated in recently ended war to end all wars. Isolationist feelings ran high. There were some, including Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford, who were even National Socialist admirers.

During those two years, Churchill tried relentlessly to convince Roosevelt and the U.S. to enter the war, yet Americans and congress were strongly opposed to fighting another European war.

As an alternative, America had been supplying the Allies with huge quantities of material and money in 1940-41, estimated at $49.1B – $1.1 T today, as lend-lease and outright gifts, and that was considered “enough.”

The Nazis had stormed across France, forcing the Dunkirk evacuation, and were poised at the English Channel. The “blitz”, an eight-month bombardment of England, was underway, until the RAF finally repelled it. This was the genesis of the Churchill statement, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

There was no peacemaker or identified pathway to peace in Europe.

Then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Congress, as well as every American, including the isolationists were instantly angry and war was declared on Germany and Japan.

Because of the strong isolationist sentiment in America, we can only speculate what would have happened to Europe had the Japanese not attacked on December 11.

Camouflage town on roof of Boeing Plant 2
6,981 B-17s were produced here

But most importantly, the people of America united in a way they had not since the Revolution, nor anytime since. Young kids like my dad rushed to enlist. Women truly “manned” the factories. The Great Depression finally ended.

The fledgling Greatest Generation created the greatest war machine the world has ever known.

But enough background. Here is the great part.

Dad & crashed ME-262

When the war ended and those kids came home – those that lived through it. They put their lives back together, built their homes, raised families, started businesses, went to school and implemented dreams. These dreams had taken root in foxholes, or the bitter cold behind a B-17 waist gun at thirty-thousand feet, or in the ocean spray standing watch on the deck of a destroyer.

These kids had defeated the German juggernaut! They believed they could do anything! And over the next twenty years they did.

Between 1948 and 1968 those war dreams created baby boomers, computers, automatic transmissions, PhD degrees, the world’s tallest buildings, a roaring economy, the Mustang and Camaro, venture capital, LEDs, supersonic flight, television, lasers, and trips to the moon.

The economy boomed, and the US rebuilt Europe and Japan, both physically and economically at a cost of $15.5B ($212B today), and we still subsidize their economies to this day.

America always with a welcome to the tired and poor of the world willing to work hard for a better life for their families, accepted both friends and former enemies into their ranks.

The Greatest Generation, now fully mature, built the most prosperous and productive country the world has ever known.

I was a child of that generation, and am grateful I could see it happen – and even participate in bits of it.

So when @realDonaldTrump talks about Making America Great Again, I think I know what he really means. I doubt he is thinking of the 80s, certainly not the 70s, or the Obama years, or some other bit of history. He is thinking of a time not many know.

When the Greatest Generation built the Great American Future, and brought much of the world along for the ride.

I am conservative. Not so by choice or argument, but by personal observation and experience. I have seen what hard work, commitment, self-reliance and common sense can produce. I cannot abide those with self-absorbed lives, minimal experience, an aversion to work, trained in Marxist /socialist universities, who ignore the efforts of their forebears.

Not only soldiers like my dad who defeated real Nazis and became a cabinet maker, but those down the road who came home and started a mechanics shop or a construction business or a bank, or Dr. Nick Holonyak who invented the LED, and helped me make one in his lab. These Great Ones fed and housed their baby boomer family for a lifetime.

Now, for the first time since World War II, after six decades of U.S. stagnation, the people of America have the opportunity to recreate part or all of that past greatness. A majority of Americans are now of one mind – we want to be great again.

I truly cannot understand why – other than ignorance – the remainder of our country would not choose to experience the pride and prosperity I did in the 50s and 60s.

True ignorance can be corrected and forgiven, but unwillingness to remember and learn results in stupidity that cannot.

So I say to radical left politicians, many old enough to remember, the news creators, producers and newsreaders at the New York Times, Washington Post @CNN, @MSNBC, @CBSnews, @ABCnews and @NBCnews, and the self-appointed “independent” reporters raging about imagined wrongdoings; Can you stop your rants and foolish criticism and honor this history and what America might be like to have that greatness again?

Sometimes it is good to be burdened by what has been.

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Why I Wander America

When I retired, the last thing I wanted to do was go to an airport, let alone think about getting on an airplane. And for five years, I was successful.

Instead, I have spent those years wandering the back roads and small towns of America. Many times I have been driving slowly down a two-lane asphalt road on a sunny morning, to a place I have never been, awed by the world around me, and so grateful that I get to do this. On the back roads of America there is a peace I have not found any other place (except maybe this little cottage on the Molokai channel). I have experienced people, places and things most of you will never know.

Along the way, there have been experiences! I hunkered down on the Oregon Coast for a week-long “Pineapple Express”, then ran southbound ahead of a major snow storm; camped for two weeks on the Padre Island National Seashore until waves were breaking under the Airstream; explored most major Civil War Battlefields and was overwhelmed by Andersonville; drove old Route 66 from the lake to the ocean and one afternoon found myself “standin’ on the corner in Winslow Arizona”; followed the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails from Kansas City to their ends; walked on the ocean floor in the Bay of Fundy; sat on the lonely rocks of the Swiss Air 111 Memorial at Peggy’s Cove looking out at the crash site; had the illegal alien experience of wading the Rio Grande from Mexico to Texas without a passport; camped in the Bakken Oilfield; looked eastward from the easternmost point of the US; spent 2 weeks in the most isolated part of the continental US (Presidio Texas); and camped as a guest of several American farmers who literally feed the world. …and then there was this rainbow in Death Valley…

So I should explain why I spend half my time wandering around America.

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The Cute College Girl – A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, when I was in college there was this freshman girl, really cute, bubbly, smiling, attractive. She had a personality that drew people to her. Everyone seemed to like her. One Saturday night at a party I had opportunity to talk to her, just the two of us. Boy howdy, I thought, I was one lucky country boy!

We talked for a while. She laughed a lot. But her thinking was… different. She made non sequitur comments, that seemed deeply philosophical. She would say things like,

“Do you know a horse?”
“Well, My body is mine.”
“I just love long sleeve vests!”
“My past is not a burden.”
“I work at McDonald’s”

What? All the time she talked nearly nonstop, with conviction and the confidence that she knew exactly what she meant.

Was I too dumb or uneducated to understand her deep meanings? After all, I was just an unsophisticated kid. It did not take long before I was confused and intimidated. My confidence was shot. She was too smart for me! So dejected, I politely excused myself and moved on.

We shared a couple of classes early on. Her class comments received admiration from her friends but confused looks from professors who did not bother to question her remarks. I occasionally saw her over the years until graduation, always surrounded by “friends”, intent on everything she said. I became more educated and got a bit smarter during those four years, and finally came to understand that although she had great rote memory, she was not deeply intuitive or even intelligent. Her random language revealed her random thinking — her language was confused because her thoughts were confused. She simply could not think coherently. So why did so many people believe she made so much sense? It dawned on me one day that it was because of her winning personality and her ability to weave those nonsense statements into plausible sounding stories that appealed to what Kahneman called Thought System One. Her stories were simple and emotional, and people could easily follow those stories and believe her without questioning. That in turn made her feel invincible. People who thought analytically (Thought System Two) went away confused.

I lost track of her for many years and one day discovered she had become a lawyer, moved through many jobs, and acquired a national reputation and importance. She still told believable stories comprised of weird comments and frequent untruths. She was still surrounded by “friends” – even more than in college – many of them rich and powerful. I wondered how someone with a head full of cottage cheese had accomplished so much, when a line from a Beatles’ song came to mind…

“I get by with a little help from my friends…”

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Critical “Race” Theory

It is Memorial Day Again.

Last Memorial Day I was on a boat in Charleston Harbor headed to Fort Sumter for a much-too-short visit. But today I saw a TV blurb about the delayed Indy 500, something I have not thought about for many years.

That took me back 65 years to 1959. Memorial Day was “Decoration Day”1 back then, and always on May 30, a Saturday, that year. I was mowing the grass with a gasoline lawnmower that you had to push. I was running with the mower so I could finish before the start of the Indianapolis 500 on the radio.2 Sid Collins, the “voice of the Indianapolis 500” until1977 would say, “and now, to start the greatest spectacle in racing, here is the President of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Tony Hulman.” Then you would hear Hulman say loudly, slowly and emphatically, “Gentlemen, Start Your Engines.”3 And even on the radio, the cacophony was overwhelming. I don’t remember much about the race, and only by looking on Wikipedia do I know that Roger Ward won in a Watson-Offenhauser, and Jim Rathman was second, also in a Watson-Offenhauser. But I listened to the entire race.

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Battles at Bull Run

Two battles were fought at Manassas. The first in July, 1861, and the second thirteen months later in August of 1862.

I spent three days at Bull Run, walking the battlefields, researching the events and talking with park rangers and volunteers. Manassas is about the best curated of all the battlefields I visited. The National Park Service is trying to return the battlefields to the way they were when the battle occurred. That means removing trees and structures as well as planting trees and restoring or recreating structures. Manassas staff has made the most progress on these projects.

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Disruptive Civil War Technology

If you manage any type of business, you likely have heard the term, “disruptive technology.” The term was first defined by Clayton Christensen in a 1995 Harvard Business Review article1 as having the following qualities.

  • A disruptive technology supersedes an older process, product, or habit.
  • It usually has superior attributes that are immediately obvious, at least to early adopters.
  • Upstarts rather than established companies are the usual source of disruptive technologies.
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Geekemeritus 2023 Review

Note: This report was prepared in January, 2024, but due to a “Biden moment” (actually more than one), I thought I had posted it, but alas, had not. I only now discovered that.
So a little late, but here it is.

Well, it is the end of another year, one in which several long-time friends and family have died, and life has changed greatly for others. The reality of life’s brevity is finally coming to rest on me. Although I am not a fan of reliving the past, I think it is important to look at my year and revisit some of the events and savor those that were special in some way.

I covered a lot of ground in 2023 — About 10,000 miles, mostly on America’s byways. Only in the early 2000’s when I was flying between the US and UK have I traveled more. In the past 12 months, I…

  • Lived in the Airstream for 7 months
  • Spent time in 18 states and 4 Canadian provinces
  • Visited 11 Civil War battlefields
  • Camped in a World Heritage Site
  • Followed and explored the old Santa Fe Trail
  • Walked on the ocean floor
  • Climbed the Kill Devil hills
  • Camped on several American Indian reservations
  • Explored the original Manhattan Project site
  • Met many interesting people

Of all the places I visited, here is a severely limited list of stand outs.

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The Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum

2021-10-27

Evergreen International Aviation has a curious history. It was long considered a CIA front, but the founder, Delford Smith would not “confirm or deny” this. However, the fact is several of the company’s senior executives either worked for the agency or had close ties to it. Smith founded the company as Evergreen Helicopters in 1960. Over 50 years the company expanded to operate in 168 countries as both a private and government contractor. Evergreen has been associated with numerous high-profile activities from movies to forest fire water delivery. Beginning in 2013 the $1 billion company began chapter 7 bankruptcy and the assets were sold. The last fleet aircraft were several 747 cargo carriers, one of which (N479EV) was converted to an aerial firefighting tanker which flew numerous firefighting missions, until 2017 when it was destroyed for salvage. The final aircraft of the fleet, the Global Supertanker, ceased operations in 2021 and was converted to a freighter.

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Artist in Residence

The little airport in the town where I grew up built a new terminal (even though it has no air service). It houses administrative offices, and a large cafe. But the thing that makes it unique – or so they claim – it is the only airport terminal in the US that has a built-in brewery.

Anyway, I recently came across a brewery that has an “Artist-in-residence.” The Hook Hand Brewery & Taproom in Williamston, NC is such a place.

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