LOYALTY? Honor? In the Land of the Corporate Capitalist?!

“Above everything, loyalty – except honor.” Actually, it was in German, a Sprichwort – Motto, I guess, is the best translation – on a Bierkrug – what you call a “stein” (it isn’t, but you call it that – it’s the way we are, nowadays) my grandfather had. I remembered it in a rather peculiar way when I realized that my mother, and my brothers and sisters, has abandoned me. I was twelve or so.

The words of the Sprichwort have always moved me, in a peculiar way, like I said. There are a lot of phrases like that. “Americans” love them. Ever telecast of a professional, college, or other football, basketball, or baseball game will recite that de rigueur mantra at least a dozen times, and the highest compliment an “American” can pay his fellow is to say that he is a team player. That means he’s loyal. Nothing more important than that.

While being an excellent movie and historical document, the recent made-for-television movie, “Band of Brothers,” celebrated teamwork and team spirit. “Band of Brothers” exalted another set of words – the information age, we love ‘em - these from Shakespeare, originally.

“From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

Last night, it was a movie (an old one – I’m not much for movies, especially the drivel the new ones always are), “Soldiers.” That, you may have trouble remembering – like I said, it’s an old movie – is the story of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in the Ia Drang Valley, 1965. 1st Battalion, Seventh Cavalry Regiment Commander Hal Moore tells his troopers, "And I swear to you that I will leave no man behind, dead or alive."

The movie makes me recall another, one I saw in a Laundromat a few years ago, Pittsburg, I think. That one, as I recall, was called “Uncommon Valor.” I watched some – Gene Hackman, you know, is a hell of an actor. “Valor” is about the MIAs – Missing In Action – we left in Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War. There are loyalty lines in that one, too. Great stuff – we never leave anyone behind. I guess I also remarked how “Americans” love to hear lines like that, and see their ideals played out ritualistically. After all, you can always tell we mean it when somebody makes a movie about it. Of course.

Just great stuff. In fact, it’s the stuff that’s the glue holding the best and most cohesive military units together. From Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae to the First of the First Cavalry in Vietnam’s Ia Drang Valley, loyalty – esprit de corps - is the military unit’s version of gravity.

I know about loyalty. I’m all for it, and I was taught that Sprichwort by my grandfather, my hero. I believe in loyalty. Like gravity forms celestial bodies – planets, stars, systems, galaxies, and the like, loyalty is the reason for family, culture, society, nations and national alliances. Like gravity forms celestial bodies – planets, stars, systems, galaxies, and the like, loyalty is the reason for family, culture, society, nations and national alliances. That happens, I believe, because human beings don’t like to feel alone, or to think they’ll be left to fend for themselves. I think it’s a primordial thing, atavistic.

It occurs to me, however, and because I WAS left to fend for myself, that I actually know very little about it on the one hand, that of practical experience. On the other hand, that a matter of more than the usual study, I know a great deal about loyalty. More, and in a manner perhaps only another orphan can understand, I value the concept and tradition of parents, and family, far more, perhaps than those who have always had it.

Interesting, isn’t it, that as I typed that, the television announced still another loyalty flick, “The World Trade Center.” That’s about rescuing people trapped on 9-11 when the hijacked airliners made their humiliatingly successful attack. It’ll be a big seller, great stuff. Band of Brothers. We never leave anyone . . . Oh, I said that, didn’t I? It’s the kind of “tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth” drivel we seem veritably to live on in the Home of the Brave. We are absolutely awash in language, rhetoric, and logic tortured in order to distort the reality we live in. A product of feminist humanism, I believe it represents the biggest threat to the life of this nation and the human civilization the latter threatens. “The Band of Brothers” Loyalty Myth is but one example, but it will serve to make my point.

In the movie, “Uncommon Valor,” Gene Hackman’s character Colonel Frank Rhodes says, “You men seem to have a strong sense of loyalty, because you’re thought of as criminals – because of Vietnam. Do you know why? Because you lost. And in this country, that’s like going bankrupt – you’re out of business. They want to forget about you. You cost too much, and you didn’t turn a profit. That’s why they won’t go over there, to pick up our buddies and bring them back. Because there’s no GAIN in it. “

The soldiers failed, in other words, and the United States of America, where individual life is so supposedly so precious, the life of a failure in NOT so precious. I use lines from movies a lot, as do I quotes of great men and women, because the so often say things succinctly, and better than I can. A while back, I also quoted from the movie, “The Mask of Zorro. In the movie, Anthony Hopkins, in the role of Diego de la Vega - the old Zorro, is instructing the new Zorro, Antonio Banderas, concerning a party they will attend in disguise. Raphael Montero, the story’s villain, will not recognize his old enemy de la Vega, Hopkins says, because a member of the Spanish nobility “would never look directly at a servant.”

Interesting, huh? Especially if you realize the reason a member of the Spanish nobility would never look directly at a servant. I can tell you about that from actual experience, not language or narrative. The nobility in this country won’t look at the poor, either. When you live on the street, it’s because you lost, and in this country that’s like going bankrupt, you’re out of business.” It doesn’t matter why, either. They look right through you.

Remember what I said the other day about thought, and thinking? That people fear thought more than anything else in the world? Remember why? Thinking, I reflected, is something Homo Sapiens – “Thinking Man” – fears because he has learned that thinking is subversive, revolutionary - destructive and terrible. Thought is merciless to privilege, to established institutions, and to comfortable opinions. To society and its governments, thought is anarchic and lawless; it’s indifferent to authority, and indifferent toward the “wisdom” of Man.

That’s probably why, as individuals and as a people, we do it so very badly. We’re far, far out of practice. Today’s public discourse, political and otherwise – from the man in the street to the purported expert on television – is riddled with logical fallacy. In fact, unless the public soon demands that public debate anywhere be moderated by a trained logician, we will perish as a democratic nation. The ship of state, like any other, cannot be left to the control of an idiot or lunatic.

But we fear accurate thinking even more than we fear thinking in general. If the hidalgo – the nobility – were to look at the “bankrupt,” the “out of business” – the poor, that is – the looking might evoke thought.

A few months ago, I happened during a trip to read the “Letters to the Editor” section of the San Angelo, Texas newspaper. A lady wrote indignantly that the poor in the United States had, “house, cars, even televisions sets.” Poverty in the United States, she said, was different from poverty elsewhere. A couple of days ago, referring to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, another American hidalgo, this one a columnist, expressed the same opinion. It fascinates me.

It fascinates me especially when I juxtapose Hackman’s Colonel Rhodes speech with that of say, our president or any of the pandering plenipotentiaries who rule here in the Land of the Free. I think, matter of fact, that ought to be done for everyone. Colonel Rhodes speech is one somebody should repeat daily in every school, and every forum in the United States.

We do love sanctimonious litanies, after all, especially those FEEL good ones feminism-imbued political correctness demands. You know, the ones the nation’s “pacifists” mouth like parrots daily. Peace at any price sounds so righteous – until YOU are the one whose life is part of the price.
The colonel’s speech should have been recited the other day, for instance, when pressure from the nation that abandons anything and anything unprofitable forced Israel to abandon the men kidnapped by Hezbollah and other Arab terrorists.

It ought to be recited by the poor, each time they are publicly ignored, and each time they are ignored in the congress.

It ought to be recited by the poor citizen of this country, when the hidalgos of corporate “America” look thought them to find an illegal alien willing to work for a quarter of what the legal citizen needs just to pay the taxes his illegal counterpart won’t be required to pay.

It especially ought to be recited by the U.S. Citizen like me, who served in the nation’s military, and played the game of “American Dream,” only to be savaged by the military industrial complex corporations auxiliary IRS, ruined, dispossessed of everything, and thrown out into the street – to become invisible, looked through like a pane of glass.

“Do you know why? Because you lost. And in this country, that’s like going bankrupt – you’re out of business. They want to forget about you. You cost too much, and you didn’t turn a profit. That’s why they won’t go over there, to pick up our buddies and bring them back. Because there’s no GAIN in it. “
Let me tell you something, my country, about the “team player,” “patriot,” and “loyalty” thing. It IS like gravity. It holds things together. Without it, things come apart – and much faster than you think. A nation that abandons those who have served it – soldier or otherwise, or both – won’t last long after it begins doing that. The reason is simple, and every human being knows it like a primordial urge, an instinct.

EVERYONE fears being left. Alone. No one wants to think about, even consider, being left alone. That’s why the MIA were never brought home. That’s why something like seventy percent of Vietnam’s veteran are unemployed. That’s why the gap between the nation’s hidalgos and the poor grows yearly, and now, exponentially.
“Never look over your shoulder,” Satchel Paige once remarked, “something might be catching up to you.”

That’s why they look right through you.