Dear Blog Reader,
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The world
spun on its axis recently and a truth that was beaten out of me has been
re-established as true. Once a long time ago, a very long time ago, I was
forced by a well-meaning educator to adjust my world view and accept, through a
coercive grading regime, what I at the time thought was obviously wrong. We
were learning about countries and borders. As any child would notice, I figured
out that not all countries are the same size. As any competitive child would
have noticed, the USA was larger than the evil Soviet Union. For all of those
in your 20’s and younger, the USSR was the country who had the US targeted with
their InterContinental Ballistic Missiles. Fairness dictates that I point out
that we had our missiles aimed at them. So it wasn’t like we and they were not
following the Golden Rule.
Being a second grader, I intuitively knew that size mattered,
and that while staring down your nemesis in a game of mutually assured
destruction, bigger was better. You could imagine my shock that any teacher
could be certified when they could not make the visual spatial comparison of
the obvious. The United States of America was larger than the USSR. She was
none too pleased that a mere 2nd grader could so patently show her
the error of her ways. I am guessing the Mrs. Gesundheit felt the same kind of
inferiority when little Albert Einstein corrected her regarding the relations
between energy, mass, and the speed of light.
I was patient. Our country was called the United States of America. The size of North America was bigger than the USSR. Mrs.
Torrence told me that North America contained both America and Canada. What? What
nincompoop let that happen? It was called North America not North America and Canada. Sure there wasn’t much
happening in Canada past the southern 100 miles or so except herds of reindeer.
Who knows? In a great conflagration with the evil empire, it may have been the reindeer
that turned the tide; releasing a Vixen could have had devastating effects on
those Russian commies. Then we could have unleashed Rudolph’s red nose on them
and it would have been game over.
I was heartened three years later to find that second grade
Roger understood more than he knew when in fifth grade I learned that other
great Americans thought that Canada should be annexed through the Monroe
doctrine. For those of you saying “huh, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny?
We didn’t talk about that in school.” I pity you for your lack of education. I
suppose that you can have binge watching House of Cards on Netflix as a
substitute teacher.
In the end, like Monroe I had to give up the idea of a
United States extending from the Rio Grande to Santa’s workshop. It is a shame
when the political will expends itself before one’s destiny is fulfilled. Then
last weekend 46 years later, I was reading the international news in Flip Board
and this headline caught my eye. “Chinese General: “Of course we have the right
to build islands in the South China Sea. It has China in its name.” God love
his little commie heart. He did not succumb to the strictures of an onerous
grading system. He simply had his teacher killed in the Cultural Revolution and
suddenly he was getting A’s for such stellar thinking. Rather than bend to the
will of his teacher, he broke her and was able to start looking for a really
big dredging machine to fulfill his Machiavellian schemes.
I would condemn the Chinese General for being an
imperialistic goon, and wag my finger at him and go tsk, tsk, tsk. He should
know better. Sure I thought that the United States of America would include all
of America. However, I was in second grade. I got over it. He should get over
it to. I would condemn his egotistical, center of the universe way of thinking,
but then I realized that we all live in glass houses.
It hit home as I was reading another newspaper article
recently. In last week’s Indianapolis Star, they were desperate for news. So in
the life style section, they had an article answering the age old question “What
if James Dean had lived?” Which is a little stupid. Of course he lived. I
suppose they meant what if James Dean hadn’t been killed in an automobile
accident 60 years ago at the tender age of 24 (not very catchy but more
accurate.) The question was posed to a variety of people of no particular
importance. It was good to see that a cousin and a high school classmate were
asked. At least they knew him, had spent time with him. As a result their
hypothesis seemed the most plausible. “He would have continued to make movies,”
said one. The other, “I think he would have stayed in show business.” People
who knew him thought that he would stay in his world of make believe not a
world of make believe of their own design.
But when the same question was posed to those who didn’t
know James Dean the person; only knew James Dean the persona, the answers flew
off into flights of whimsy. According to some, he would have taken movie roles
away from Dennis Hopper in Hoosiers and have been the God Father instead of
Marlon Brando. He would have come out of the closet at age 80 “like his good
friend Jim Nabors.” A closet, which according to the internet, whose door was
not completely shut even in a more circumspect time of the 1950’s. Others
thought that he was going to be the next Paul Newman and worry more about race
cars than acting as he aged. The oddest prediction was that he would have
beaten Ronald Reagan for the Presidency. Of course that would have put him in
his early 50’s for the first presidential run. He would have had to put his
political career into over drive to go from Rebel Without a Cause to the Oval
Office in 25 years.
It intrigued me that when describing James Dean’s destiny,
others were merely proposing what they wished to be true. If wishes were
horses, beggars would ride. One wisher said that James Dean would have pushed
through the Gay Rights Act in 1966 just two years after the Civil Rights act
got African Americans off the back of the bus.
Why don’t we realize that destiny is really wishing?
Dangerous wishing since manifestations of destiny are wishes of people who have
set themselves at the center of the universe and projected their wishes out to
the ends of time and imposed them on all of God’s lessers.
To know the design of the world is a practice we all
participate in. However, it is a game that should be left to 2nd
graders. It just seems safer that way.
Take care.
Roger.
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