Tough Guys in America, (Part 4) 8-31-2010

 [Continued from Tough Guys in America, (Part 3) 8-31-2010. sch 3/21.]

 LBJ pushed forward into Vietnam, so as not to look oft on Communism. We keep alive the Cuban embargo for similar reasons. We did not decide the goal and then the means. Affluence meant we could afford a rigidity in means as well as ends. Would we have beaten the Nazis if we had not allied with the Soviets? With our current bullheaded obsession with ideology, we would never have done that. We cannot afford rigid ideologies any longer.

I must wonder about the connection between our movie tough guys and ports and our national ideologies. For all of John Wayne's fight scenes, I do not recall him as a boxer, but only as a footballer. [Er, not sure what I meant about this sentence - Wayne is a boxer in The Quiet Man, and I have seen that movie too many times to have meant he was never a boxer, but only that in that movie his being a boxer is forgotten rather easily. sch 3/21/23.] Cagney was a boxer. I think Gable played a boxer. Football does not require the same sort or amount of thinking as boxing. Boxers who do not use their brains lose. Footballers who do not use their brains are known as linemen.

I prefer an America that is adroit, fast on its feet, not playing the palooka. If that means pulling out of Afghanistan because it is now against our best interests, then so be it. If talking to Iran gets us something worthwhile, then we talk. We are not the world's substitute for Christ. We are only human. Which do we prefer, Achilles pouting in self-righteousness or Odysseus succeeding with his wits? Remember, Achilles was long-dead by the time Odysseus made it home.

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