James M. Redwine

Events

It Is On U.S.

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The title of a CNN article by Aaron Blake is, “Trump Launches the Regime-Change Effort in Iran that he Pledged to Avoid”. But President Trump did not start our wars with Iran, America did. We live in a republic where we choose our representatives. Their actions are our actions. The blame and shame for Israel sending three missiles into an elementary girls school in Minab in southern Iran to prevent the girls from developing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, is ours. We murdered more than 100 children in what Israel called its preemptive opening act of self-defense. We share Israel’s shame and blame for this crime; but we did not have the right to elect Benjamin Netanyahu. No, our Supreme Leader, who enabled and abetted these war crimes, is in office because we chose him twice. Or, as Donald Trump says three times, due to what he calls the stolen 2020 election.

During the Viet Nam War we Americans were branded with our country’s public attitude as reflected by the stated military strategy against the people of Viet Nam and Cambodia. General Curtis LeMay said we were going to “Bomb them back to the Stone Age”. Fifty-eight thousand of our soldiers and over 1,000,000 Vietnamese were slaughtered in that endless and mindless tragedy. That is the same strategy Israel has been and still is applying in Palestine with our encouragement, weaponry and diplomatic immunity. Israel is using the same actions now in Lebanon and Syria.

Americans who opposed the Viet Nam War and those who now oppose the war with Iran are reminded of the 1960’s folk song by Phil Ochs, “Is There Anybody Here?”:

♫ ….
[Verse 3]

Is there anybody here
Who thinks that following the orders takes away the blame?
Is there anybody here
Who wouldn’t mind to murder by another name?
…. ♫

Or as pointed out by the war hero, Senator Mark Kelly, whom Secretary of War Pete Hegseth wants to court martial for pointing out what is clearly the moral and legal duty of the military that they should refuse illegal orders. Before Kelly flew all those combat missions during the Viet Nam War, he could have paid a medico to find bone spurs in his ankles and let some other “suckers and losers”, as Trump called D-Day’s heroes, go risk life and limb to serve their country in Viet Nam.

President Trump declared one of his main objects of our attacks on Iran was regime change. With Israel’s killing of Ali Khamenei and other senior leaders of Iran’s government, that objective has been met, not by ballots, but by bullets. America has the right to regime change also. We have several non-ballistic alternatives and all of them require citizen and elected representative involvement. Impeachment is one non-violent alternative.

But, to cast the blame on the narcissistic, megalomaniacal military decisions of one person out of 350 million does not absolve the rest of us. We are America; President Trump is one American. The blame and shame are on U.S. all.

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One Thousand Years

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Photo by Peg Redwine

The first Olympic Games were held at Olympia, Greece in 776 BC. They were held at Olympia because they were a paean to Zeus who supposedly presided there. The games were designed to be held every 4 years until the Roman Emperor Theodosius the Great ordered them stopped because his Christian sensibilities were offended by the worship of Zeus. Theodosius was born in 347 AD and ruled from 379 AD until his death in 395. Rome had finally conquered the Achaean League (Greece) in 146 BC after about a century of strife.

What became known as Greece was a conglomeration of city states, Corinth, Athens, Sparta and the Kingdom of Macedonia, that competed and cooperated for several hundred years until the Romans used wily diplomacy and military stratagems as fatal wedges to divide the Greeks. However, the ancient Romans, much as contemporary peoples yet today, adopted much of Greek culture, such as art, literature and philosophy. That included the Olympic Games.

The theory of the Olympic Games that the ancient Greeks put into practice with their Greek neighbors was that a sacred truce, in the name of Zeus, would be declared if the neighbors were at war and peace would reign during travel to and from and during the games. Even after Rome took over, the games were not a problem for over 500 years. Then the flame was extinguished until the “modern” Olympic Games were reignited in 1896.

There were probably many fractures in the 1,000 years of laying down swords and beating them into ploughshares. However, the concept of feats of athleticism replacing warfare, even for a day or a couple of weeks, must have helped the Achaeans live in relative non-belligerence for many years. Also, this state of truce surely encouraged the interchange of cultural benefits. Perhaps this attitude of “Hey, can’t we all just get along?” if even for a short time every 4 years, helped the Greeks lay the foundation our Founders built upon.

After 4 years of war between Russia and Ukraine and battle lines being in place over much of our known planet, using the old “Champion System” where soldiers sheath their weapons and vie for medals that stand for physical excellence, not dominance or survival as those Greek heroes did, might assuage our wounds. It makes more sense than endless negotiations over the shape of the table as in our war with Viet Nam, or who gets to claim another Pyrrhic victory such as the endless bloodletting in the Middle East. This will be especially obvious soon when President Trump gleefully girds our military’s loins up about him and once again attacks Iran on Benjamin Netanyahu’s orders.

Bad Bunny vs. Bad Donnie

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Our version of a Puerto Rican cane field; a corn field in Posey County, Indiana. Photo by Peg Redwine

Metaphors are never perfect. If they were, they would be identical copies, not learning opportunities. A more perfect metaphor for Donald Trump’s vision of America versus Bad Bunny’s vision of how Donnie treats Puerto Rico would have had the New York Jets play the Seattle “Sharks” in the 2026 Super Bowl. This would have left no doubt of the half-time show message. My northeast coast bred wife, Peg, said about five minutes into the spectacular production of telephone poles, sugar cane bundles and salsa rhythms, “Hey, Jim, this is West Side Story!”

With my small-town Southwest upbringing I got it a little more slowly, but I had to agree. Donald Trump’s MAGA view of America (the white Jets) was juxtaposed to Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio’s Puerto Rico (the Sharks). Themes of immigration, bias, and what America is truly about were punctuated by throbbing music and ecstatic dancing. In less than fifteen minutes, Bad Bunny celebrated the culture of the United States and of Puerto Rico and Spanish speaking peoples, including soccer, but reaffirmed America’s triumphant football talisman by personally carrying a “real” football.

Bad Bunny has stated that the only thing stronger than hate is love. He described his “fifteen minutes of half-time fame” as the desire for Americans to conquer hate with love, especially through music and dancing. Bunny, dressed all in white, joined that endless legacy of dreamers such as Jesus, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) who advance the hope that love will conquer hate. I am less sanguine, but it is probably better to keep an open mind even in the face of thousands of years of contrary evidence.

I am familiar with Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story but confess I had never heard of Bad Bunny until Super Bowl LX. On the other hand, I had never heard of Taylor Swift until she started showing up at Kansas City Chiefs games. I do know a few songs by that earlier “Elvis the Pelvis” who drove my generation’s parents to distraction and to whom Bad Bunny is compared for what the Donald calls Bunny’s pornographic movements and song lyrics (does Donald even understand Spanish?). Although, if anyone should recognize pornography it might be someone judged by a jury with sexual assault. Unfortunately, the endings for both Romeo and Juliet and for Tony and Maria were not love conquering hate but tragedy.

If football is America’s new substitute for great literature, the Super Bowl half-time show may have become the type of looking glass through which we see and seize our country’s future. Will we celebrate another 250 years of our Constitutional republic and a striving for what even our most mundane athletic contests offer: Due Process and the Rule of Law as interpreted by impartial officials? Or will we finally have reached the final gun as so many other cultures have done? Bad Bunny says he is betting on love while Donald proudly professes hate for his enemies.

If sports are a metaphor for our country’s life, Super Bowl LX’s half-time show with its “Love conquers all” message may draw upon the “Better Angels of our nature”. Hey, it could happen.

 

Legends

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Photo by Peg Redwine

What turns a passing incident into a legend? Fear is often involved or at least, apprehension. Hatred perhaps or maybe just sublimated envy. Villains and heroes, sinners and saints, hangers-on and barely aware casual observers may be recognized or may be unnoticed. Accurate observations may be misidentified while surmise and self-fulfilling yearnings might be confused by societies distracted by the sturm und drang of living. What we can be assured is that an occasional legend is required if we are going to sublimate our daily ennui and manage to muddle through.

Great legends of history often arise on a “just-in-time, just-in-place” happenstance. Often, they appear as individuals but, more often, individuals are named while the legends involve groups. Military exploits such as Achilles and the Greeks at Troy, or Eisenhower and the Allies at D-Day are examples. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King led, but many others also sacrificed. It is impossible to honor or even acknowledge the millions who contributed to the legends, so we usually coalesce upon one or a very few to crown with being the legend. There is nothing we can do about this human approach; we are human.

Another area we choose in which to anoint representative heroes is athletics. The legends are often only cogs in the great Circle of Life that helps the hero showcase his or her talents but who would not advance without many spokes supporting them. Fortunately, often our legends recognize and acknowledge these facts and often say so as they share the credit.

So, as we glorify Curt Cignetti and Fernando Mendoza and all the rest of the 2025-2026 Indiana Hoosier football team who are the College Football National Champions, as well we should, we should follow their lead and thank the many before them and along with them who helped them inspire us. Here’s to ball-boys, water-girls and the generous boosters among countless others such as IU’s administration.

One of the best attributes of current glory is, if our contemporary heroes have character, and these do, they acknowledge the foundation upon which they stand and often refer to our heroes of IU’s illustrious more than 200-year history. When the media dwells upon past losses we should remind the world of past glories. Indiana University was founded in 1820, not 2024.

When I would walk across the Indiana campus from the Law School to the Gables Restaurant, I often thought of that other law student, Hoagy Carmichael, who had been in there dreaming of “Stardust” when he probably was supposed to be trying to fathom the intricacies of Marbury v. Madison (1803). But what always drew my attention was the gigantic mural above the Gables lunch counter that portrayed our undefeated football team of 1945; war veterans who had helped save the world while enhancing IU’s proud history.

And another good aspect of our 2025-26 Rose Bowl Champions is their exploits recall those of our 1967-68 Rose Bowl team. It has been particularly gratifying to see Coach Lee Corso on TV giving credit to our 1979 Holiday Bowl victors. Neither Curt Cignetti nor countless others failed to honor our university’s long and proud history of culture and accomplishments. IU’s record of football losses is a mite in the pantheon of our proud traditions. Our 2025-26 team is our most recent reminder, we are not losers, we are Hoosiers!

The current chapter of the IU legend may be a new beginning or but a moment. Regardless, it is sure fun now and that is due to the efforts of a whole lot of other dreamers who are, after all these years, as amazed and gratified as Peg and I and the rest of the long cream and crimson line of co-commiserators and winners are.

 

Join or Die

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The Haudenosaunee, the democratic confederation of the Six Nations of Native Americans, had existed for centuries before Canasatego, their spokesperson, suggested the 13 colonies should form a similar arrangement. In 1754 Benjamin Franklin adopted the idea and even designed a flag with a snake cut into several pieces with the motto “Join or Die”. Eventually Canasatego’s advice was followed and Native Americans lost their lands. “Be careful what you wish for” or “No good deed goes unpunished”; either adage might apply.

These thoughts led the first of Ken Burns’ six-part PBS documentary of the American Revolution. Gentle Reader, if you did not watch it last week, I recommend you could not find a better use of twelve hours of your valuable time than pulling it up now on the PBS streaming app. My realization was how little I knew about the unlikely birth of the United States of America. Until last week my thought was, we Americans had had only one Civil War. I was ignorant of the animus among the colonies and our revered Founders. The revelations that the people who sacrificed so much and endured such hardships were actually people, much as people of today, was difficult to incorporate with my formal education and years of social experience and hearsay analysis.

I have spent many years sanguine with the core of America’s birth being a struggle for freedom by oppressed colonists against a repressive British monarchy. It was a clean, straight forward story requiring little nuance. I liked it and was comfortable in my beliefs; honor was the hallmark of the American Revolution.

After all, what words are more American than “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor”? Honor was the standard and such things as speculation in Indian lands as a motivation for revolution by such speculators as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were beyond the pale. However, in Ken Burns’ treatise, the historian Philip Deloria states, “I think the American Revolution was all about land”. And in support of this premise he cited the 1763 British Royal Proclamation that declared all the land west of the Appalachian Mountains off limits to white people for either settlement or speculation. This infuriated the colonists who cited Manifest Destiny and who came from a culture in which 2% of Britain’s population owned 66% of the land. Many colonists believed their only hope of ever owning land was to take it from the Native Americans west of the Appalachians.

And of course, there was that soaring marvelous language, “All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. My formal schooling did not mention that the population “All men” did not include any women or non-white men nor did it mention the institution of slavery being practiced and jealously protected by many of the men who signed our glorious Declaration of Independence from the British crown.

So, was the American Revolution a straight forward story of good versus bad, of honor versus oppression, or was it vastly more complex? There was much to admire but, as with all human behavior, there are stains that should be acknowledged and learned from. Honor is not just a word; it is a cause. Honor encapsulates all vital human aspirations of honesty, integrity, generosity, humility, fairness, courage and self-sacrifice. The Founders certainly displayed much honorable behavior.

However, as we should know our history so we can learn from it, it should be the full story so the right lessons are applied in our country’s life in our times. Knowing our heroes were human does not denigrate their achievements. It does help us seek the harder right and eschew the easier wrong. I respectfully submit the story of the American Revolution is best celebrated with truth.

Richard Nixon

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It is 4:30 a.m. and I just spent the last three hours watching a PBS special on Richard Nixon. It may be that years of working the night shift followed by several hours of college classes makes normal sleep abnormal for me. At least I prefer that explanation to what my father told me when I asked him why he was up and down most nights, “Son, when you get old you just can’t stay asleep”. Regardless, I am awake and the PBS documentary reminded me of a Gavel Gamut article I wrote in about January of 2007 about Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. That article is set out below. Gentle Reader, I trust you remember it.

What almost twenty more years has done to my impressions of the turbulent Sixties and Seventies is soften some edges and made others more acute. Once again, just like my sleep habits, I prefer to ascribe those changes to factors other than my age. Anyway, I was intrigued by President Nixon’s self-imposed catastrophe wrought by a series of his seemingly inexplicable wrong decisions that changed Americans’ views of our own country and our role in the world. Most perplexing to me was how unnecessary and silly many of Nixon’s Watergate cover-up decisions were. Nixon was highly intelligent and disciplined. He was a tireless worker from a lower economic class family who knew right from wrong. Yet, he chose the easier wrong over the harder right at virtually every stage of the “Third-Rate Burglary” that brought about his own demise and our country’s imbroglio. It is a fairly obvious allegory of the old, “For want of a nail, a horseshoe was lost”.

One take away I got from the PBS special was how my view of Nixon’s frailties was softened by today’s events, such as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and President Trump’s comments about it or, perhaps, the bombing of Iran or the sinking of the Venezuelan drug boat. I kept watching President Nixon digging a deeper hole for himself and the rest of us as my thoughts conjured up President Trump. Nixon went from winning every state but Massachusetts to resigning in disgrace. As a side note, Nixon’s first Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, had resigned in disgrace only a year before.

I do not predict nor am I soliciting any contemporary resignations, but the lessons of history should be heeded by those who lead us. Maybe some type of epiphany is called for. I know I had to reevaluate what I thought I had learned when I lived through similar times. Perhaps President Trump who is about my age was up watching the special too.

PARDON ME, PRESIDENT FORD
(Week of January 8, 2007)

President Gerald Ford died December 26, 2006.  In a life filled with public service, he will always be best known for his pardon of President Nixon in 1974.

President Nixon personally chose Gerald Ford to replace the disgraced Vice-President Spiro Agnew who resigned in 1973 amid disclosures of bribery while Agnew was Governor of Maryland. Vice-President Ford served under President Nixon until Nixon resigned in August of 1974.  One month after President Nixon resigned, President Ford issued him a full pardon for any crimes he may have committed while president.

At the time, I and most Americans were calling for a complete investigation of the Watergate debacle and especially Nixon’s involvement in it.  It was a time of a media feeding frenzy and blood in the water.  President Ford took the unprecedented step of going personally before Congress and flatly stating that President Nixon and then Vice-President Ford had no deal to pardon Nixon if he would resign.

I recall how dubious I was when President Ford stated that he issued the pardon only to help our country to start healing from the loss of confidence caused by Watergate. Yet, after a few months I began to have second thoughts about my initial reaction to the pardon.  I began to see how much courage it took for President Ford to go straight into the anti-Nixon firestorm sweeping the United States.

As a country, we were almost paralyzed by the partisan fighting at home and the War in Viet Nam.  We needed a new direction and a renewed spirit. Surely President Ford with his twenty-two (22) years in Congress knew he was committing political suicide by not giving us our pound of flesh.  Still, he put his country first.  Of course, the country rewarded his sacrifice by booting him from office and electing President Jimmy Carter to replace him.

But during the campaign of 1976, when President Ford came to Evansville, Indiana on April the 23rd, I took my son, Jim, out of school and we went to the Downtown Walkway to cheer the man who put country above self. For while William Shakespeare may almost always get his character analysis right, when it came to President Ford, “The good he did lived after him.”   Julius Caesar, Act III, sc. ii.

Even President Carter, one of America’s most courageous and best former presidents said of President Ford:

“President Ford was one of the most admirable public servants I have ever known.”

And when it came to the pardon of President Nixon, Senator Ted Kennedy, while admitting that he had severely criticized the pardon in 1974, said that he had come to realize that:

“The pardon was an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest.”

So, President Ford, since even your political opponents came to appreciate your courage and goodness, I am confident that you have long ago “pardoned” all of us who doubted you back when we needed your leadership.