In Key West "Remember the Maine"

Key West "Maine" Memorial

As I huddle indoors enduring the latest polar vortex that has brought record sub-zero temperatures to the Great Lakes, I warmly recall that I began this month in the Florida Keys.  Specifically in Key West, which isn’t all just sun and fun, boats, beaches, and bars.  There are some serious sights to see.

One notable place is the military section of the Key West cemetery.  It’s easy to get to, a moderate walk from most parts of the western, tourist side of the island.  Servicemen from many wars rest there, and not all American, but the prominent memorial is to the 19 sailors buried there after the explosion of the American Navy cruiser Maine in Havana harbor (most of the Maine dead were buried at Arlington National Cemetery).

The Maine was one of the very first American ironclad battleships, still featuring masts in case the steam engines failed.  Because of the nine years between design and completion, and the rapid advance of naval technology, Maine was obsolete when it entered service in 1895.  In January of 1898, it steamed from Key West to Havana to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban uprising against Spanish rule.  Just three weeks later, on February 15, an explosion sunk the ship in Havana harbor.  Over 266 American servicemen men died, while 89 survived.  In March, the U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry, sitting in Key West, declared that a naval mine had caused the blast.  This conclusion has been challenged, and it seems from my reading that most knowledgeable observers today think that a spontaneous internal coal fire ignited the magazines (the Navy brain trust had the Maine using, for ships, a non-standard type of coal, which burned hotter but was prone to producing combustible gases).  

At the time, the sinking of Maine became a rallying cry ("Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!") of those who wanted the US to declare war on Spain.  The warmongers soon got their wish, and after a short war the US emerged victorious and the new ruler of Puerto Rico and the Philippines (and some other places like Wake Island and Guam).  The Spanish-American War at the time was viewed as a great American victory, but actually it is one of the great American misadventures.

Maine sat on the harbor floor until 1911, when the US built a temporary dam around it and patched up the hull.  What was left of the ship was then floated, towed out to sea, and re-sunk some miles off the Cuban coast.  It was a sad ending to a misbegotten ship that was poorly-designed and poorly operated in its power plant, leading to the deaths of nearly 300 young American men in the bloom of youth.  To compound the tragedy, Maine’s destruction was used to start a war absurdly costly in blood and treasure, and whose sequelae burden the United States to this very day. 

And far from tropical Havana, in north-central Illinois, there is this:

A memorial to those who died in the Spanish-American War, in Ottawa, a town in north-central Illinois.
The second body of text begins with "USS Maine seaman Carlton H Jencks." 

The filaments of war reach far and wide.

R Balsamo

Rotting Out America – the Anti-Trump Political Scandal Percolates On

About one year ago I first commented on the great frame-up of Donald Trump, then after more than a year of unfruitful FBI and Department of Justice investigation.  Now one whole year later the witch hunt continues, as its perpetrators labor mightily to push their discreditable and shameful boulder up the hill, only to have it time and time again roll back to painfully crush a bone or two. 

But as facts are pried loose from the malefactors who fight hard to keep them all secret, the slow unveiling of the greatest scandal, by far, in American political history fitfully continues.  We see more and more, in drips and drabs, as time goes on.  We know indisputably that some Democrat Party senior officials in the Obama Administration’s national security team, in the Justice Department, in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and in the Clinton campaign, strongly aided by Democrat operatives in the media masquerading as journalists, all conspired to criminally sabotage Donald Trump, first in his presidential campaign and then in his presidency.  After the election, they deftly maneuvered around hapless Republicans to engineer the appointment of a special inquisitor of effectively all things Trump and in essence charged him with finding the crime.  The Democrat insiders have known from the jump that it was all a put on, but still today gullible, Trump-hating true believers, churlishly refusing to accept an election result, frantically grasp at illusory straws while specters of collusion dance in their fevered dreams. 

Even many so-called Republicans, those whose Democrat-lite political influence dissipated in the Trump wave or whose exploitation of cheap, illegal labor is threatened or whose lust for endless foreign wars is unrequited, have looked the other way at these Democrat depredations.  They myopically and delusionally make common cause with the Democrat crocodile while it rips away at some other Republican, thinking the beast will be forever satisfied with just Trump. 

In political depth and breath, and by the global stakes at hand, this may be the greatest nefarious frame-up in all political history.  It has severely corroded public trust in the FBI and the Justice Department, the two critical federal agencies once, naively in retrospect, thought fair and honest and above the political fray.  And senior leaders of the Democrat Party, actively and passively, have endorsed these affronts, and more (see their vicious, despicable behavior during the Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation process).  I fear that the evildoers who have betrayed America’s trust will never be held to account, making further damage to our polity much more likely, and that this horrific scandal is one giant step toward a very ugly political future. 

Romans, Egyptians, and British, to name just a few, at one time could not imagine that their great states, their great power, could ever collapse.  We know though that they first became hollowed out, until the shell that was left just collapsed.  Now, Americans can only hope that there is a “great deal of ruin in a nation.”  But should America die, how will it die?  Certainly slowly at first, politically rotting out behind the facades and underneath the flags, and then one day all of a sudden.  And then having sown the wind, the great destructors will reap the whirlwind.

R Balsamo

Related link:

https://criticalthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/clinton-democrats-fbi-justice.html