Category Archives: history

A seldom-told story of the end of WWII

Posted on by
7

This year has been the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.  We’ve see a lot of publications about the anniversary, including V-J day, Victory over Japan day.  We have yet to see one that tells you the story we are about to tell you.

Most of us probably have seen photographs of General MacArthur signing the peace treaty with Japan in ceremonies on the deck of the USS Missouri.

But few of us probably have seen these pictures:

A few weeks ago my long-time friend, Hugh David Waggoner, called to see if I would be interested in an old trunk full of pictures from World War II that had belonged to a man named R. Sheldon Gentry (his first name was Rusaw, which might explain why he used “R” so he wouldn’t have to explain or repeat “Rusaw.”)  The name rang a faint bell with me but I have not been able to pin down who he was.

The pictures you see above are from the trunk.  The photographs and some 70-plus years old newspaper clippings tell the story behind the famous pictures of the surrender on the Missouri.  This story from that trunk is a story not often told, one I had not heard. So we’re going to tell it today because we doubt many of you have heard it, either.

One of the people in the third picture above is of extremely special interest because without him the war might have gone on longer than it did with consequences of immensely tragic proportions beyond the tragedies that had been occurring since Japan invaded China in 1931, the real beginning of the war.

A word, first, about Gentry, who went into the Army as a Second Lieutenant and came out a Major. He was a decorated photo intelligence officer who wound up with two Presidential Citations and two Legions of Merit among his medals because of his expertise in advising bomber crews about their targets. In fact, he went on several missions and helped guide crews to their targets in the southwest Pacific Theatre as the allies closed the noose around Japan.

Three days after the second Atomic Bomb was dropped, Gentry was in an American bomber fifty feet over Nagasaki assessing the damage.  A few days after that, Japan accepted the surrender terms laid down at the Potsdam Conference by the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union. The notification was announced on August 15 by President Truman, the same day the Emperor dramatically announced to his nation that he had ordered all Japanese military forces to stop fighting. It also was the day General McArthur was designated the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.

MacArthur immediately ordered the Japanese Imperial Government to send envoys to Manila on the 17th to put the surrender into effect. The delegation was to travel from Japan in a white airplane with green crosses on the fuselage and wings to the island of Ieshima where they would transfer to an American plane that would take them to Manila. The Japanese were granted some extra time to make preparations for the flight—painting an airplane, for example.  On the morning of August 19, the sixteen-member delegation boarded two re-painted Mitsubishi G4M “Betty” bombers and flew to IeShima (the Japanese called it IeJima or Iye Jima), an island in the Okinawa Prefecture.

The Betty was the main bomber used by Japan, often as a torpedo bomber—as it was at Pearl Harbor. It was fast, 265 mph, could fly 3,250 miles. One of its most notable accomplishments was the shocking sinking of the British battleships, Prince of Wales and Repulse during the earliest days of the war, the first battleships sunk in a wartime air attack. But the plane had no armor and no self-sealing fuel tanks, making it vulnerable to a few well-placed shots.  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese Navy at Pearl Harbor and Midway, was sought out and shot down in a Betty over Bougainville in 1943.

But that’s straying from our story.

The pictures at the top of this entry were in Gentry’s trunk.  They show the two disarmed Betty bombers, as the Americans called them—Americans gave male names to Japanese fighter planes and female names to the bombers—being escorted by two Army Air Force B-25s.  The second pictures shows one of them landing.

The delegation was met by American officers who escorted them to one of our C-54s for the flight to Manila.   Notice, in the third picture, the man in the white suit, in the center, wearing glasses. He was the only civilian among the seven men who sat at the negotiating table in Manila, across from seven American military representatives who worked out the final agreement in two sessions the evening of the 19th and the morning of the 20th.

In the trunk is the first teletype message that negotiations for Japanese surrender had been completed and Japanese negotiators would arrive later on the 20th in Tokyo.

But things almost did not turn out well.

The man in the white suit at the negotiations was Katsuo Okazaki, a 5,000 meter runner at the Paris Olympics of 1924.  Although MacArthur’s directive was for negotiators only from the Army and the Navy, the Japanese government decided to have a representative of its own with the group and selected Okazaki, the former second secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Washington and then the director of the research bureau of the foreign office.

The surrender flight to Ie Jima had been a nervous trip for those aboard the two bombers. “At that time the Kamikaze corps was still strong.  We had to make our preparations in secret lest the Kamikazes attack us on the way.  It took longer than we expected…

“We flew from Kisarazu airbase,” he recalled in a late 1947 interview with Ray Falk of the North American Newspaper Alliance. “A little after noon we were off Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost island, where we were met by American planes. We had been given the call signal, ’Bataan.’”

(The Battle of Bataan in the Japanese Philippine campaign of 1942 ended with a 65-mile forced march of 75,000 captured American and Filipino troops to concentration camps. The march was infamous for the brutality of the Japanese, who beat bayonetted the starved and weak prisoners who were too weak to walk. Thousands of them died on the march or in the camps.)

“When we called, ‘Bataan! Bataan!’ the American pilots answered, ‘Yes, we are Bataan’s watchdog—follow us…’”

The group returned to IeShima after the Manila conference to find one of their planes was undergoing repairs and split up, with half of the group going back to Japan and the other half waiting to fly back later.

“Half an hour before our expected landing time in Japan, the pilot came back and said, ‘I am sorry but we found our gasoline tank is leaking, and we have very little gas left.’ We were flying over water. We didn’t know whether we could reach land. We knew the bomber would not float more than one or two minutes.  Come what may, I was entrusted with all the documents.”

“Fifteen minutes later, the plane crashed, and I made a compete somersault. A second crash and another tumble followed.  I was ready to jump out when the pilot came back and said, ‘Please remain calm and swim ashore.’  We had landed in shallow coastal water.”

The pilot had managed to land the plane near a beach at Hamamatsu, about 285 miles south of Tokyo.

Okazaki went into the water and swam ashore, holding the vital documents above his head. “We couldn’t see where we were for it was so dark,” he continued. “Eventually a full moon rose and we went ashore. Two fishermen from Hamamatsu helped us to get to the Hamamatsu airbase.  The villagers had been reluctant to help us when they saw the plane crash because they thought I was a B-29. We were lucky not to have been attacked as enemies.

“Anyway, we reached Prime Minister Prince Higashi Kuni’s office at 9 o’clock the following morning, only seven hours late.  The cabinet had waited for us all night.

“I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had drowned. General headquarters already was mistrusting us because we were two days late in getting to Manila. What measures the allied armies might have taken are pure conjecture. But they would have been unpleasant. It might have caused the war to continue in view of the fact that our party had to escape from the anti-surrender Kamikaze corps which wanted to continue the war.”

There might have been conjecture on Okazaki’s part in 1947 but there was no conjecture on the part of the allies of 1945 who already had been planning one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Downfall, to start in November.  The second phase would have been launched in early ’46 near Tokyo. Japan knew the invasions were coming but hoped the cost to the allies would be so great that the war would end with an armistice, not a defeat.

The forecasts for casualties varied widely. One estimate from Secretary of War Henry Stimson forecast 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities and as many as four-million total casualties, not counting the 100,000 allied prisoners of war who were to be executed if Japan was invaded.

But for Russia’s late-war invasion from the north and the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with threats of more such attacks—and a swimmer named Katzuo Okazaki—history might have been a great deal more “unpleasant” as Okazaki put it in 1947.

The first advance party of American soldiers arrived in Japan on August 26 with greater numbers arriving two days later, with the surrender ceremonies taking place on an American battleship in Tokyo Bay September 2. Okazaki was part of the Japanese delegation on the Missouri that day.

And what became of him?

The man in the white suit was elected to the Japanese House of Representatives in 1949. Two years later, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida name him Chief Cabinet Secretary and state minister without portfolio. He became Foreign Minister in 1952 and during his three years in that office, signed a Mutual Security Assistance Agreement with American Ambassador John Allison. He retired but was called back to service to be Japan’s delegate to the United Nations from April, 1961 to July, 1963.  He died two years later at the age of 68.

And the Betty bomber, the Mitsubishi G4M1 that carried Okazaki and the others on those historic surrender flights? The Japanese called it the Hamaki, meaning “cigar,” a reference to its shape. Wrecked remains of hundreds of them are scattered throughout Southeast Asia and in the Southwest Pacific. The Smithsonian Air & Space Museum has pieces of one it is slowly restoring. A wrecked one is on display at an air museum in Chino, California.  Two years ago Warbird Digest reported two of the bombers had been recovered from the Solomon Islands for possible restoration. There are no flyable Bettys in existence.

There are more stories in that old trunk, It now resides at the Museum of Missouri Military History at the Ike Skelton Training Center near Jefferson City. We might tell more about Gentry in some later entry.  We haven’t learned much about his post-war years, but his trunk sure has some interesting things about that part of his life and the war he saw and helped fight. Now his trunk and the stories in it are at a place where they will be cared for and appreciated.

 

The Staples Lesson

Posted on by
3

A lot of time and space is being chewed up in the media—including here—about our president’s desire to dominate the Republican Party after he leaves office.  We’ve heard, read, and seen a number of questions about why the GOP, by and large, refuses to acknowledge that the president lost on November 3.  One answer we have NOT heard suggested was explained in the Missouri Senate during the September veto session of 2002 by Danny Staples.

Senator Staples ran a canoe-rental business in Eminence, in country of Ozark Mountains, National Forests, and Scenic Riverways.  He might have been the greatest storyteller in the history of the Missouri Senate—certainly I never heard anybody better in four decades of statehouse coverage.  Some of his stories were tinged with truth.

When things got pretty testy, Staples often would get up and go off on a long, windy discussion of life in Shannon County’s Horse Hollow, his baseball career, his adventures with his horse Trixie, how he was related (by marriage) to Lady Godiva, defending cockfighting, or the days when he hauled cars from New Orleans to Omaha or something else. When Danny Staples was forced out by term limits, the Senate lost about 80% of its sense of humor.

But getting back to today’s situation in Washington, where it seems all sense of tension-relieving humor left the Capitol long ago.

For those worried about the Republicans in Congress who don’t dare speak even slightly ill of our president, we turn to a story told by Danny Staples in his farewell remarks to the Senate eighteen years ago.  Your reporter had the foresight to turn on his tape recorder to capture many Staples stories and has transcribed most of those recordings. Here’s part of his last speech to the Missouri Senate:

“…This is the greatest place in the world to try to make a living.  Sometimes the food is free.  Sometimes the beverages are free.  But I can tell you now…that I had to come up here two weeks ago on constituent services business and I went over to the Deville Hotel.  There was 18 lobbyists sitting there eating and drinking. And I’m term limited out. They know I can’t ever vote again.  And I set over in the corner, all by myself like an orphan boy at a picnic, bought my own Bud Lite and bought my own steak dinner.”

Danny died seventeen years ago, a little more than seven months after leaving the Senate.

The Deville Hotel has a different name. It no longer is a hangout for lobbyists around a restaurant table because it doesn’t have a restaurant anymore. And the Senate doesn’t have Danny Staples.

Nor does the Senate, or the House, in Washington have anyone who can step in when things get too self-important and tense, and cool things down the way Danny Staples did in the Missouri Senate.  And man-oh-man do they ever need it.

As far as why Republicans in Washington—or even the Republican candidate for the Senate in Georgia—continue to parrot Trumpian hogwash that the election was stolen from him, the answer might become more clear on January 6, 2021.

That’s the day after the two U. S. Senate elections in Georgia.  After that, our president will be considerably weaker because there will be nobody over whom he can threaten harm. Disparaging remarks on Twitter will mean far less because all elections have been decided. The control of the Senate has been determined. While he still might bark loudly, most of his harmful teeth will be gone—for at least two years. And with the passage of time (and the potential for legal difficulties that might mean more than another four-year term), his bite will be even less fearful.

Walking into a room of the powerful when you are in no position to help them or to seriously harm them will be a far different experience for our president from the days when he could walk into a room or into a Tweet before that senate election and hurt somebody.

As of January 6, it might be the president who “sets over in the corner like an orphan boy” because the people he will leave behind in the House and the Senate will have a much reduced reason to deal with him.

As far as being “relevant” within the party or whether a Trump will lead the national GOP: other people will be making a lot of decisions once our president no longer has the cover of his office to protect him and those decisions have the potential to make some decisions for the party regardless of the number of true believers the president now has when he has the power to do something for them. Sooner or later the party might recognize a need to move on and the path might be clearer when there is no sitting president blocking the view.

Regardless, both parties and   both houses of the Congress still badly need somebody such as Danny Staples to tell them to quit taking themselves so seriously that they lose sight of the broad public that believed it was electing them to serve in its interests.

 

 

Playbook

Posted on by
Reply

We offer this observation from a book called “My Fight,” an autobiography written in 1925 by a German World War One veteran who refused to acknowledge his country’s leadership had lost the war and who was  looking for someone else to blame.  This is a 1939 translation by Irish writer and translator James Murphy. You may draw from it anything you wish, or nothing at all.

…It remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

“My Fight” in German is Mein Kampf. The description of “The Big Lie” has been widely attributed to Hermann Goering, the information minister for Adolph Hitler.  But no attributable source has been found for Goering. But it is attributable to his boss, in this book.

A further discussion of the author of this technique can be found in A Psychoanalysis of Adolph Hitler, His Life and Legend  that was compiled for the Office of Strategic Services during World War Two. (The OSS morphed into the CIA after the war.)

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-02646R000600240001-5.

Again, we offer this material without comment.  Make of it what you will.

-0-

Poster Child

Posted on by
5

Three weeks ago in this space, I argued that we should give our president some slack so he could protest perceived shortcomings in the November 3 election.  But enough is now more than enough. The final straw came last Sunday with his interview with Maria Bartiromo on FOX.

His seemingly unending and increasingly bizarre and wild claims that the election was stolen from him, his efforts to hamper his successor’s transition to the presidency, his ongoing lack of concern about the thousands of his fellow citizens who are falling ill and losing their lives at increasing rates, and his seeming (though perhaps intentional) appearance of ignorance of how elections and the courts work have exceeded the tolerance of many who were willing to give him one final chance to grow up.

I am out of patience.

Quite early in my career as a reporter, I determined there were two qualities in public figures that I would not tolerate.

I would not tolerate rudeness.

I would not tolerate liars.

Our incumbent president pegs the needle on both counts.

I pity the man.  I’ll tell you why later.

Every day, our president justifies his role as a poster child for the worst qualities anyone in elective office can have. He is toxic to the American system.  And as long as members of his political party refuse to stand up for their roles in the American system of checks and balances, he will spread his blot upon the office of President of the United States.

I take a risk in writing these words for there are issues and causes in which I believe that will need support of members of his party—and I know these words might create hurdles that are not needed to accomplish some goals.  But there are times when tolerance reaches its limits. These comments are sure to arouse the tempers of those who believe Donald Trump is our country’s greatest president.  None of them, however, believe it more than he does. To be honest, Mr. Trump was my seventh-favorite candidate in a field of two in 2016.  Hillary Clinton was my fourth-favorite candidate in the field of two—and I don’t remember who ranked above them nor do I care anymore. Those who found Mr. Trump number one by far are free, as always, to leave comments in the box below these remarks. But I urge them to follow the guidelines if they expect to see them attached to the entry. I respect differing opinions but I respect them more if they are courteously presented and are more than echoes of his unfounded assertions.

History sometimes offers a cleansing perspective to events and people who are despised in their own time.  But it is difficult for those who find Mr. Trump reprehensible as a person and as a politician to anticipate a time when that might happen for him. Despite his self-proclamations of greatness, he seems during these years when his massive character flaws have been flaunted likely to be listed among the worst presidents in our national history.

I am afraid his positive accomplishments in office have been obscured by his own behavior and his own personality, by his lies and his rudeness.

He has shown manifold instances of believing the Congress is unnecessary and of believing that the Supreme Court is his to command.

He respects no one but himself and is quick to turn on those he has praised when they speak truthfully to him the first time. He shows little or no respect for the political party he claims to represent or for those within the party who place truth and service above loyalty to him. His attacks on Republican election officials and his firing of a lifelong Republican who headed the Homeland Security Cybersecurity program—who had the temerity to say this year’s elections were the most secure in history—are so clearly antagonistic toward the party that it is hard to accept that the party leadership can remain so acquiescent.

He’s a manipulator, an intimidator and with his run for the presidency and his securing that job, he has stood upon his own pedestal to proclaim greatness. He has walked on and over people to get where he is and has left no significant record of ever helping someone else up.

He lies.  If he were say to me, “Good morning,” I would not believe it.

He has no class.  No dignity.  He is not a man who brings out the best in us.  He doesn’t even try.  Everything is about him.

I wonder how many of the thousands who have gathered at his rallies want their children to grow up to be like him.

His behavior has been such that a record number of people voted on November 3 against him and his truculent behavior since bespeaks his lack of respect for the greatest symbol that our country can show the world—free and fair elections and peaceful transfers of power.   He seems incapable of understanding that his looney conspiracy theories are so outlandish that his own judicial appointees have found them embarrassing.

He knows he is the one thing he fears most.  He is a loser.

He believes in power over others, selective recognition of rights, and the idea that he might lose that power frightens him. He wants to remain “relevant,” meaning he wants to continue intimidating the timid souls in his own political party who only enable him to speak and behave outlandishly because they are afraid.

Instead of worrying about the minority that pledges undying support to him, the leaders of his party should turn away and seek an identity that draws a new constituency that makes ideals a goal rather than a constituency that idolizes a figure who cares not about his followers except in terms of their numbers. It is the party that must remain relevant and if the penalty for doing so is loss of control for a time, so be it. Relevance to a changing nation will pay off eventually. Obeisance is temporal but weakening.

Despite these harsh words, I pity him.

He is a man who grew up in a world of concrete, steel, tall buildings, wealth and privilege, in which money could replace apologies and in doing so encouraged unapologetic behavior.  He was never a Boy Scout. His military service consisted of being sent to a military school as a young teenager where he rose to the rank of captain of cadets until he was replaced. His version of why he was replaced differs from the recollections of other cadets whose recollections indicate he was not the team player or leader he should have been, which is no surprise to those who witness him today. There is no record that I have seen that he was ever been on a nature hike, never visited a national park to appreciate beauty outside the harsh scenery of tall buildings, never placed value in anything growing naturally.  He participated in few team sports—although he once claimed to have been the best baseball player in the state, he never made the varsity team at either of his colleges although he was on the Squash team at one of them. He has a car collection but it is unlikely you’ll find the kinds of Chevrolets, Fords, Dodges and Plymouths that are part of our lives. It is unlikely he ever mowed the family yard or raked the leaves after enjoying the colors they brought to the change of seasons.  He sees people such as us as pawns in his political games, playable pieces that have no meaning other than the ways he can move them to his benefit. He doesn’t appreciate people such as us because he has never shared any of our real-world joys, pleasures, responsibilities, and challenges.

As angry as I have become with his behavior, I feel pity for someone who has never truly had a chance to live outside of himself, to be one of the people he uses.

But pity does not generate tolerance.  He’s not the kind of person I would want as a neighbor.  We have neighbors who voted for him, probably, but we appreciate them more than he does.  He would never be invited onto my front porch for a quiet conversation over Cokes.

He wants to keep control of the Republican Party after he leaves the White House.  But the nation is changing and he cannot stop it.  It would be wise of his party to embrace the changes but it can only do so if it breaks his grip and becomes once again a party of Republicans rather than a party of someone who only claims to be one.

The success of down-ballot candidates of the party indicates many believe it is a viable part of our political system.  The results that show confidence below the top surely must be the guide that cannot be ignored when the party determines its  soul going forward.

–

And the winner—

Posted on by
Reply

(Your faithful observer confesses to being less observant than he thought he was, as at least three of you faithful consumers have been good enough to remind me.  For those who don’t or won’t in the future know about that to which I refer, go on with your lives. For those who do, please note that I have made the slight correction you suggest, with thanks.  But Mr. Biden is still P45.)

—won’t be known until January 6, 2021, two weeks before inauguration day.

Not officially, anyway.

We think we’ll know.  The networks will think they know.  The print reporters and the pundits will think they know. But they won’t be correct until January 6.

Officially.

Before we launch into an explanation of those statements, we want to say two things.

First: Joseph Biden will NOT be the 46th President of the United States.  He will be the 45th.  He will lead the 46th presidential administration but he will be the 45th president.  Grover Cleveland screwed up the numbering system when he served two non-consecutive terms and somebody decided he would be the 22nd and 24th President.  He was not two people. But he did lead two administrations.   It’s a small thing. But there are those who get really irritated with the lack of clarity in describing Mr. Biden as our 46th president. If should be apparent who one of them is.

(On Monday, we heard Governor Parson talk briefly about what an honor it is to be Missouri’s 57th governor and to realize how small the group is of men who have led the state in its 200 years.  Actually, the group is more exclusive than that.  He’s our 55th Governor, serving the 57th administration.  Phil Donnelly was 41 and 43 and Christopher Bond was 47 and 49 in terms of state administrations. So Governor Parson is one of only 55.)

Second and more important to today’s discussion: Our county election officials and the hundreds of volunteers who filled various roles on election day—for pitifully little pay—did something remarkable two weeks ago. Not just in Missouri.  Nationwide. With all of the concern about trouble from poll watchers, concerns that the number of voters would overwhelm the system, that the pandemic added hostile and confusing elements, and with the U. S. Postal Service set up to be a fall guy if some absentee or mail-on ballots didn’t get counted, election day happened without noticeable problems beyond the usual ones.  Election days are never easy days for those responsible for administering them.  But November, 2020 should be remembered because our election authorities stayed focused on their jobs and their responsibilities and did a highly-praiseworthy job. Thank Heavens our state went Republican. Otherwise those good folks would be living with unreasonable accusations and insults they do not deserve.

Now, on with our explanation of why we won’t have an official winner until the first week of the new year.

A week ago today we went to bed and we woke up and we didn’t know who would take the oath of office in Washington on January 20, 2021.

There’s a lot about this process of picking a president that we have forgotten about—if we ever knew it.

First, there’s this reminder. You and I were not electing a president two weeks ago.  We were indicating a preference for a president. We were deciding which party’s electors would elect a president.  Missouri Democrats and Republicans each select ten electors, one for each of our members of congress plus two because we have two Senators.  Our system says the person who finishes ahead in the popular vote in Missouri gets all ten of our electors. The electors then vote for the president.  In 2016, Donald Trump won Missouri 10-0.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  Our friend Phill Brooks, who started covering the Capitol about the same time your obedient servant did and writes a weekly political column about Missouri politics, said in a recent column, “the results reported on election night are neither official nor complete.”

Those of us who enjoy reporting the numbers on election night like to think they are, but Phill is correct. Mail-in and absentee ballots are counted after election day if they are postmarked by election day.  That’s why the numbers from the November 3 election were not certified by local election authorities on the spot.

But those are not the official numbers.

“The state law gives the state Board of Canvassers several more weeks before announcing the official state results based on those local reports,” Phill wrote. It is during this time that required recounts in local elections take place and protests or lawsuits are filed.  Once all of that is resolved and canvassers certify no problems with the count, a determination is made about which electoral college panel gets some work to do while the others go home.

The Missouri electoral college delegates will not meet until December 14.  Our ten D or R delegates will give all ten of Missouri’s real determining votes to the state winner, meaning Donald Trump will carry Missouri again 10-0.

But the winner is not determined then, either.

Congress collects all of the Electoral College reports and will hold a joint session on January 6. It will count the electoral votes and declare the person who got 270 or more electoral votes the winner of the big chair in the oval office.  Two weeks later that person will be inaugurated.

That’s how it works. We voted November 3 to pick someone from our district to represent all of the winner’s voters. That person will present all ten of our votes to one candidate.

And then it’s official.

The Secretary of State reports Donald Trump got 1,711,848 votes in Missouri last week. But actually, he got 10.  Joe Biden got 1,242,851.  Actually, he got none.  But thank you, 1,242,851 Missourians for taking part.

One other thing to mention.  Missouri saw 3,012,436 votes cast for president. The total number of votes cast (because some people did not vote for president but voted for other candidates or issues) is going to be more than that. But the number of votes for president was almost 200,000 more ballots that were cast in the 2016 election.

Book Club—VIII

Posted on by
Reply

In this, our last entry in this series, we turn to the last few words of The Soul of America by Jon Meacham, who writes, “For all of our darker impulses, for all of our shortcomings, and for all of the dreams denied and deferred, the experiment begun so long ago, carried out so imperfectly, is worth the fight. There is, in fact, no struggle more important and none nobler, than the one we wage in the service of those whose better angels who, however besieged, are always ready for battle.”

We conclude with the words John F. Kennedy would have spoken in Dallas on November 22, 1963 had he not been murdered on the way to a luncheon at the Trade Mart. They are as timely today as they were then, perhaps even more timely now because so much of what he warned against has come about,

Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country’s security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason — or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternative, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.

But today other voices are heard in the land — voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness…

The United States is a peaceful nation. And where our strength and determination are clear, our words need merely to convey conviction, not belligerence. If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help…

In today’s world, freedom can be lost without a shot being fired, by ballots as well as bullets. The success of our leadership is dependent upon respect for our mission in the world as well as our missiles — on a clearer recognition of the virtues of freedom as well as the evils of tyranny…

Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society…

We, in this country, in this generation, are — by destiny rather than by choice — the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of “peace on earth, good will toward men.” That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: “except the Lord keep the city, the watchmen waketh but in vain.”

We watchmen go to the polls next Tuesday. May we be worthy of our responsibility. And may our better angels prevail.

 

More History Than We Could Have Imagined 

Posted on by
Reply

We have been reminded from all sides that this year’s election is historic. Whether it is as historic as some of the rhetoric has tried to portray it will be determined by the passage of time, as time’s context defines history. But it is, at least, unique.

Especially for Missourians.

We might be—probably are—participating in a huge first step of a transition from polling place to mailbox or other ways of casting votes. While mail-in voting was approved by the legislature as a one-off experience in this pandemic year, this bell has been rung and it can’t be UNrung. It is hard to believe lawmakers here and throughout the country will not revisit this issue, smooth out its rough spots, and move to make remote voting in one form or another a regular practice.

Resistance can be expected. But the arrow is in flight and while its course might become longer than anticipated, it will not be diverted.

More locally, what we are seeing in Missouri this year has never happened before or has happened only once. For example—-

Governor Mike Parson is not running for RE-election. He was Lieutenant Governor when Eric Greitens resigned, moving him into the big office. This is the first time Missourians have been faced with a sitting governor running for election since Lilburn Boggs, who as lieutenant governor replaced Daniel Dunklin, who resigned after becoming Surveyor General of Missouri and Illinois. Boggs, who is best known for issuing the extermination order against the Mormons, was elected to a full term in 1836.

(As a side note, all of this occurred a decade after an unusual gubernatorial succession circumstance put one man in the governor’s office with no opponent. Our second governor, Frederick Bates, died in 1825. Lieutenant Governor Benjamin Reeves had resigned earlier to help survey the Santa Fe Trail.  Senate President Pro Tem Abraham Williams, a one-legged shoemaker from Columbia, assumed duties as governor and under the constitution in effect at the time, called an election.  John Miller defeated three other candidates. Miller ran for a full term in 1828 and to this day is the only governor elected without opposition.  He served the longest continuous term until a constitutional change allowed Warren Hearnes to succeed himself in 1969.)

Never before have we had so many people seeking election to statewide offices they already hold but were not elected to hold.  Parson, Lieutenant Governor Kehoe, Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick were not elected to their present offices. But  Mike Kehoe was headed back to private life as a term-limited senator and Fitzpatrick was facing ouster from the House because of term limits. When Parson moved up to governor, he promptly appointed Kehoe as Lieutenant Governor. Schmitt was elected State Treasurer then was appointed by Parson as Attorney General when Josh Hawley ended Claire McCaskill’s U. S. Senate Career.  Fitzpatrick, the outgoing House Budget Committee Chair, was appointed by Parson as Schmitt’s successor as Treasurer. The only statewide office holder who is running for RE-election, not just election, is Secretary of State Jay Ashcoft, who has stayed where voters put him four years ago.

The last time a sitting statewide office holder was elected, not re-elected, was 1996 with the election of Bekki Cook as Secretary of State.  She had been appointed to succeed acting Secretary Dick Hanson after the Missouri Supreme Court removed Judi Moriarty from office. Hanson, incidentally, served in the office only a few days and as far as we know holds the record for shortest time in office of any statewide official.

Cook did not see re-election but four years later was the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor. She lost to fellow Cape Girardeau resident Peter Kinder who went on become the only person to serve three full terms as Lieutenant Governor—a record unlikely to be broken if Amendment 1 is unfortunately approved next week.

President Trump’s repeated refusal to say he would assent to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses recalls an instance in Missouri when the legislature refused to allow such a transfer. Democrats had a stranglehold on state offices and on the legislature in 1940 when Republican Forrest Donnell was elected Governor.  In those days, the Speaker of the House proclaimed the official winners of statewide elections and Speaker Morris Osburn refused to certify Donnell’s election. The loser, Democrat Larry McDaniel, and state Democratic Party Chairman C. Marion Hulen claimed voting irregularities made McDaniel a winner by 30-thousand votes, not the 36-hundred vote loser. The Missouri Supreme Court finally ordered Donnell be sworn in—six weeks late, and to serve until a recount showed he had lost. The recount became a disaster for McDaniel, who withdrew his challenge without consulting Democratic leaders who had urged him to fight.

The event is unlikely to be repeated. A new state constitution adopted five years later made the Secretary of State, not the Speaker of the House, the person who certifies election results.

Many who read these observations already have cast their ballots and already have contributed to this historic election.  Thousands more will go to polling places next Tuesday to do their parts.

It’s not often that so many people make so much history.  We hope you will have or already have done your part.

 

God and the election

Posted on by
4

(Since July, 1997, the Reverend Doyle Sager has been the lead pastor of the First Baptist Church, next to my First Christian Church—and across the street from the First Methodist Church—a few blocks from the Missouri Capitol.  Whenever I stop at the cafeteria in the basement of the Capitol, I see if there’s a new edition of Word and Way, a monthly Baptist magazine because I enjoy Doyle’s thoughtful essays.  He wrote one a year ago, in the October, 2019 edition, that is appropriate for these last few days before a major election.  We’re passing it along today instead of our usual meditation from Dr. Frank Crane because it strikes us as eminently appropriate to our times.)

NATIONALISM & THE TRIBAL GOD IT CREATES

More than anytime in our recent history, America is struggling to discern the difference between patriotism and nationalism. This summer I attended the annual gathering of the Baptist World Alliance in Nassau, the Bahamas, interacting with believers from approximately 50 nations. As always, it was a beautiful experience of cultural immersion—all sorts of languages, all shades of skin color, and all kinds of beautiful Caribbean costumes. Back in my room late one evening, I made a journal entry about a Christ who is bigger than our Western culture and sectarian politics.

But instead of worshipping a Cosmic Christ, many have settled for a tribal deity who suits our tribal behavior. The result? A nationalism which places country above God and uses religion to justify any means.

Observe carefully: Most genocides are religion-based. These pogroms christen violence in the name of their god. Conveniently, a tribal god hates what we hate and loves what we love. In contrast, the true Lord God of Hebrew and Christian scripture is larger than our nationalism. Isaiah, Jonah, John the Baptist, and Jesus all bear witness to a God who strides above the nations and will not be domesticated for our parochial purposes.

History offers many warnings. By the mind-1930s Germany’s body politic had been infected with Hitler’s toxic fascism. In protest, Karl Barth and others crafted the Barmen Declaration, a bold witness offered by those who loved their country enough to tell it the truth (an essential ingredient in true patriotism).

For our purposes, two points from the Barmen Declaration are particularly relevant. Number three: “The message and order of the church should not be influenced by the current political convictions.” And number six calls for the rejection of “the subordination of the Church to the state…” In other words, the Church is not the errand boy for any politician or party.

Nationalism loves to delete unpleasant portions of its history, bending and weaponizing its myths to align with its purposes. Patriotism, on the other hand, is willing to face harsh truth in order to be liberated from the past. Karl Barth often marveled at the human capacity for self-deception. It never occurs to us that God might be opposed to us. We always see God as the guarantor of our values, our way of life and our tribe. What if we’re wrong? What if God isn’t pleased?

Here’s a challenge: Read in detail the tragic massacre of Native Americans at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. Also consider a lesser-known national sin, the Rock Springs massacre.  After the sweat and toil of thousands of immigrant Chinese had made possible the completion of the transcontinental railroad, white Americans decided they had no more use for the foreigners who were taking up space and being hired for jobs that whites needed. Tensions rose and a riot broke out in present-day Rock Springs, Wyoming. Enraged miners killed at least 28 Chinese and injured 15 others. Seventy-eight Chinese homes were burned. One local newspaper defended the killings. A grand jury refused to bring any indictments. No one was ever convicted for the slaughter.

Our church recently hosted a community worship service commemorating the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in America.  The service was a painful time of truth-telling, as blacks and whites together reflected on our country’s nightmare and our dreams. We cannot undo the past, but we can tell ourselves the truth in order to make tomorrow better.

Without fail, history bears witness to an ironic truth: Nationalism always leaves us more enslaved, not more free.  This is true because tribalism always shrinks us—a smaller world, more selfish goals, deeper fears and more distrust of the other. And a small-hearted tribe always needs a very small, angry, god.

Recent brain science research has revealed that we become like the God we worship.  Contemplating a loving God strengthens portions of our brain where sympathy and reason track.  Contemplating a wrathful God empowers the limbic system, which is filled with aggression and fear. Brian McLaren comments, “The God we choose to love changes us into his image, whether [that God] exists or not. (A New Kind of Christianity, p. 279).

Everyday, Americans get to decide; Do we choose a god who is a mascot for our shameless nationalism? Or do we choose the one who is above all rulers and authority and who calls us to healthy, thoughtful patriotism.

(Reverend Sager was diagnosed in mid-August with Stage IV lung cancer. He recently finished a round of chemotherapy and posted on his web page that the results were encouraging. We pray for his recovery.)

 

Throwing away our right to vote—again

Posted on by
Reply

How unfortunate that in a year when millions of Americans and thousands of Missourians are taking such extraordinary steps to vote, Missourians are likely to throw away the right to vote.

Again.

For the third time, by our count.

Amendment One puts term limits on the Lieutenant Governor, State Auditor, Secretary of State and State Auditor.  Two terms and they never again can fill those offices no matter how well they have done their jobs, no matter how many people want to vote for a third term for them.

Missourians are likely to throw away their right to decide if these people should be in office longer than eight years.

Missourians threw away their right to vote for a fifth term or more for their state representative or a third term for their state senator about thirty years ago.   Many years later, Missourians threw away their right to decide whether their city ever could levy an earnings tax. The same amendment required St. Louis and Kansas City to get voter approval of earning taxes every five years. But a not-well publicized additional provision means local voters can never decide an important local issue.

Now here we are with Amendment one.

In an election cycle that will be remembered for, among other things, the intentional promotion of distrust in and confusion about our election system, when tens of millions of people are determined to vote despite a pandemic and the generated chaos in the system, citizens of this state are being asked to approve a third constitutional amendment taking away a voting right.

Past results indicate they’ll do it.  And then they will hypocritically prove they don’t really believe in what they are approving.

Prove it, you say? Easily. The term limits do not affect the listed statewide officers until the next time they come up for election. If State Auditor Nicole Galloway remains the State Auditor after this year’s governor’s race is decided, she will have a chance to serve two MORE terms as Auditor.  Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who could be elected to a second term this year would be eligible for election to two MORE terms—giving him four terms in office. Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe and Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who are serving out unfinished terms of Mike Parson and Josh Hawley could be elected to full terms this time and be eligible to run for two MORE terms, if they want to do so.

We saw this happen with legislators when the original term limits were enacted.  Those lawmakers elected that year were eligible to four MORE terms in the House no matter how many they already had served and those elected to another four-year term in the Senate were eligible to run for two MORE four-year terms.

And their constituents did vote for them for those additional terms after saying eight years was a limit for their service.

It is a fact proven by experience that voters are more likely than not to support an incumbent time after time after time if they have the chance—-despite saying they want term limits.

Term limits paints with a size 30 brush when voters would be better served with a size four brush. It misses the target it should have.  The biggest danger of unlimited terms is not in positions of  service; it is in  positions of power.  Controlling government power is one thing.  Limiting the opportunity of trusted and responsible office-holders to continue providing service is another.

It is appropriate that Missouri has term limits for the Governor and the State Treasurer—although making them nuclear limits as they are (never again serving in those offices after, for example, waiting four years before trying to come back) can be and has been questioned—because these two officers have executive and financial powers that set them apart from the other statewide officials whose roles are more management-oriented.

In an extended age of loud voices that undermine trust in public institutions of all sorts and the easy acceptance of paranoid conspiracy fictions, we are willing to sell out, again, one of the great gifts our founders gave us—the right and the opportunity to decide who deserves to stay in office.

Our founding fathers gave us a system that can work if we are responsible enough as citizens to make it work.  If the national polls are correct, we might find out in a few days that voters decided Donald Trump’s term limit is one, a proof that the system can work if we are responsible enough to protect that system and use it.

Your pessimistic observer knows that his voice is unlikely to influence a wide audience on Amendment One and it probably is too late in the process for it to make any difference.  But giving away our right to vote, one increment at a time, is not something that should never happen quietly—or ever happen again.

 

Book Club—VI 

Posted on by
Reply

In 1832, South Carolina enacted nullification acts declaring the state would not obey or enforce federal laws establishing duties on certain imported products.  Jon Meacham quotes President Andrew Jackson telling his Secretary of War, Lewis Cass, “Nullification and secession, or, in the language of truth, disunion, is gaining strength. We must be prepared to act with promptness and crush the monster in its cradle before it matures to manhood.”

Jackson, whose followers founded the Democratic Party and saw him elected to the presidency in 1828, issued a special proclamation on December 10, 1832 defending the concept of a union of states and the importance of a central government.

Contemplate the condition of that country of which you still form an important part. Consider its government, uniting in one bond of common interest and general protection so many different States, giving to all their inhabitants, the proud title of American citizen, protecting their commerce, securing their literature and their arts, facilitating their intercommunication, defending their frontiers, and making their name respected in the remotest parts of the earth!  Consider the extent of its territory, its increasing and happy population, its advance in arts, which render life agreeable, and the sciences which elevate the mind!  See education spreading the lights of religion, morality, and general information into every cottage in the wide extent of our Territories and States!  Behold it as the asylum where the wretched and the oppressed find a refuge and support!  Look on this picture of happiness and honor and say, We too are citizens of America. 

Meacham writes in “The Soul of America” that Jackson “had spoken in the vernacular of hope and of unity to combat fear and disunion.